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Anonymous,
1 yr 301 days ago
This is an interesting thread. My daughter too came home singing a,e,i,o,u, and sometimes y and w too. I thought it ludicrous that W was a vowel. I have asked numerous teachers "when is W a vowel"? For every answer I have received from these "teachers" I have been able to come up with an exception. I am from Kansas. Do you not hear the W at the end of cow? I do. Do you not hear the W at the end of follow? I do. The truth is I hear it at the end of the word "so" but it isn't there. Still perplexed in Kansas.
Anonymous,
1 yr 296 days ago
Both w and y are occasionally used as vowels in English.
Anonymous,
1 yr 268 days ago
In my experience as a teacher, I've found it helpful to teach "w" as a letter that "acts" as a vowel in words such as snow, show, row, bow, tow, low, etc. You get the idea. For young readers, ow usually sounds like ou and so, at the end of words, the w "acts like a vowel" (you know, when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking and the second one is silent) to make the o become a long vowel instead of the ou sound such as how, now, and the like. Hopefully, this does not cause any confusion, but actually helps them when learning long vowel rules.
Anonymous,
1 yr 235 days ago
I was taught that “sometimes Y and W” are vowels in public elementary school early 80's. My peers think I’m nuts.
Unfortunately the explanation behind why W is a vowel never really sunk in. Besides the two Celtic words. I always assumed that W was a vowel only in-conjunction with another vowels like ae, ai, ou, oi, au, and oe create unique sounds: show or shoe – sh is the consentient and the vowel pair is the vowel.
Shrug. My advice to your children is avoid mentioning that W is a vowel, it will save them a lot of embarrassment and debate.
abk-MN
Anonymous,
1 yr 233 days ago
What their trying to say is that "W" in Old English was used in place of "OO" so words like dwr are Old English for our word door. When you think about how you pronounce "W" you say actually say "double ew" (not double 'U") like when you pronounce moon removing the m and the n sound. Basically this is a rule that applied to our heritage of the English language but modern English doesn't use it so most schools have stopped teaching it - but it is still the rule. A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y and W is correct.
Anonymous,
1 yr 221 days ago
What about "spy" and "sky" Yoong? Y is also a vowel
Anonymous,
1 yr 211 days ago
"Flew" is a perfect of 'w' as a vowel. 'W' makes the <oo> sound and I will say that 'e' is quiet. 'Tis nice to know that other people are interested in this sort of thing!
Anonymous,
1 yr 191 days ago
There are way more than two.
Basically, any time a word ends in a W, the W acts as a vowel, just like with Y.
Anonymous,
1 yr 171 days ago
Fundamentally, w is definitely not a vowel. It is used in some of those words (that are not even in the english language by the way) but many characters can have a vowel sound.
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