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In phonetics, a triphthong (UK: / ˈ t r ɪ f θ ɒ ŋ, ˈ t r ɪ p θ ɒ ŋ / TRIF-thong, TRIP-thong, US: /-θ ɔː ŋ /-thawng) (from Greek τρίφθογγος triphthongos, lit. ' with three sounds ' or ' with three tones ') is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement of the articulator from one vowel quality to another that passes over a third.
If the penult contains a short vowel in an open syllable, the stress falls on the antepenult: e.g., stá.mi.na, hy.pó.the.sis. If the penult contains a long vowel; a diphthong; a closed syllable (with any length of vowel); or is followed by z, the stress falls on the penult. Long vowel: cicāda > cicáda, exegēsis > exegésis.
A short-lived convention of spelling long vowels by doubling the vowel letter is associated with the poet Lucius Accius. Later spelling conventions marked long vowels with an apex (a diacritic similar to an acute accent ) or, in the case of long i, by increasing the height of the letter ( long i ); in the second century AD, those were given ...
The syllable nucleus was always a vowel in stressed syllables. [5] Stressed monosyllabic words always ended in either a consonant or a long vowel (whether a long monophthong or long diphthong): this can be stated in terms of stressed words having at least two moras of length. [125]
Among vowel letters, small capitals indicate lax vowels. Most of the original small-cap vowel letters have been modified into more distinctive shapes – e.g. ʊ ɤ ɛ ʌ from U Ɐ E A [citation needed] – with only ɪ ʏ remaining as small capitals.
One may distinguish the English tense vs. lax vowels roughly, with its spelling. Tense vowels usually occur in words with the final silent e , as in mate. Lax vowels occur in words without the silent e , such as mat. In American English, lax vowels [ɪ, ʊ, ɛ, ʌ, æ] do not appear in stressed open syllables. [15]
The grapheme k was also used, unlike in the modern alphabet, particularly before front vowels. [4] The disuse of this letter is at least partly due to the publication of William Salesbury's Welsh New Testament and William Morgan's Welsh Bible, whose English printers, with type letter frequencies set for English and Latin, did not have enough k ...
The same process also affects stressed front and back vowels in hiatus if they are antepenultimate (in the third-to-last syllable of a word). When /j/ is produced, primary stress shifts to the following vowel, but when /w/ is produced, primary stress shifts instead to the preceding syllable, as in /fiːˈliolus, teˈnueram/ > /fiːˈljolus ...