7 ms·

What am I missing about fly

by s09dfhks 1y ago

ninkendo 1y ago
The article thinks aeiou are all the vowels, and forgets about y.
- SwiftyBug 1y ago
  Is y considered a vowel in English? In my native language it is not.
  - tough 1y ago
    same, i is a vowel, y is a consonant TIL: When y forms a diphthong—two vowel sounds joined in one syllable to form one speech sound, such as the "oy" in toy, "ay" in day, and "ey" in monkey—it is also regarded as a vowel. Typically, y represents a consonant when it starts off a word or syllable, as in yard, lawyer, or beyond.
    - adrian_b 1y ago
      In English it is pretty much unpredictable whether Y is a vowel or a consonant. While for older English words there is a complex set of rules mentioned by another poster for determining whether Y is a vowel, as mentioned by yet another poster, English also includes more recent borrowings from languages with other spelling rules for Y. At its origin, Y was a vowel, not a consonant. It was added to the Latin alphabet for writing the front rounded vowel that is written "ü" in German, "u" in French or "y" in Scandinavian languages. It is very unfortunate that in English, and in some other languages that have followed English, Y has been reassigned to write consonant "i". This has created a lot of problems due to the mismatches between the spelling rules of different languages. The rule that is most consistent with the older usage would have been to use J for consonant "i", like in German and other languages inspired by it. However in many Romance languages the pronunciation of consonant "i" has changed in time, leading to other 3 phonetic values for the letter J, like in English (i.e. Old French), like in French/Portuguese and like in Spanish. So the result is that both for Y and for J there are great differences in pronunciation between the European languages, and the many words using such letters that have been borrowed between languages create a lot of complexity in spelling rules.
      - tough 1y ago
        Thank you for the extended explanation, really interesting stuff!
  - nemomarx 1y ago
    The list of vowels in American English is "A E I O U and sometimes Y" as taught to school children. It would be a vowel in Ypsilanti for example.
  - horsawlarway 1y ago
    Sometimes. Which is actually part of why I clicked into the article - I expected it to get into the complexity of trying to detect if 'y' was a vowel as part of the search, and instead got a mostly banal python text search article. You can see the technical rules for when 'Y' is a vowel in english here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/why-y-is-sometimes-a-vowel-usage#:~:text=Y%20is%20considered%20to%20be,a%20syllable%3A%20system%2C%20borborygmus. https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/why-y-is-sometimes-a... Y is considered to be a vowel if… The word has no other vowel: gym, my. The letter is at the end of a word or syllable: candy, deny, bicycle, acrylic. The letter is in the middle of a syllable: system, borborygmus.
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
      I dunno about those rules; there are exceptions. Yttrium. Yggdrasil. Probably others, but those from off the top of my head. I think the best way to define when Y is a vowel is when it's not a consonant. Basically, if you make the sound that Y represents in the word "yes", it's a consonant. Otherwise, it's a vowel. (At least, no exceptions come to mind.)
      - DougN7 1y ago
        Wow, how would you code that?!
        lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
        Heh, good question. I’d probably use a heuristic like what’s discussed in this thread and hope that it works. :D
  - holycrapwhodat 1y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_it0G2KcrM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_it0G2KcrM
  - layer8 1y ago
    It depends on the word, and possibly even on dialect. There isn’t a 1:1 mapping between characters and vowels. Vowels are fundamentally a phonetic concept, not a graphemic one. This is also why Unicode doesn’t have a “vowel” character property. Otherwise you could use a regex like `\p{Vowel}`.
    - csb6 1y ago
      Yes, this is true. Many people seem to think of words as written text and not as spoken words, so they focus on analyzing the characters is a word and not how it sounds. I had a linguistics professor say something like “Writing is parasitic on speech”
  - mystified5016 1y ago
    Y and W are sometimes used as vowels. They are technically consonants, but in some cases produce a vowel sound. The rule in English is not "all true words contain a vowel" it's that all words contain a vowel sound. Except the ones that don't, because English is a very messy language.
    - IAmBroom 1y ago
      Hmm...
  - xigoi 1y ago
    Letters are not vowels; sounds are vowels. The letter Y sometimes represents a vowel sound and sometimes a consonant sound.

