Is Y a Vowel or not?

[civ_king]

It's a semi-vowel like W. English R can also be argued to be a semi-vowel for some pronounciations, and we also pretty much use L as a syllable by itself too (like in "table" - I'd argue there's no schwa in there).

The vowel-consonant dichotomy is good enough for most layperson purposes but it breaks down when you start looking at phonetics in any detail.

LOLWUT, do you live in a cwm or something?

 

[Arwon]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_labio-velar_approximant

It's semi-vocalic. There's plenty of languages which represent the exact same sound with a U. Spanish 'cuanto' and French 'oui' for instance.

 

[cybrxkhan]

We should remember that there's a diference between the actual pronounciation and what's written in the orthography. In Linguistics, if I remember correctly, we'd denote /y/ to mean an actual pronounciation of a certain sound, while <y> would mean what's written in the orthography.

Linguistically speaking, /y/ is actually an entirely different sound altogether. In English, however, if <y> is used as a consonant, then it usually is what Linguists would consider /j/. If <y> is used as a vowel, then it is usually /i/ or /I/, which are basically more or less equivalent to <i>.

 

[GamezRule]

A E I O U and sometimes Y.

 

[Takhisis]

Semivowel.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Depends on the word.
If it's the first letter it's usually a vowel, otherwise it's usually a consonant.
In fact, it's more like one letter representing two sounds, and one of them is just 'I'.

 

[warpus]

It's a vowel in Polish so I've always seen it as one.

I didn't realize that Y wasn't always a vowel in English until a couple years after I moved to Canada and I still don't really get how the y in "Yesterday" or "By" is a consonant.

My Czech friend's explanation: 'English people feel they "need" vowels, I guess'

 

[Winner]

Others have already answered the question. As for my native language, it can only be a vowel; also there is no difference in pronunciation between "i" and "y". There used to be one, but it has long since disappeared. Some language experts argue we should drop it altogether, because learning where to write "i" / "y" in modern Czech is one of the hardest thing about Czech grammar.

Also, there is no difference in Czech between "w" and "v" - "w" only occurs in foreign words and is pronounced a "v".

Damn the vowel movement of the great vowel shift, damn it to hell.

and we also pretty much use L as a syllable by itself too (like in "table" - I'd argue there's no schwa in there).

LOLWUT, do you live in a cwm or something?

My favourite Czech words:

"vlk"
"zmrzlina"
"krk"
"ztvrdl"

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Wow.
Serbian -like probably most slavic languages- uses R as a vowel (smrt, srce, krv, crveno), but L ?
You guy are crazy !
I'm guessing 'vlk is 'large', 'zmrzlina' is 'ice', krk is the Croatian island and 'ztvrdl' is...'prison' ? Or something locked ? Soemthing hard ?
.

 

[Winner]

Wow.
Serbian -like probably most slavic languages- uses R as a vowel (smrt, srce, krv, crveno), but L ?
You guy are crazy !
I'm guessing 'vlk is 'large', 'zmrzlina' is 'ice', krk is the Croatian island and 'ztvrdl' is...'prison' ? Or something locked ? Soemthing hard ?
.

Vlk - wolf
Zmrzlina - ice-cream
krk - neck
ztvrdl - become hard/stony (tvrdý - hard)

You're right, both "r" and "l" can function as vowels in Czech. And it shows Serbian is a slavic language.

Serbian ---- Czech --- (English)
smrt ---- smrt --- (death)
krv ----- krev --- (blood)
srce ----- srdce ----- (heart)
crven(a) ----- &#269;ervená ---- (red colour)

If only they dropped that silly Cyrillic alphabet...

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Yeah, stupid nationalism.
At least they don't have any redundant letters like Q,W,X or Y.

 

[emzie]

I think Boundless is right. I was taught that "y" was the vowel in words which do not have a typical vowel, for instance "sky".

Er, well more like a syllable without another vowel. Like in the word syllable, y is a vowel.

 

[Dachs]

Yeah, stupid nationalism.
At least they don't have any redundant letters like Q,W,X or Y.

Fortunately, Q and X are so intrinsically awesome that their redundancy is easily overlooked.

 

[Kennigit]

oh forgot to mention my favourite word.

syzygy.

now tell me y is not a vowel in that.

 

[Flying Pig]

At least they don't have any redundant letters like Q,W,X or Y.

The Qataris would beg to differ.

 

[Dachs]

The Qataris would beg to differ.

Their country's name is not only in another language, it is in another alphabet. Qaaf is a legitimate letter; its pronunciation differs meaningfully from, say, kaaf.

 

[Flying Pig]

Their country's name is not only in another language, it is in another alphabet. Qaaf is a legitimate letter; its pronunciation differs meaningfully from, say, kaaf.

I meant that Qatar can't be spelt Katar or Catar without subtly changing the pronounciation, so they'd probably say that Q was quite a useful letter for Englsih to have!

 

[Dachs]

Eh. Most people I know who don't actually know how to pronounce "Qatar" say "katar" as it is. A marginal advantage at best.

 

[warpus]

We need those letters for scrabble

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I meant that Qatar can't be spelt Katar or Catar without subtly changing the pronounciation, so they'd probably say that Q was quite a useful letter for Englsih to have!

How about Katarr or Kataar ?
European languages don't need the Q. It kan always be repalced with a K, Kw, or KW.
"Can you eksplain kwantum mechanics to me ?"