undyingking: (Default)
[personal profile] undyingking
I'm interested to learn what people think a vowel is. For reasons that will be explained further down the post, once you've done the poll!

[Poll #1575745]

We were at a pub quiz the other day where a question was: Name a six-letter word in English that starts and finishes with the same letter, a vowel; and has no other vowels inbetween. ie. the pattern is 'v1234v' where both vs are the same vowel, and 1,2,3,4 are consonants which may be the same or different. Then name another six-letter word that also fits this pattern.

We got one quite quickly, but on a second being suggested, there was a difference of opinion about whether it counted or not: it had a 'y' in the middle, pronounced as a long 'i' sound. One group argued that only a, e, i o and u are vowels, so y is definitely a consonant. Another argued that although y is sometimes a consonant, when it's pronounced like i then it's a vowel. A third opinion was that it depended if it was written or spoken. What would you have said?

And, for a bonus, can you get the two words? The one we got quickly is the name of a common medical complaint. The one with a 'y' in the middle (which, it turned out, didn't count, as the quizmaster was using the aeiou interpretation) is the name of a category of biological substance. The official second answer which we didn't get, is a highly obscure topographical term (and is a plural, if that helps).

Also I'm interested to know, people who are knowledgable about other languages, whether they handle these things more sensibly?

Date: 2010-06-08 11:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] undyingking.livejournal.com
It seems to me that any letter that is representing a vowel sound is de facto a vowel. It would seem crazy to say that the 'y' in 'fly' is a vowel sound when you say it, but a consonant when you write it down.

Date: 2010-06-08 11:07 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] bateleur.livejournal.com
It would seem crazy to say that the 'y' in 'fly' is a vowel sound when you say it, but a consonant when you write it down.

I don't think that's crazy. The clue is in the word "sound".

Of course, perhaps it's just my mathematician's bias in terms of wanting technical terms to have clear definitions and being happy to use long, vague descriptions for long, vague ideas!

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Date: 2010-06-08 11:43 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mr-malk.livejournal.com
I would say that letters are vowels where circumstance requires that they are vowels - i.e. when they represent a vowel sound, but I would not expect most people to use the word "vowel" like that.

I would have expected most people to say that the vowels are "a, e, i, o and u", particularly if they didn't qualify it. In the quiz scenario, it would be worth asking the quizmeister, but in the absence of clarification, I would assume that y wouldn't count, even though I would count it myself.

The reason for this is that most people only really associate the word "vowel" with that collection of five letters, and probably the sounds they represent (in fact, as I'm sure you know, of the AY, EE, AI, OE and YU sounds, only the first two are genuine vowels, and the others are dipthongs, but most people not only don't know that, they don't care, and they wouldn't thank you for pointing it out in conversation)!

Stephen Fry drew attention to the issue in QI, when he said that the most common vowel in the English language is "schwa" (ə) more commonly recognised as the dull vowel sound in "the" or in the second syllable of "station".

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Date: 2010-06-08 11:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] venta.livejournal.com
I'd say a vowel is a, e, i, o, u, but that's just because I was taught "these are vowels" and not due to any specific piece of reasoning.

It seems to me that it's more sensible to count 'y' as a vowel than to count it as a consonant, though basically it can act as either in different circumstances.

Whoever said it depends whether it's spoken or written was clearly insane :)

Date: 2010-06-08 11:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] undyingking.livejournal.com
because I was taught

I suspect that may be at the root of many respondents' answers.

Sadly I've come gradually to the realization that almost every 'rule' of the English language that I learnt at primary school was wrong.

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Date: 2010-06-08 11:46 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] karohemd.livejournal.com
Whoever said it depends whether it's spoken or written was clearly insane

This.

I always think of vowels of letters that can stand on its own, not as sounds in usage but that is most likely due to my German roots as some English vowels on their own are diphtongs so not a single sound (u is pronounced "you", a is "ay" etc. whereas in German it's all one sound, like a musical note).

However, the technical linguistic definition seems to be usage based, so y and w would fall under vowels.

I wouldn't even have thought of that if it hadn't been for this post. o_O

Date: 2010-06-08 03:25 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] secretrebel.livejournal.com
Yes, that's my reason too. I really havered because in scrabble Y is totally a vowel but I was TAUGHT it was a consonant.