What am I missing about fly

ninkendo 1y ago

The article thinks aeiou are all the vowels, and forgets about y.

SwiftyBug 1y ago
Is y considered a vowel in English? In my native language it is not.
- tough 1y ago
  same, i is a vowel, y is a consonant TIL: When y forms a diphthong—two vowel sounds joined in one syllable to form one speech sound, such as the "oy" in toy, "ay" in day, and "ey" in monkey—it is also regarded as a vowel. Typically, y represents a consonant when it starts off a word or syllable, as in yard, lawyer, or beyond.
  - adrian_b 1y ago
    In English it is pretty much unpredictable whether Y is a vowel or a consonant. While for older English words there is a complex set of rules mentioned by another poster for determining whether Y is a vowel, as mentioned by yet another poster, English also includes more recent borrowings from languages with other spelling rules for Y. At its origin, Y was a vowel, not a consonant. It was added to the Latin alphabet for writing the front rounded vowel that is written "ü" in German, "u" in French or "y" in Scandinavian languages. It is very unfortunate that in English, and in some other languages that have followed English, Y has been reassigned to write consonant "i". This has created a lot of problems due to the mismatches between the spelling rules of different languages. The rule that is most consistent with the older usage would have been to use J for consonant "i", like in German and other languages inspired by it. However in many Romance languages the pronunciation of consonant "i" has changed in time, leading to other 3 phonetic values for the letter J, like in English (i.e. Old French), like in French/Portuguese and like in Spanish. So the result is that both for Y and for J there are great differences in pronunciation between the European languages, and the many words using such letters that have been borrowed between languages create a lot of complexity in spelling rules.
    - tough 1y ago
      Thank you for the extended explanation, really interesting stuff!
- nemomarx 1y ago
  The list of vowels in American English is "A E I O U and sometimes Y" as taught to school children. It would be a vowel in Ypsilanti for example.
- horsawlarway 1y ago
  Sometimes. Which is actually part of why I clicked into the article - I expected it to get into the complexity of trying to detect if 'y' was a vowel as part of the search, and instead got a mostly banal python text search article. You can see the technical rules for when 'Y' is a vowel in english here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/why-y-is-sometimes-a-vowel-usage#:~:text=Y%20is%20considered%20to%20be,a%20syllable%3A%20system%2C%20borborygmus. https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/why-y-is-sometimes-a... Y is considered to be a vowel if… The word has no other vowel: gym, my. The letter is at the end of a word or syllable: candy, deny, bicycle, acrylic. The letter is in the middle of a syllable: system, borborygmus.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
    I dunno about those rules; there are exceptions. Yttrium. Yggdrasil. Probably others, but those from off the top of my head. I think the best way to define when Y is a vowel is when it's not a consonant. Basically, if you make the sound that Y represents in the word "yes", it's a consonant. Otherwise, it's a vowel. (At least, no exceptions come to mind.)
    - DougN7 1y ago
      Wow, how would you code that?!
      - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
        Heh, good question. I’d probably use a heuristic like what’s discussed in this thread and hope that it works. :D
- holycrapwhodat 1y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_it0G2KcrM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_it0G2KcrM
- layer8 1y ago
  It depends on the word, and possibly even on dialect. There isn’t a 1:1 mapping between characters and vowels. Vowels are fundamentally a phonetic concept, not a graphemic one. This is also why Unicode doesn’t have a “vowel” character property. Otherwise you could use a regex like `\p{Vowel}`.
  - csb6 1y ago
    Yes, this is true. Many people seem to think of words as written text and not as spoken words, so they focus on analyzing the characters is a word and not how it sounds. I had a linguistics professor say something like “Writing is parasitic on speech”
- mystified5016 1y ago
  Y and W are sometimes used as vowels. They are technically consonants, but in some cases produce a vowel sound. The rule in English is not "all true words contain a vowel" it's that all words contain a vowel sound. Except the ones that don't, because English is a very messy language.
  - IAmBroom 1y ago
    Hmm...
- xigoi 1y ago
  Letters are not vowels; sounds are vowels. The letter Y sometimes represents a vowel sound and sometimes a consonant sound.