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In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. [1] Examples of semivowels in English are y and w in yes and west, respectively.
For example, in Ukrainian, medial /i/ triggers the formation of an inserted [j] that acts as a syllable onset so that when the affix /-ist/ is added to футбол ('football') to make футболіст 'football player', it is pronounced [futbo̞ˈlist], but маоїст ('Maoist'), with the same affix, is pronounced [mao̞ˈjist] with a ...
Examples include English /w/ and /r/. In some languages, such as Spanish, there are sounds that seem to fall between fricative and approximant. One use of the word semivowel, sometimes called a glide, is a type of approximant, pronounced like a vowel but with the tongue closer to the roof of the mouth, so that there is slight turbulence.
For this reason, the IPA symbols for labialization and palatalization were for a time placed under the primary letter (e.g. k̫ for [kʷ] and ƫ for [tʲ]), and a number of phoneticians still prefer such unambiguous usage, with kʷ and tʲ used specifically for off-glides, despite the official policy of the IPA.
The following is the chart of the International Phonetic Alphabet, a standardized system of phonetic symbols devised and maintained by the International Phonetic Association. It is not a complete list of all possible speech sounds in the world's languages, only those about which stand-alone articles exist in this encyclopedia.
Prokosch describes the symbol as a "modified h, since h is the usual spelling in all Germanic languages" (p. 83), though other authors simply write these sounds f þ h. A couple symbols were mentioned in the 1949 Principles of the International Phonetic Association as recent suggestions for further improvement and were never adopted:
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɥ , a rotated lowercase letter h , or occasionally jʷ , which indicates with a different kind of rounding. The labial–palatal approximant can in many cases be considered the semivocalic equivalent of the close front rounded vowel [y].
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɰ , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is M\. The consonant is absent in English, but may be approximated by making [ ɡ ] but with the tongue body lowered or [ w ] but with the lips apart.