Date: 2010-06-08 11:21 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fractalgeek.livejournal.com
My understanding is that the vowel sounds are aeiou, but for spelling purposes, y must be a vowel, as "English words have vowels" - but y is almost always pronounced as i in this context.

eg
[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<a [...] http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861732372_1861732379/nextpage.html</a>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

My understanding is that the vowel <i>sounds</i> are aeiou, but for <i>spelling</i> purposes, y must be a vowel, as "English words have vowels" - but y is almost always pronounced as i in this context.

eg <a href="http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861732372_1861732379/nextpage.html"http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861732372_1861732379/nextpage.html</a>


I am aware in Japanese, for instance, that some letters have changed sound, and have lost their distinct prounciations - so you have wo --> o (but is still used written in a distinct semantic context), and ye has been abolished (having become e), except as an equivalent of "ye olde pub", so there is (y)ebisu beer, where the y is silent, but gives the impression of something old.

Date: 2010-06-08 11:45 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] undyingking.livejournal.com
That's interesting re Japanese, thanks!

Date: 2010-06-08 11:49 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mr-malk.livejournal.com
"English words have vowels"

Just as a point of interest, I discovered last week that "ch" is a valid word in Scrabble (English, obviously), and is a dialect term meaning "I". Not sure if it's pronounced with a vowel sound, or what the originating dialect is, but it's true!
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Date: 2010-06-08 11:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mr-malk.livejournal.com
Without seeing what anyone else has written first, so sorry for any repetition, a vowel can be either a verbal sound or a written representation of that sound. In English, the written vowels are a, e, i, o and u, and sometimes y. Very occasionally w (in obscure words pinched from Welsh). Other languages have additional ones.

English has considerably more phonetic vowels (I forget the exact number, but it's in double figures, plus a handful of dipthongs, which are two vowels welded together in such a way that most native speakers don't even realise that they are not a single sound).

Date: 2010-06-08 11:33 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] undyingking.livejournal.com
Ha, yes, I'd forgotten 'w'. Although I don't suppose people would be any more convinced by that than by 'y'.

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Date: 2010-06-08 11:58 am (UTC)
ext_44: (kittens)
From: [identity profile] jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com
a,e,i,o,u "and sometimes y".

I have gone for "something else" rather than "it depends" because I don't know what the sometimes actually depends on.

Date: 2010-06-08 11:58 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] zenithed.livejournal.com
I'd say 'y' isn't a vowel, because I'd say "a yellow balloon" rather than "an yellow balloon". I think that makes sense.

First word: asthma?

Date: 2010-06-08 12:14 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] undyingking.livejournal.com
Yes, well done! You get a point.

I'm trying to think now of a word that starts with y as a vowel, and so would need 'an'. But I can't. Hmm.

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Date: 2010-06-08 12:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ninthcouncil.livejournal.com
There are words in English with a "vowel y" at the start - two chemical elements, Yttrium and Ytterbium, for instance - and you'd use "an" before them ("an Ytterbium granule"), so that doesn't really work. Conversely, you still hear BBC announcers saying "an hotel", when the "h" is neither silent nor a vowel.

I can't see that any definition other than a stricutly functional one can stand up. If it behaves like a vowel, it is a vowel.

Asthma, yes. But there is another which word which fits the definition but seems not to have been included - aphtha (mouth ulcer).

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Date: 2010-06-08 12:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] floralaetifica.livejournal.com
I was taught 'a, e i, o, u' in school. But in America they're apparently taught 'a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y'. And in some American schools they're apparently taught 'a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y and w'.

I don't think I'd personally include W, because, although it doesn't involve any teeth or tongue sounds, it's not a simple sound, it's always (in English) composed of 'oo' plus another vowel - oo-ah, oo-ih, oo-oh, etc. I think maybe (and this seems to be basically the same point karohemd made) vowels are supposed to be the pure open mouth sounds - even though often in English we pronounce a diphthongy sound - a becomes 'ayee', o becomes 'owa', i becomes 'ayee', u becomes 'yooou', in theory, vowel sounds are pure. In other languages (eg Spanish, Korean (I'm told)), they're still pure simple sounds.

I'm not sure us English speakers can really talk about vowels at all, given that we generally only actually pronounce one vowel per word (the vowel with the stress), the rest becoming slurred 'uh' sounds. (In Spanish it's the opposite - crystal-clear vowels, but they barely pronounce their consonants at all.)

Date: 2010-06-08 03:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] undyingking.livejournal.com
the rest becoming slurred 'uh' sounds

Not to mention 'vowels' like the e at the end of rattle, which aren't actually pronounced at all but are just there to prevent the terminal consonant looking silly.

Date: 2010-06-08 12:32 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dr-bob.livejournal.com
I always thought it was a e i o u until I heard the They Might Be Giants song "the vowel family" which added y as an additional vowel. Which frankly makes a lot more sense - "there's a vowel in every word" Except shh and ch, obviously (and no doubt other weird two letter scrabble words I've forgotten)

Date: 2010-06-08 12:41 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gbsteve.livejournal.com
I'm in the sometimes y brigade. It's clearly a vowel in yclept but obviously not in yellow. It's hard to think of a circumstance in which a, e, i, o or u works as a consonant. Funnily enough I was just looking at this yesterday.

