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heart-shaped shop sign stating "Anybody can cuddle but only the Welsh can cwtch" English orthography typically represents vowel sounds with the five conventional vowel letters a, e, i, o, u , as well as y , which may also be a consonant depending on context. However, outside of abbreviations, there are a handful of words in English that do not ...
Many languages that use a form of the Latin alphabet have more vowel sounds than can be represented by the standard set of five vowel letters. In English spelling, the five letters a e i o and u can represent a variety of vowel sounds, while the letter y frequently represents vowels (as in e.g., "gym", "happy", or the diphthongs in "cry ...
The longest word without any of the main five vowels but including Y: Twyndyllyng Main article: English words without vowels The longest words recorded in OED with each vowel only once, and in order, are abstemiously , affectiously , and tragediously (OED).
The title eunoia, which literally means good thinking, is a medical term for the state of normal mental health, and is also the shortest word in the English language which contains all five vowels. The cover features a chromatic representation of Arthur Rimbaud 's sonnet " Voyelles " (Vowels) in which each vowel is assigned a particular colour ...
Oxford Companion to the English Language in its entry on vowel letters, says, "the five classic vowel letters of the Roman alphabet are A, E, I, O, U, to which Y is usually added; apart from its syllable-initial role as a semi-vowel or semi-consonant in words like year, y functions in English largely as an alternative vowel symbol to i." The ...
Another type of spelling characteristic is related to word origin. For example, when representing a vowel, y represents the sound /ɪ/ in some words borrowed from Greek (reflecting an original upsilon), whereas the letter usually representing this sound in non-Greek words is the letter i .
In Kentish, the vowels /æ(ː)/ and /y(ː)/ also merged into /e(ː)/ sometime around the 9th century, leaving /e(ː)/ and /i(ː)/ as the only front vowels in this dialect. [104] [105] The long and short versions of each vowel were probably pronounced with the same quality, although some reconstructions assume accompanying qualitative distinctions.
The letter y has double function (modifying the vowel as well as being pronounced as [j] or [i]) in the words payer, balayer, moyen, essuyer, pays, etc., but in some words it has only a single function: [j] in bayer, mayonnaise, coyote; modifying the vowel at the end of proper names like Chardonnay and Fourcroy.