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Just what I learned in elementary school (1st grade in the US). Vowels are the five letters of the english alphabet that are special, because the pronunciations
by captainmuon 9y ago
Just what I learned in elementary school (1st grade in the US). Vowels are the five letters of the english alphabet that are special, because the pronunciations of all other letters contain a vowel. That's why the others are called consonants (with-sounders).
I know that is highly unscientific, and probably doesn't reflect current linguistics, but it still makes sense to me :-)
- yorwba 9y agoWhat you learned is not completely wrong, but 1. it only applies to English, 2. aeiou are the five classical vowels of the Latin alphabet, but English has more than five vowels (see the table here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English) 3. although in English every consonant occurs in a syllable together with a vowel (as a with-sounder, if you will), there can be multiple consonants in one syllable. E.g. "claps" is a single syllable with one vowel "a" and four consonants. There is no vowel directly adjacent to "c" or "s". This is also the case for "mnemonic": the syllable "mne" has one vowel and two consonants. (Except in the English pronunciation, where the "m" is dropped.)