Date: 2010-06-08 03:25 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com
In the right circumstances, W can be a consonant, and so can liquids like M and N.

Date: 2010-06-08 03:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] undyingking.livejournal.com
Mm, there's a whole further bag of worms to be opened up when talking about what is or isn't a consonant!

Date: 2010-06-08 03:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ar-boblad.livejournal.com
Interestingly (to me anyways) Korean avoids all this by drawing a massive line between vowels and consonants, and making it so that while some circumstances modify a consonant sound in a word none ever do to a vowel. Thus for each vowel (and diphthong, which are treated as vowels in Korean) there is exactly one vowel sound and one vowel letter.

Also in Korean the vowels look very different to consonants: ㅣㅏㅡㅑㅖ compared to ㅈㄷㅋㅇㅆ for example. But then Korean is a far more sensible language than English.

Date: 2010-06-08 03:54 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] undyingking.livejournal.com
Almost any language is far more sensible than English! I always thought those characters were for when you wanted to lay out boxes in ASCII, I had no idea they were Korean vowels.

I think I'm right in saying that some Semitic languages, such as Hebrew, don't have written vowels at all.

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Date: 2010-06-08 06:21 pm (UTC)
triskellian: (grammar)
From: [personal profile] triskellian
Wow. I never expected to get to the bottom of a 60-comment thread and not find anyone had made the point I was going to!

It seems to me to be a difference in technical versus layfolk language. In ordinary English, as used for talking about individual letters, it's a, e, i, o and u, and when talking about letters-as-parts-of-words, it's a, e, i, o and u, and sometimes y and w.

In technical (linguistic) language, although it also uses the above definitions for written language, there's an extra definition. I'm not enough of a technical linguist to be precise about it, but it's something like 'a single standalone phoneme', which sort-of corresponds to the sounds we represent with the vowel-letters.

The way I understand the 'standaloneness' of the phoneme is to think that for all the consonants (in the alphabet; I'm not getting into what a consonant is, or all the different non-vowel phonemes in English), if you try and pronounce them as individual sounds, you have to add a vowel-sound, usually schwah. Buh, tuh, kuh, etc. We can't say b, t, k, and the rest, without the vowel. A-as-in-cat, otoh, we can say on its own, therefore it's a vowel (sound), represented by a vowel (letter).

Date: 2010-06-10 09:04 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] undyingking.livejournal.com
I suspect you may be the first commenter actually to have any formal understanding of linguistics ;-) Interesting definition, I hadn't thought about standaloneness. I'm now wondering about the sounds in eg. African click languages that seem like consonants but also seem like they can be made without adding a vowel...

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Date: 2010-06-08 06:32 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cardinalsin.livejournal.com
I was always taught that y is a vowel, so it's a vowel. I'm not inclined to think there's any particular logic to the terms "vowel" and "consonant", however, any more than any other aspect of language is especially logical. So probably you can swing both ways.

Date: 2010-06-08 06:51 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jackfirecat.livejournal.com
hmm, quite interesting, thank you!

I'm with you on 'y', but in the context of a quiz the question is not what's 'right' but what the quiz-setter had in mind, so aeiou in this case I would've bet (I say in full enjoyment of hindsight).

Reading wikip (prompted by 'liquid' above which I hadn't head of) I see there's a contention that R can carry the main sound of a word in certain dialects (they say General American, I would add Ulster and Scots). So, purpler, in General American is devoid of our 'u' sound that it's spelt with and is pronounced prplr. I've always loved the way (some) Americans say 'purple' and I think this informs that - it sounds odd because that stressed R is doing such different work than it does in my English.

I also liked the alleged vowelless prst_skrz_krk

Date: 2010-06-10 09:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] undyingking.livejournal.com
Prst skrz krk is great! -- thanks for that. I must do some reading around this, it's an interesting area.

There's a good page here about such r-related antics, but it needs me to follow loads of other links defining terms before I will properly understand all of it.

Date: 2010-06-24 07:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] splendorsine.livejournal.com
Enzyme is a word of Greek origin, and that upsilon is very much a vowel in Greek. Just because the native English "y" may be a consonant doesn't mean we can jettison our classical educations as and when it suits us!

Date: 2010-06-24 08:13 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] undyingking.livejournal.com
Good point! Although actually I think that in Anglo-Saxon and even Middle English y is always a vowel too: consonantal y seems to be a fairly modern invention.

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