I believe that in most dictionaries, nth is the only word without a written vowel. It is pronounced with one however. I've seen posted elsewhere that strength is the longest English word with only one vowel. May or may not be true, but

That's an interesting question. I've never thought about it. There are some four-consonant words in my mother tongue. I have a different question: what is the longest consonant cluster at the beginning of an English word? The number would

Hi there, I was wondering about the following matter: Why do we use the indef. art. a -> /ə/ before words that start with a consonant sound? And why do we use the indef. art. an -> /ən/ before words that start with a vowel sound? The

if a vowel is followed by a consonant and another vowel, the first vowel is long, not short. Near the end of a word, yes, usually. But if it's in a stressed first syllable of three, you'd be surprised how many are short. CJ

Dear teachers, I would like to ask you a question which has been troubling me for ages. I hope to get a satisfactory answer very soon. Q: Does 'w' ever function as full vowel? Can you think of an example? Thanks a million

I recently worked with a coworker who claimed to have grown up in England. He pronounced words like "bagel" as "bag'gel" (short a) instead of the American version "bAgul" (long 'A'). Is this typical? In

You don't have to pronounce the word in a particular way anywhere. It is merely an observation that for the purposes of clarity and word flow, most native speakers use /thi:/ before vowel sounds and /thə/ before consonant sounds.

The choice between a and an depends on the sound of the next word. unique is pronounced as if "yoo-neek". The initial y sound counts as a consonant. a unique, not an unique. CJ

Hi and welcome to Englishforums! It's " a unique ... " because " u " here represents a consonant sound. The same goes --for instance -- with " a university " and " a user ". However, " u "

Ok, I deleted the other thread you started, since it's the same as this. Well, it depends if they are irregular or not. "Girl" is not irregular, so you can just add the 's': one girl, two girls. "Country" is not