By Vowels, Consonants

Thanks Kooyeen for sharing your frustration you have gone through. Basically, I understand the limitation of "broad transcription", i.e. a set of simplified symbols instead of the complete set of IPA. They are easier to read and generally won't cause any problems for native...

There is no /h/ and /w/ in the words "shah" and "shaw". There are the letters <h> and <w>, but it's a mistake to think that these letters are somehow determining which vowels you have in these words.

(a) I'm sure that in the word 'cow,' <w> is not functioning as a vowel. It is functioning as half a dipthong. (b) I really don't think that /w/ is a vowel-like sound at all... think of the difference in pronunciation between the word 'shah' and the name...

Are you sure? I think that: (a) In writing <w> can function as a vowel sign (as in "cow") and as a semi-consonant (as in "won") (b) in (English) speech /w/ is a semi-consonant, by which I mean a vowel-like sound that functions as a consonant but never appears at...

no, what is happening there is that the sound produced by both dipthongs (<ou> and <ow>) is the same the letter <w> represents (1) half of the <ow> dipthong, and (2) the consonant sound we hear in the word <wax> It is a consonant. Just because a letter...

.To preserve the 'short' sound of the last vowel.Compare:winning vs winingbatting vs batinglopping vs lopingetc.

hi the rule : The best way to remember when to double the last letter is to remember the “C-V-C rule.” The C-V-C says that if you are adding a suffix (letters added to the end of a word, like the –ed in happened) to a word, first look at the last three letters of the word. If those three...

A distinction has to be made between (a) a sound that functions as a consonant but has a vowel-like quality and (b) a symbol that sometimes represents a vowel sound and sometimes a sound that functions as a consonant but has a vowel-like quality. Confusingly, both (a) and (b) may be described as...

It would be helpful for you to re-read the rules in the link posted by Jim above. The rules do NOT require the words to be monosyllabic. They also apply to words with more than one syllable. However, you only need to pay attention to the last syllable when applying the rules. To summarize,...

In my 16th edition Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, it says, in the introduction,although native speakers may well find no difficulty in dividing words into syllables, it seems that learners of English have trouble in doing so, . . . No completely satisfactory scheme of syllable division...