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Variably by dialect and even word, the / j / in this / j uː / may drop (rune / ˈ r uː n /, lute / ˈ l uː t /), causing a merger with / uː /; in other cases, the /j/ coalesces with the preceding consonant (issue / ˈ ɪ s. j uː / → / ˈ ɪ ʃ uː /), meaning that the silent e can affect the quality of a consonant much earlier in the ...
English orthography typically represents vowel sounds with the five conventional vowel letters a, e, i, o, u , as well as y , which may also be a consonant depending on context. However, outside of abbreviations, there are a handful of words in English that do not have vowels, either because the vowel sounds are not written with vowel letters ...
The letters A, E, I, O, and U are considered vowel letters, since (except when silent) they represent vowels, although I and U represent consonants in words such as "onion" and "quail" respectively. The letter Y sometimes represents a consonant (as in "young") and sometimes a vowel (as in "myth").
The e is dropped for other derivations, for example, central, fibrous, spectral. However, the existence of related words without e before the r is not proof for the existence of an -re British spelling: for example, entry and entrance come from enter, which has not been spelled entre for centuries. [24]
The word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, meaning "vocal" (i.e. relating to the voice). [2] In English, the word vowel is commonly used to refer both to vowel sounds and to the written symbols that represent them ( a , e , i , o , u , and sometimes w and y ). [3]
In the word vague, e marks the long a sound, but u keeps the g hard rather than soft. Doubled consonants usually indicate that the preceding vowel is pronounced short. For example, the doubled t in batted indicates that the a is pronounced / æ / , while the single t of bated gives /eɪ/ .
e and i in separate segments (and often separate syllables or morphemes) Prefixes de-or re-before words starting with i (deindustrialize, reignite, etc.) Inflection -ing of those verbs with roots ending in -e that do not drop the e (being, seeing, swingeing, etc.) Others: albeit, atheism, cuneiform*, deify*, deity*, herein, nuclei, onomatopoeia
In the case of /u/, the quality u was normally preserved in the endings -um, -ung, -uc or after an accented syllable containing the /u/ sound (as in duguþ); in other contexts (e.g. hēafod, heofon), u was variably interchanged with o depending on dialect and time period, with the use of o generally increasing over time, although there was a ...