Re: Vowels?
| From: | Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, January 24, 2002, 5:56 |
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On 23 Jan 02, at 19:12, Chris Palmer wrote:
> Traditional grammarians have it that the vowels are "a, e, i, o, u
> and sometimes y", but from an articulatory point of view, that's not
> the case.
This illustrates another problem. The vowel collection you listed
sounds like an orthographic approach, and might confuse someone into
thinking that English has six vowel phonemes -- which is most
definitely not the case.
It also fails to explain why one says "a university" but "an uncle",
since the choice of a/an depends on whether the following word starts
with a vowel; both words start with the same letter, but in one case it
represents the vowel /V/ (IPA wedge) and in the other the semivowel -
vowel combination /ju/.
Apparently, the "a e i o u (y)" definition is what is taught in grade
school, but it can be misleading.
Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <Philip.Newton@...>