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| - In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by an open configuration of the vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, which are characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract. A vowel is also understood to be syllabic: an equivalent open but non-syllabic sound is called a semivowel. Category:
- In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as 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], where there is 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.
- A vowel was a specific sound made in verbal communication, as opposed to a consonant. The preservers obelisk on Amerind could be opened either by playing certain musical notes or by speaking a series of vowels and consonants in their proper sequence. (TOS: "The Paradise Syndrome" ) A reversal of vowel and consonant was called metathesis, which accidentally made Captain Picard say "Mister Broccoli" instead of Barclay in 2366. (TNG: "Hollow Pursuits" )
- A vowel is a sound that is pronounced when the vocal tract is open, as opposed to consonants, where the vocal tract is partially or fully closed. Approximants (glides), such as /w/ and /j/ (English y), blur the boundary between consonants and vowels because they are pronounced with an very small, though open vocal tract as if they were vowels, yet they typically occur at the edges of syllables as if they were consonants, such as in yes and wow. Vowel Qualities IPA vowel chart
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| - A vowel was a specific sound made in verbal communication, as opposed to a consonant. The preservers obelisk on Amerind could be opened either by playing certain musical notes or by speaking a series of vowels and consonants in their proper sequence. (TOS: "The Paradise Syndrome" ) A reversal of vowel and consonant was called metathesis, which accidentally made Captain Picard say "Mister Broccoli" instead of Barclay in 2366. (TNG: "Hollow Pursuits" ) In a holographic recreation of 1944 France, a message to the French Resistance in Sainte Claire was encrypted in a weather report of the British Radio Network. The code key to decipher it was every fifth letter, every third vowel. (VOY: "The Killing Game")
- A vowel is a sound that is pronounced when the vocal tract is open, as opposed to consonants, where the vocal tract is partially or fully closed. Approximants (glides), such as /w/ and /j/ (English y), blur the boundary between consonants and vowels because they are pronounced with an very small, though open vocal tract as if they were vowels, yet they typically occur at the edges of syllables as if they were consonants, such as in yes and wow. Vowels in natural human languages can contrast in placement, lip roundness, tenseness/laxness, length, nasalization, tone (and/or pitch accent), and phonation (or voicing). They can also be monophthongs (single vowels) or diphthongs (double vowels - where one vowel or the other generally behaves as a glide). Vowels in nonhuman languages could incorporate any of these features, or yet more, assuming the speakers' anatomy is appropriate. Vowel Qualities Placement Placement of vowels is generally discussed in terms of height (or closeness) and backness. For instance, the vowel in the word 'beat,' /i/, can be categorized as a high front vowel; /u/ of 'food' is a high back rounded vowel; and /a/ of 'bark' is a low central vowel. IPA vowel chart Roundness It is natural in many of the worlds languages to make back vowels round; this creates an acoustic effect that seems to increase the backness, making the two vowels more audibly distinct. In a system like this (as in English), roundness is a feature that is present in the language, but it is not contrastive. In other languages, like French and German, there are vowels in the same place of articulation whose only difference is the absence or presence of rounding - particularly the front vowels. Compare French dit /di/ (front unrounded), du /dy/ (front rounded), and d'ou /du/ (back rounded). Since rounding increases the 'back sound,' this makes it sound like there are three different places of articulation in terms of back and front (adding a central-sounding vowel), when in reality, there are only two. Nasalization In many languages, including English, speakers begin to pronounce nasal sounds (m, n, and ng) before they've finished their vowel; the result is nasalization. However, in some languages like French, Portuguese, and Mohawk, the vowel is nasalized but the nasal sound that originally triggered this pronunciation has been deleted (or was perhaps never there). Vowel Systems In natural languages, vowel systems range from the very simple (i/a/u - e.g. Inuktitut) to the very complex (e.g. English, with ~12 vowels). What is important to consider in assigning a vowel system to a conlang is the vowel spread. Observe that in most languages with only three vowels, they are spread to the farthest three corners of the chart, forming a triangle. A natural language would never have a sytem of three high front vowels, because speakers want to be able to hear the difference between the vowels as clearly as possible. Even in a language like English, where there are two high front vowels, our chart is still relatively balanced - because we have two of just about every vowel placement, in pairs we call tense/lax (compare /i/ 'beat' (tense) to /ɪ/ 'bit' (lax)).
- In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by an open configuration of the vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, which are characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract. A vowel is also understood to be syllabic: an equivalent open but non-syllabic sound is called a semivowel. Category:
- In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as 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], where there is 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 languages, vowels form the nucleus or peak of syllables, whereas consonants form the onset and (in languages that have them) coda. However, some languages also allow other sounds to form the nucleus of a syllable, such as the syllabic l in the English word table [ˈteɪ.bl̩] (the stroke under the l indicates that it is syllabic; the dot separates syllables), or the r in Serbian vrt [vr̩t] "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 "yes" and "wet" (which suggests that phonologically they are consonants). The American linguist Kenneth Pike 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. The word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, meaning "speaking", because[Sōrs rīkwest] in most languages words and thus speech are not possible without vowels. Vowel is commonly used to mean both vowel sounds and the written symbols that represent them.
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