Vowels
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In
phonetics,
a
vowel is a
sound
in spoken
language,
such as an
English ah! /ɑː/
or
oh! /oʊ/,
pronounced with an open
vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air
pressure at any point above the
glottis. This contrasts with
consonants,
such as English
sh! [ʃː], which have a constriction or closure at some
point along the vocal tract. A vowel is also understood to be
syllabic:
an equivalent open but non-syllabic sound is called a
semivowel.
In all
oral languages, vowels form the
nucleus
or peak of syllables, whereas
consonants form the
onset
and (in languages that have them)
coda.
Some languages also allow other sounds to form the nucleus of a syllable, such
as the syllabic
l in the English word
table [ˈtʰeɪ.bl̩] (the stroke under the
l indicates
that it is syllabic; the dot separates syllables)—which, nevertheless, many
still consider to have a weak vowel sound
[ˈtʰeɪ.bəl]—or the
r in
Croatian or Serbian vrt [vr̩t], meaning "garden".
There is a conflict between the
phonetic
definition of "vowel" (a sound produced with no constriction in the
vocal tract) and the
phonological definition (a sound that forms the
peak of a syllable).
The
approximants
[j] and
[w] illustrate this conflict: both are produced without
much of a constriction in the vocal tract (so phonetically they seem to be
vowel-like), but they occur on the edge of syllables, such as at the beginning
of the English words "yet" and "wet" (which suggests that
phonologically they are consonants). The American linguist
Kenneth Pike
(1943) suggested the terms "
vocoid" for a phonetic vowel and
"vowel" for a phonological vowel,
so using this
terminology,
[j] and
[w] are classified as vocoids but not vowels. However,
Maddieson and Emmory (1985) demonstrated from a range of languages that
semivowels are produced with a narrower constriction of the vocal tract than
vowels, and so may be considered consonants on that basis.
The word
vowel comes from the
Latin word
vocalis,
meaning "vocal" ("relating to voice").
In English, the word
vowel is commonly used to mean both vowel sounds
and the written symbols that represent them.
Vowel systems
The importance of vowels in distinguishing one word from another
varies from language to language. Nearly all languages have at least
three phonemic vowels, usually
/i/, /a/, /u/ as in
Classical Arabic and Inuktitut (or /ɐ/, /ɪ/, /ʊ/ as in Quechua), though Adyghe and many Sepik languages have a vertical vowel system of /ɨ/, /ə/, /a/. Very few languages have fewer, though some Arrernte, Circassian, Ndu languages have been argued to have just two, /ə/ and /a/, with [ɨ] being epenthetic.
The rarest vowels cataloged are
/ɜ/ (has just been cataloged in
Paicî and Received Pronunciation English) and /ʊ̈/ (Early Modern English and Russian).
It is not straightforward to say which language has the most vowels,
since that depends on how they are counted. For example, long vowels,
nasal vowels, and various
phonations
may or may not be counted separately; indeed, it may sometimes be
unclear if phonation belongs to the vowels or the consonants of a
language. If such things are ignored and only vowels with dedicated IPA
letters ('vowel qualities') are considered, then very few languages have
more than ten. The Germanic languages have some of the largest inventories: Standard Danish has 15 short vowels (/ɑ a æ ɛ e i o ɔ u ø œ ɶ y ʌ ɒ/), while the Amstetten dialect of Bavarian has been reported to have thirteen long vowels: /iː yː eː øː ɛː œː æː ɶː aː ɒː ɔː oː uː/. The situation can be quite disparate within a same family language: Spanish and French are two closely related Romance languages but Spanish has only five vowel qualities, /a, e, i, o, u/, while classical French has eleven: /a, ɑ, e, ɛ, i, o, ɔ, u, y, œ, ø/. The Mon–Khmer languages of Southeast Asia also have some large inventories, such as the eleven vowels of Vietnamese: /i e ɛ ɐ a ə ɔ ɤ o ɯ u/. Wu dialects have the largest inventories of Chinese; the Jinhui dialect of Wu has also been reported to have eleven vowels: ten basic vowels, /i y e ø ɛ ɑ ɔ o u ɯ/, plus restricted /ɨ/; this does not count the seven nasal vowels.
One of the most common vowels is
[a̠]; it is nearly universal for a language to have at least one open vowel, though most dialects of English have an
[æ] and a
[ɑ]—and often an
[ɒ], all open vowels—but no central
[a]. Some
Tagalog and Cebuano speakers have [ɐ] rather than [a], and Dhangu Yolngu is described as having /ɪ ɐ ʊ/, without any peripheral vowels. [i] is also extremely common, though Tehuelche has just the vowels /e a o/ with no close vowels. The third vowel of Arabic-type three-vowel system, /u/, is considerably less common. A large fraction of the languages of North America happen to have a four-vowel system without /u/: /i, e, a, o/; Aztec is an example.
