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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, in contrast to consonants, which are characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract. The
word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, meaning
"uttering voice" or "speaking". Vowels usually form the peak or nucleus of a syllable, whereas consonants form the onset and coda. Some languages allow sounds that wouldn't normally be
classified as vowels to form the nucleus of a syllable, such as the sound of m in the English word prism, or the sound of r in the Czech word vrba (meaning "willow"). Sometimes vowels are defined by the criterion of whether they
form the nucleus of a syllable, and by that criterion these sounds are vowels, but usually the sounds that can form the
nucleus of a syllable are called sonorants.
Vowel qualities
Vowel space
The features that distinguish different vowels in a language, such as tongue position and lip roundedness, are said to
determine the vowel's quality. See the table of vowels. A
vowel sound whose quality doesn't change over the duration of the production of the vowel is called a monophthong. Monophthongs are sometimes called "pure" or "stable" vowels. A vowel sound that glides from
one quality to another is called a diphthong, and a vowel sound that glides
between three qualities is a triphthong. All languages have monophthongs and
many languages have diphthongs, but triphthongs or vowel sounds with even more target qualities are relatively rare
cross-linguistically. English has all three types: the vowel sound in hit is a monophthong, the vowel sound in
boy is a diphthong, and the vowel sound in fire is a triphthong. In phonology, diphthongs and triphthongs are
distinguished from sequences of monophthongs by whether or not the vowel sound constitutes one or more syllables. For example,
the vowel sounds in the two-syllable word flower phonetically form a triphthong, but are phonologically a sequence of a
diphthong (represented by the letters "ow") and a monophthong (represented by the letters "er").
Languages can distinguish different vowel qualities in a variety of ways:
- Height refers to the tongue position during the articulation of a vowel
relative to the roof and bottom of the mouth. In high vowels, such as [i] and [u], the
tongue is positioned high in the mouth, whereas in low vowels, such as [a], the tongue is positioned low in the mouth. The International Phonetic Alphabet identifies
seven different vowel heights, although no known language distinguishes all
seven:
- Backness refers to the tongue position during the articulation of a
vowel relative to the back and front of the mouth. In front vowels, such as [i], the tongue is positioned forward in the mouth,
whereas in back vowels, such as [u], the tongue is positioned towards the back of the mouth. The International Phonetic Alphabet identifies
five different degrees of vowel backness, although no known language distinguishes all five:
- Roundedness is simply whether the lips are rounded, or not.
Simply having a rounded vowel is not using this contrast because it must also have an unrounded version of the same vowel.
French, German, and some dialects of English use roundedness as a contrast. Different kinds of rounded vowels are also possible,
as in Swedish, which has "pursed lips" rounded vowels as
well as "compressed lips" rounded vowels.
- Length refers to the duration
of the vowel. Japanese, Arabic and Latin have a two-way contrast between short and long
vowels. Estonian and Wichita have a three-way contrast among short, half-long, and long vowels. Long vowels are written in the
IPA with a triangular colon, which
has two equilateral triangles pointing at each other in place of dots. The IPA symbol for half-long vowels is the triangular
colon without the lower triangle.
- Nasalization refers to whether some of the air escapes through the nose.
In nasal vowels, the velum is lowered, and some
air travels through the nasal cavity as well as the mouth. An oral vowel is a vowel in which all air escapes through the mouth. French and Portuguese contrast
nasal and oral vowels.
- Tenseness is the amount
of energy expended in producing the vowel, so that tense vowels have higher formants and generally greater tongue involvement in
the production of the sound that their lax counterparts. English contrasts vowels using this relatively rare feature:
leap and suit are the tense versions of lip and soot, which are called lax.
- Voicing describes whether the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation of a vowel. Most languages only have voiced vowels, but
several Native American languages, such as Cheyenne and Totonac, contrast voiced and
devoiced vowels. Vowels are de-voiced in whispered speech, and in Japanese, vowels that are low pitched and between voiceless
consonants are de-voiced.
- Creaky voice, breathy voice, and murmured voice are phonation types that are used
contrastively in some languages. Often, these co-occur with tones or
stress patterns; in the Mon language, vowels pronounced in "high tone" are
also produced with creaky voice. In such contexts, it can be unclear whether it is the tone, the voicing type, or the pairing of
the two that is being used for phonemic contrast.
