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. A vowel letter is a letter of an alphabet that represents a vowel sound.

In English, five letters in the alphabet are usually called the vowel letters. 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 can either be spoken with a vowel or consonant sound, depending on the word. 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/.

The letter Y 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 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 in the word cwm (a kind of valley; pronounced “coom"). A few of these words may be borrowed in English, with the W representing its vowel sound.

In written English, the 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 system does not always show readers which sound a vowel letter represents in a word. This can cause confusion for people learning the English language.

• 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