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Vowel

A vowel is a particular kind of speech sound made by changing the shape of the upper vocal tract, or the area in the mouth above the tongue. In English, it is important to know that there is a difference between a vowel sound and a [letter] in the [alphabet]. In English, there are five vowel letters in the alphabet.

The sounds of American English are written with letters in the English alphabet, as either vowels or consonants. All English words are written with vowel letters in them.

These letters are vowels in English:

A, E, I, O and U (and sometimes W and Y)[1]

It is said that Y is "sometimes" a vowel because it represents both vowel and consonant sounds. In the words cry, sky, fly, my and why, the letter Y represents the vowel sound /aɪ/. In words like myth and synchronize, it represents the vowel sound /ɪ/. In words like only, quickly, and folly, it represents the vowel sound /i/.

It can also be a consonant sound called a glide as in the beginning of these words: yellow, yacht, yam, yesterday. Y is a consonant about 2.5% of the time, and a vowel about 97.5% of the time.[2]

The letter W can sometimes be the second part of a vowel sound as in words like such as cow, bow, or how. In these words the vowel has the sound of /aʊ/. The letter W can be used as a consonant sound at the beginning of in the words when, where, wet. In some languages, like Welsh, the letter W represents the vowel sound /ʊ/, like cwm (a kind of valley pronounced “coom").

In written English the six vowel letters are used to represent the 13-15 vowel sounds (depending on the variety) in English.[3] This means there are many more vowel sounds than letters in the English alphabet, and the English spelling systems do not always help us figure out what the English sounds are. This can be confusing.

  • The rest of the letters of the alphabet are consonants:
B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, X, Y and Z (and sometimes A, E, I, O and U)
  1. ↑ "Is It True "W" Can Be Used As A Vowel?". Dictionary.com. 8 December 2020. Retrieved 31 October 2023.
  2. ↑ Edward Fry (2004). "Phonics: A Large Phoneme-Grapheme Frequency Count Revised". Journal of Literacy Research. 36 (1): 85–98. doi:10.1207/s15548430jlr3601_5. S2CID 146226795.
  3. ↑ Crystal, David 1995. The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language. Cambridge. p237

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