- Retracted
tongue root is also used in African languages. This contrast is used extensively in Maa and other East African languages.
Advanced tongue root and retracted tongue root resembles the lax/tense contrast acoustically, but they have different
articulation.
- Pharyngealisation occurs in some languages; Sedang uses this contrast.
Daniel Jones developed the cardinal vowel system to describe vowels.
Written vowels
The name "vowel" is often used for the symbols used for representing vowel sounds in a language's writing system, particularly if the language uses an alphabet. In the Latin alphabet, the vowel letters
are usually A, E, I, O, U, and in some languages Y, as in English and
W, as in Welsh.
There is necessarily not a direct one-to-one correspondence between the vowel sounds of a language and the vowel letters. Many
languages that use a form of the Latin alphabet have more vowel sounds than can be represented by the standard set of five vowel
letters. In the case of English, the five primary vowel letters can represent both long and short vowel sounds
(some of the long vowel sounds in English are actually diphthongs). Furthermore,
in English some vowel sounds are represented by combinations of vowel letters, such as the ea in beat or by a
vowel and a glide (Y or W), as the ow in how and the oy in boy.
Other languages also attempt to overcome the limitation in the number of Latin vowel letters in similar ways. Many languages,
like English, make extensive use of combinations of vowel letters to represent various sounds. However, it is also very common
for languages to add diacritical marks to vowels, such as accents or umlauts, to represent the variety of possible vowel sounds. Some languages have also
constructed additional vowels that are based on the standard Latin vowels, such as æ or ø that are found in
some of the Scandinavian languages. The International Phonetic Alphabet has a set of
28 symbols to represent the range of basic vowel qualities, and a further set of diacritics to denote variations from the basic
vowel.
Vowels in languages
The semantic significance of vowels varies widely depending on the language. In
some languages, particularly Semitic languages, vowels mostly
serve to denote inflections, and omitting them doesn't impede understanding. As
a result, the alphabets used to write these languages, such as the Hebrew
alphabet and the Arabic alphabet, do not ordinarily mark vowels.
These alphabets are called abjads.
In most languages, however, vowels are very important. Although in some simple cases English can be understood without written
vowels (cn y rd ths?), for long passages, including the vowels is essential for understanding. In some languages with few
consonants, the vowels are also more important to the structure of the word. Pacific languages such as Maori and Fijian
are of this sort. In languages that have a large vowel inventory, like Sedang, a relative of Vietnamese, which
contrasts 55 different vowel qualities, vowels are critically important to understanding.
Vowel systems
Most languages have 3-7 vowels, the following 5-vowel system being the most common:
The reason for this seems to be that it makes the most efficient use of the vowel space. Spanish and Modern Greek, for example, have this
vowel system; Latin had a similar system (it made a difference of long and short vowels
in speech, but not in writing); it is for this reason that the Latin alphabet has five vowel letters. All languages have at least
two vowels; the Tshwizhyi and Abzhui dialects of Abkhaz contrasts
only /a/ and /i/, with significant allophony. (Some linguists
claim that it is possible to posit only one vowel in some Abkhaz dialects, though the general consensus seems to be that
that is stretching things a bit.) Three-vowel systems have been noted in a number of forms. These include:
A few languages, such as Navajo, have four-vowel systems that lack
either i or u, but there is no known natural language that lacks some form of a. At the other end of
the spectrum, languages with more than 12 vowels are relatively uncommon, although some widely-spoken languages have large vowel
inventories, particularly Germanic languages. For example,
English has 14-16 vowels (including diphthongs), depending on
dialect, and Swedish has the most distinct vowel qualities in the
height-backness-roundedness spectrum, with 17 different monophthongs. Sedang contrasts 55 different vowels.
Vowels of different languages
- Arabic : دَ دِ دُ
دَا دَى دِي دُو
- Korean : ㅏ ㅐ ㅑ ㅒ ㅓ
ㅔ ㅕ ㅖ ㅗ ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅛ ㅜ ㅝ ㅞ ㅟ ㅠ ㅡ
ㅢ ㅣ
- Russian : hard: А О У Ы Э ;
soft: Я Ё Ю И Е
- Japanese : normal: あいうえお grammatical: を
See also
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