In most languages, vowels serve mainly to distinguish separate
lexemes,
rather than different inflectional forms of the same lexeme as they
commonly do in the Semitic languages. For example, while English man becomes men in the plural, moon is not a different form of the same word.
Words without vowels
In rhotic dialects of English, as in Canada and the United States, there are many words such as
bird, learn, girl, church, worst, wyrm, myrrh that some phoneticians analyze as having no vowels, only a syllabic consonant
/ɹ̩/. However, others analyze these words instead as having a rhotic vowel,
/ɝː/. The difference may be partially one of dialect.
There are a few such words that are disyllabic, like
cursor, curtain, and
turtle: [ˈkɹ̩sɹ̩],
[ˈkɹ̩tn̩] and
[ˈtɹ̩tl̩] (or
[ˈkɝːsɚ],
[ˈkɝːtən], and
[ˈtɝːtəl]), and even a few that are trisyllabic, at least in some accents, such as
purpler [ˈpɹ̩.pl̩.ɹ̩],
hurdler [ˈhɹ̩.dl̩.ɹ̩],
gurgler [ˈɡɹ̩.ɡl̩.ɹ̩],
certainer [ˈsɹ̩.tn̩.ɹ̩], and
Ur-turtle [ˈɹ̩.tɹ̩.tl̩].
The word
and frequently contracts to a simple nasal
’n, as in
lock 'n key [ˌlɒk ŋ ˈkiː]. Words such as
will, have, and
is regularly contract to
’ll [l],
’ve [v], and
’s [z]. However, none of them are pronounced alone without vowels, so they are not phonological words. Onomatopoeic words that can be pronounced alone, and that have no vowels or ars, include
hmm, pst!, shh!, tsk!, and
zzz. As in other languages, onomatopoeiae stand outside the normal phonotactics of English.
There are other languages that form lexical words without vowel sounds. In Serbo-Croatian, for example, the consonants
[r] and
[rː] (the difference is not written) can act as a syllable nucleus and carry rising or falling tone; examples include the tongue-twister
na vrh brda vrba mrda and geographic names such as
Krk. In Czech, and Slovak, either
[l] or
[r] can stand in for vowels:
vlk [vl̩k] "wolf",
krk [kr̩k] "neck". A particularly long word without vowels is
čtvrthrst, meaning "quarter-handful", with two syllables (one for each R). Whole sentences can be made from such words, such as
Strč prst skrz krk, meaning "stick a finger through your neck" (follow the link for a sound file), and
Smrž pln skvrn zvlhl z mlh "A morel full of spots wetted from fogs". (Here
zvlhl has two syllables based on L; note that the preposition
z
consists of a single consonant. Only prepositions do this in Czech, and
they normally link phonetically to the following noun, so do not really
behave as vowelless words.) In Russian, there are also prepositions
that consist of a single consonant letter, like
k "to",
v "in", and
s "with". However, these forms are actually contractions of
ko,
vo, and
so
respectively, and these forms are still used in modern Russian before
words with certain consonant clusters for ease of pronunciation.
In Kazakh and certain other Turkic languages, words without vowel sounds may occur due to reduction of weak vowels. A common example is the Kazakh word for one:
bir, pronounced
[br]. Among careful speakers, however, the original vowel may be preserved, and the vowels are always preserved in the orthography.
In Southern varieties of Chinese, such as Cantonese and Minnan, some monosyllabic words are made of exclusively nasals, such as
[m̩˨˩] "no" and
[ŋ̩˩˧] "five".
So far, all of these syllabic consonants, at least in the lexical words, have been sonorants, such as
[r],
[l],
[m], and
[n], which have a voiced
quality similar to vowels. (They can carry tone, for example.) However,
there are languages with lexical words that not only contain no vowels,
but contain no sonorants at all, like (non-lexical)
shh! in English. These include some Berber languages and some languages of the American Pacific Northwest, such as Nuxálk. An example from the latter is
sxs "seal fat" (pronounced
[sxs], as spelled), and a longer one is
xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓ (pronounced
[xɬpʼχʷɬtʰɬpʰɬːskʷʰt͡sʼ]) "he had had in his possession a bunchberry plant". (Follow the Nuxálk link for other examples.) Berber examples include
/tkkststt/ "you took it off" and
/tfktstt/ "you gave it". Some words may contain one or two consonants only:
/ɡ/ "be",
/ks/ "feed on".
[22] (In Mandarin Chinese, words and syllables such as
sī and
zhī are sometimes described as being syllabic fricatives and affricates phonemically,
/ś/ and
/tʂ́/, but these do have a voiced segment that carries the tone.) In the Japonic language Miyako, there are words with no voiced sounds, such as
ss 'dust',
kss 'breast/milk',
pss 'day',
ff 'a comb',
kff 'to make',
fks 'to build',
ksks 'month',
sks 'to cut',
psks 'to pull'.
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