2 ms·

I don't think truly vowel-less words can exist, unless the consonants can all be "held" like {rr, sh, th, zh, l}. If a consonant cannot be held, like {b, k, t,

I don't think truly vowel-less words can exist, unless the consonants can all be "held" like {rr, sh, th, zh, l}. If a consonant cannot be held, like {b, k, t, d}, then there has to be a vowel somewhere. When I say "ng", I say it almost like "oong", so there's a starting vowel. I can say it with an ending vowel like "nga". I suppose the consonant "ng" can be held, but it's hard to say it without pronouncing a vowel somewhere. Note: This opinion is not scientific.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Asraelite 5y ago
> I suppose the consonant "ng" can be held, but it's hard to say it without pronouncing a vowel somewhere. It just takes a bit of practice. The surname Ng is pronounced without a vowel in Cantonese. It's true that you can't really have a stop-only word in isolation, but they can still exist with other words depending on how you define what a word is. You could consider "'d", the contracted form of "would", "had", or "did", to be a word in English. If you didn't, it would imply that "you'd", "I'd", "Mary'd" etc. must be words in their own right which is a bit ridiculous. A good example in another language would be 't and 'k in Dutch, since they're also written with spaces separating them.