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It is unusual for a language to contrast a semivowel and a diphthong containing an equivalent vowel, [citation needed] but Romanian contrasts the diphthong /e̯a/ with /ja/, a perceptually similar approximant-vowel sequence. The diphthong is analyzed as a single segment, and the approximant-vowel sequence is analyzed as two separate segments.
A small number of words also contain an /e/, though there is some evidence that these are all loanwords. (Mara also has a very small quantity of lexical items containing an /e/, all of which are related to insect terminology.) Additionally, the vowel /o/ appears in exactly one Warndarang word: the interjection yo!, meaning "yes, good!" and ...
Vowels are inconsistent between languages. ï ë etc. may be used for unrounded central vowels, [ 3 ] and the a -based letters are poorly defined, with height and rounding confounded. Anthropos (semi)vowels (1907)
[ʝ̞] and [j] are two different segments, but they have to be labelled as voiced palatal approximant consonants. I think that the former is a real consonant, whereas the latter is a semi-consonant, as it has traditionally been called in Spanish, or a semi-vowel, if preferred. The IPA, though, classifies it as a consonant."
The most common type of palatal consonant is the extremely common approximant [j], which ranks among the ten most common sounds in the world's languages. [1] The nasal [ɲ] is also common, occurring in around 35 percent of the world's languages, [2] in most of which its equivalent obstruent is not the stop [c], but the affricate [].
Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no turbulence. [3] This class is composed of sounds like [ɹ] (as in rest) and semivowels like [j] and [w] (as in yes and west, respectively), as well as lateral approximants like [l] (as in less). [4]
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is j̃ , that is, a j with a tilde. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j~, and in the Americanist phonetic notation it is ỹ . The nasal palatal approximant is sometimes called a nasal yod; [j̃] and [w̃] may be called nasal glides.
In broad transcription, the symbol for the palatal approximant, j , may be used for the sake of simplicity. The voiced palatal fricative is a very rare sound, occurring in only 7 of the 317 languages surveyed by the original UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database [ citation needed ] .