W is a vowel

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#543614 Sat, 19 Jul 08 06:56 PM

Forbes
That just about sums it up really.

no, he's wrong

W does not have 'something of a vowel' about it.

period

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FOR ALL INTENSIVE PURPOSES NEVER LICK A GIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH

Vowels

Forbes

#543686 Sat, 19 Jul 08 10:24 PM

Have a look at these opinions:

http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/t50.html

http://answergirlnet.blogspot.com/2007/07/can-you-give-example-of-use-of-w-as.html

http://www.roanoke.com/columnists/jennings/wb/xp-4058

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_Word_uses_w_as_a_vowel

http://www.angelfire.com/biz/valderbooks/lesson6.html

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0004D&L=ads-l&P=7346

http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2007/04/vowel-play.html

http://www.eduqna.com/Words-Wordplay/795-Words-Wordplay-7.html

Forbes

Joined on Thu, Jun 16 2005

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Phobias, Vowels

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#543700 Sat, 19 Jul 08 10:57 PM

friend, I looked at your links

the case presented over and over is that W is a semivowel because sometimes it is used to represent PART of a dipthong

I don't think that qualifies. In fact, every one of your sources (excpet the woefully inadequate wikianswer site) says that SOME linguists call W a semivowel. I maintain the stance that that opinion is wrong.

There is no consensus in linguists about this. If you want to teach that W is a semivowel, go ahead. My point is that it's an obscure opinion that isn't backed up by much that can't be summarily dismissed as esoteric descriptive linguistics because of the limits of the discipline in general (you can make an equally flimsy case using descriptive linguistcs that it is not a semivowel). So, until it's a generally accepted part of the english set of vowels, it shouldn't be taught as if it is.

It's all semantics anyway. As you've pointed out, the letters themselves aren't exactly representative of the full range of sounds in the language. People have to 'fudge' when creating new linguistic material (words, sounds, etc.) in a language. Hebrew has had to invent letters in the last 100 years.

TLDR: W isn't a vowel

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Vowels

Forbes

#543924 Sun, 20 Jul 08 11:19 AM

Here's a conundrum for you:

Latin as written in Roman times had no letter <w>, but it did have the sound /w/. The letter <u> was used to represent both the sound /u/ and the sound /w/.

uolo (pronouced more or less as "wallow")

cum

uulpus (pronounced more or less as "wool puss")

So.

Was the letter "u" a consonant or vowel?

The fact that the Romans did not feel the necessity for a separate symbol for the sound /w/ and also used the symbol <u> (also used for the sound /u/) to represent it is a clear indication that either (a) they did not perceive /w/ to be distinct from /u/ or (b) they considered the two sounds to be so close that they could without confusion be represented by the same symbol.

Similar observations may be made about modern languages derived from Latin. In French, Spanish and Italian there is no symbol for /w/ that is not also used for something else.

French oui

Italian uomo

Spanish huevo

It may also be noted that in Arabic /w/ and /u:/ are represented by the same symbol.

The idea that /w/ is identical to or a positional variant* of /u/ has been around for at least two thousand years and is today felt by the speakers of many languages. It is not some new-fangled notion of descriptive linguistics and certainly not obscure.

*Is that the correct terminology?

Forbes

Consonants, Vowels

Kooyeen

#544114 Sun, 20 Jul 08 07:47 PM

I agree with those who say there could be several definitions.

Considering letters. Vowels: A E I O U (so W is not included here)
Considering sounds. Vowel sounds: all those in the IPA vowel chart. (so W is not included here either. "The" is pronounced "thee" and the article "a" becomes "an" before vowel sounds of this kind, so say "a wall" and "a university")
Considering sounds more broadly. I think dark l's (as in "wall"), r-colored schwas (as in the last syllable of "powder"), w-sounds and y-sounds ("wall", "year") can all have some points in common with vowels. That's why some people often consider W a semi-vowel.

In general, I usually don't consider W a vowel, for several reasons. Here's some that came to my mind:
the end - the winner <-- does not behave like a vowel when considering some changes in pronunciation
an oar - a war <-- does not behave like a vowel when considering those articles
at all - at work <-- does not behave like a vowel when considering tapped t's

That said, it's just my opinion, and there are lots of other different definitions of vowel that make sense. Smile

Kooyeen

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Articles, Pronunciation, Universities, Vowels

Forbes

#544155 Sun, 20 Jul 08 11:05 PM

When you say that /w/ does not behave as a vowel you are in a sense correct. It does not behave like a "full" vowel in that it can never form the nucleus of a syllable. However, although it does not behave like a vowel it is formed liked a vowel. It is sometimes described as a "non-syllabic vowel". Whatever we call it, the fact is that it only occurs in positions typically associated with consonants. This is why I said ages ago in this thread that from the phonetic point of view /w/ is a vowel, but from a phonological point of view it functions as a consonant.

The preceeding relates to the sound /w/.

The letter <w> is something different.

It is often the case that the letter <w> represents the sound /w/. When it does it is entirely reasonable to say that <w> functions as a consonant letter.

But it is also often the case that the letter <w> does not represent the sound /w/. The word mown is sounded the same as the word moan. <ow> and <oa> are two of the ways in which the vowel sound can be written. The <w> and the <a> both perform exactly the same function. If we are going to insist that in the case of mown <w> functions as a consonant letter, I do not see how we can get round saying that the <a> in moan also functions as a consonant letter.

Forbes

Consonants, Phonetics, Vowels

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#556640 Tue, 19 Aug 08 08:45 PM

Forbes
When you say that /w/ does not behave as a vowel you are in a sense correct. It does not behave like a "full" vowel in that it can never form the nucleus of a syllable. However, although it does not behave like a vowel it is formed liked a vowel. It is sometimes described as a "non-syllabic vowel". Whatever we call it, the fact is that it only occurs in positions typically associated with consonants. This is why I said ages ago in this thread that from the phonetic point of view /w/ is a vowel, but from a phonological point of view it functions as a consonant.

