Why do vowels exist

Of course, there are also sounds made by consonants that can be repeated over and over without a vowel sound. As you can see, the differences between vowels and consonants are more complex than you were probably taught in elementary school. There are few words that have four or more consecutive consonants in the same syllable.

You might find four or five consecutive across two syllables e. Despite the claim, shhh, brrr, and zzz are real words. They each fit the definition of a word: a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing. The type of word they are is onomatopoeia: a word that suggests, resembles, or phonetically imitates a sound.

Depending on how it is used in a sentence, onomatopoeia can be classified as an interjection, a noun, an adjective, or even a verb. As the pronunciation of vowels and consonants can be elongated, the elongation is expressed by repetition in the spelling of the representative letter s of the word. Not all spelling variations are entries in a dictionary, but their absence from the lexical tome does not mean they are not words. Shhh, brrr, and zzz are examples of onomatopoeic words that are found in some standard dictionaries.

Grinding out a K sounds like nails on a chalkboard. Th , prolonged, has more a pleasant, wind-in-the grass feel. Every language has vowels, but languages vary in the number of vowel sounds they use. While we learn A , E , I , O , U, and sometimes Y , English, depending on speaker and dialect, is generally considered to have at least 14 vowel sounds.

Yeah, our spelling is a delightful hot mess. Castilian Spanish and Japanese, meanwhile, are generally considered to have five vowel sounds. Languages also vary in the number of consonants they have. English has at least 24 consonant sounds. Hawaiian, around eight, and Lithuanian 45—still nothing on some languages in southern Africa!

How vowels and consonants are distributed and patterned together in a language is called phonology. This can called be a syllabic consonant, which can fill the vowel slot in a syllable. English can have them in the final syllables of words like bottle and button , among other environments. From here, we can divide English vowel sounds up into a couple of categories: short vowels, long vowels, diphthongs, vowels before historical R, and weak vowels.

First, the distinction between short and long vowels is pretty self-explanatory. Next, diphthongs are vowel phonemes that begin as one vowel sound and slide into another, but still only make up one syllable.

Meanwhile, vowels before historical R have undergone many changes in the history of English , and so this is an important category to consider. This is especially true because our two reference accents differ on this a lot, as SSBE has lost all traces of historical R when not at the beginning of a syllable.

Finally, weak vowels are like short vowels, except they can never appear in a stressed syllable and they can end a syllable. Standard Southern British English has 19 distinct vowel phonemes. In general, most uses of the letter Y are vowels. When Y is a consonant, it is typically at the beginning of a word or syllable. Unlike vowels, consonants involve blockage or constriction of airflow when they are articulated. This can be partial blockage or complete closure of the vocal cords. As with the examples where Y is a consonant, all letters that are consonants can be easily determined by saying them out loud.

This will make it clear what speech sound involves blockage of airflow. Take, for example, the letter M.

In order to articulate the speech sound represented by M, air flows through the vocal cords and is then blocked completely by the lips. As with consonants, individual vowels can only do so much on their own. Vowels can make different pitches, lengths, and tones. Rather than create additional letters for each speech sound, which would result in an alphabet much larger than our own, the English language has vowel digraphs and vowel teams that combine to form new speech sounds.

The same goes for different vowels paired together. With all of the clear distinctions between vowels and consonants, you might wonder what vowels are actually used for.