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In modern Welsh, "W" is simply a single letter which often represents a vowel sound. Thus words borrowed from Welsh may use w this way, such as: The crwth [6] (pronounced /ˈkrʊθ/ or /ˈkruːθ/, also spelled cruth in English) is a Welsh musical instrument similar to the violin. [7] He intricately rhymes, to the music of crwth and pibgorn. [8]
It does not normally use combinations of letters to represent single sounds, the way English does with sh , th and ng , nor single letters to represent multiple sounds, the way x represents /ks/ or /ɡz/ in English. There are no letters that have context-dependent sound values, the way c and g in several European languages have a "hard" or ...
The consonant sounds represented by the letters W and Y in English (/w/ and /j/ as in went /wɛnt/ and yes /jɛs/) are referred to as semi-vowels (or glides) by linguists, however this is a description that applies to the sounds represented by the letters and not to the letters themselves.
For a table listing all spellings of the sounds on this page, see English orthography § Sound-to-spelling correspondences. For help converting spelling to pronunciation, see English orthography § Spelling-to-sound correspondences. The words given as examples for two different symbols may sound the same to you.
Clusters are made of two or more consonant sounds, while a digraph is a group of two consonant letters standing for a single sound. For example, in the word ship, the two letters of the digraph sh together represent the single consonant [ʃ]. Conversely, the letter x can produce the consonant clusters /ks/ (annex), /gz/ (exist), /kʃ/ (sexual ...
However, there are only 26 letters in the modern English alphabet, so there is not a one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. Many sounds are spelled using different letters or multiple letters, and for those words whose pronunciation is predictable from the spelling, the sounds denoted by the letters depend on the surrounding letters.
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Other alphabets only use a subset of the Latin alphabet, such as Hawaiian and Italian, which uses the letters j, k, x, y, and w only in foreign words. [38] Another notable script is Elder Futhark, believed to have evolved out of one of the Old Italic alphabets. Elder Futhark gave rise to other alphabets known collectively as the Runic alphabets ...