I'm glad we agree.. now lets tackle the other part

Forbes
But it is also often the case that the letter <w> does not represent the sound /w/. The word mown is sounded the same as the word moan. <ow> and <oa> are two of the ways in which the vowel sound can be written. The <w> and the <a> both perform exactly the same function. If we are going to insist that in the case of mown <w> functions as a consonant letter, I do not see how we can get round saying that the <a> in moan also functions as a consonant letter.

your example forgets that dipthongs are made up of multiple sounds together. The dipthongs /ow/ and /oa/ have the same sound when used in the words you provide as examples, but that doesn't mean that you can isolate half of each dipthong and then show that they the letters obviously represent the same sound. By that logic, <w> and <a> have the same function and the same soound.

The reason that you can't do that is because the dipthongs themselves are the units of sound. They cannot be broken into their component parts anymore than the letters that represent them can be broken into parts. So /ow/ is a vowel sound, a dipthong more specifically, but that doesn't mean that /o/ + /w/ = /ow/..... but you already knew that.

/ow/ and /aw/ are vowel sounds

/w/ is never a vowel

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Consonants, Phonetics, Vowels

Forbes

#557214 Thu, 21 Aug 08 02:05 PM

I am glad we agree about the sound /w/.

That leaves us with the letter <w>.

Letters of the alphabet must not be confused with sounds. By convention and for convenience, letters that represent vowel sounds are called vowels and letters that represent consonant sounds are called consonants. (In the rest of this post when I use the word "vowel" I mean a vowel symbol or letter and use "vowel sound" to refer to sounds.) This does not present any special problem for many languages, but for some, including English, difficulties arise when you begin to look into it. The complexities of English orthography arise, at least in part, because the way it is written is etymological rather than phonetic; that is, writing represents an earlier stage of the language.

Consider the words mat and mate. If asked, most people would have no hesitation in saying that <m> and <t> were consonants and <a> and <e> were vowels. A moment's thought, however, may lead us to ask what the <e> is doing in mate. It clearly has a function in that it changes the vowel sound between the <m> and <t> - mat and mate are pronounced differently. Even so, the <e> has no value on its own - you have to take the whole package of <a> + <C> + <e> = the vowel sound in mate, a fairly regular correspondence.

Consonants also influence the value given to vowels.

Take mating v matting. Here it is the doubling that changes the quality of the vowel sound. Are we justified in saying that there is some indication of "vowelness" in the consonants here?

The vowel sound of bath can be represented in several ways:

bath

harm

palm

etc

The <r> and <l> are not pronounced, but without them we have ham and Pam. Can <r> and <l> be said to be functioning as consonants?

Now consider the letter <k>. It is a consonant most will say. By what is it doing in knot? The <k> does help to show the pronunciation since not is pronounced in the same way. It is true that the presence of the <k> helps to distinguish the two words, but that is coincidental; it is simply the case that the <k> has not been eliminated since the /k/ stopped being pronounced. Are we justified in saying that in knot <k> is a consonant?

I have already noted above that <y> can function to represent (a) the sound /j/ (b) a vowel or dipthong and (c) an element of a dipthong.

<w> does not operate in quite the same way as <y> as (ignoring the rare borrowing from Welsh) it never operates on its own to represent a vowel or dipthong. It can :

(a) represent the sound /w/ in way

(b) combine with another vowel to represent a vowel sound as is law

(c) combine with another vowel to represent a dipthong as is cow

I therefore do not see the problem in saying that <w> has a dual function in writing - it is both a vowel and a consonant.

Forbes

Consonants, Phonetics, Pronunciation, Vowels

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#557294 Thu, 21 Aug 08 07:31 PM

Forbes
A moment's thought, however, may lead us to ask what the <e> is doing in mate. It clearly has a function in that it changes the vowel sound between the <m> and <t> - mat and mate are pronounced differently. Even so, the <e> has no value on its own - you have to take the whole package of <a> + <C> + <e> = the vowel sound in mate, a fairly regular correspondence.

this is my argument about not being able to pull apart dipthongs and make statements about their components

because of that, I find it hard to make the claim that <w> is really part of <aw>

<aw> is its own unit of sound, and just because it's represented using the letter <w> doesn't mean that <w> is an independant actor in the dipthong's sound

In other words, because we don't have a letter to represent the sound /aw/, we fudge a little and use two letters in combination. But the sound /aw/ is not really /a/ + /w/... if that makes sense.

So, the 'half a dipthong' arguments don't hold water, imo. For a letter to be a vowel, it's got to be capable of being used as a vowel outside the context of a dipthong. There is a large number of true consonants that, combined with a vowel, create an entirely new sound (like the <r> amd <l> in your examples).

But <r> and <l> aren't vowels, are they? Just because you add a consonant to a vowel and produce a new sound doesn't mean that you can then call the consonant a vowel.

Bottom line: Letters and sounds have a very, very loose connection. At best, letters are used to represent sounds, but never can one claim that a given sound is the exclusive domain of any letter or vice versa. So, it follows that sounds represented by multiple letters (dipthongs being the primary example of this) are distinct entities on their own. So /aw/, /ow/, and all their friends are not the product of combining letters (or even the sounds those letters represent, for that matter). They are distinct sounds of their own.

the /aw/ in 'paw' is a vowel

but /a/ and /w/ do not appear in the above word...even though <a> and <w> do appear

Therefore, we can say that /aw/ is a vowel, but we can't make the same claim for /w/ (or <w>) without having at least a few examples of their use as vowels.

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Consonants, Numbers, Vowels

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