Questions tagged [vowels]
Vowels sounds in English.
260 questions
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What is THE shortest English verb?
I have heard that two letter verbs are the shortest verbs in English. Is this totally true? Are any of the letters official recognized as verbs?
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pronunciation US-UK in words like "semi"
I am trying to find a document that explains pronunciation differences in /E/ and /I/ sounds between UK and US styles. I think US pronunciation has /'sɛmay/ a lot more often than UK /'sɛmi/. Where can ...
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Pronunciation of "Oceania" in British English
How is Oceania properly pronounced in British English? Is it /ˌəʊʃɪˈɑːnɪə/, or /ˌəʊʃɪˈɑːnə/? I know a lot of people who use the latter, but I have always been taught the former.
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Why are we supposed to say the “a” as an “e” in “any” and “many”?
I speak Australian English, but I seem to pronounce the words many and anything differently from how the vast majority of people here do so.
I pronounce it using an a sound rather than an e sound ...
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How to pronounce '-ing' followed by a vowel
I'm getting into English recently and I'm a little confused by the way people pronounce a word that starts in a vowel right after a word ending in -ing.
For example:
You have to bring it up now?
...
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"Boneular" vs. "bonular" [closed]
My knowledge in morphology and orthography is lacking. I would like to know how to spell the neologism boneular, from bone (or Backbone, a programming library used for creating Web applications) and ...
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What are the most common letters used in pairs after others in the English alphabet? [closed]
I have a question which is somewhat similar to What are the most common consonants used in English? (on wikiHow). What are the most common seven letters that come second in pairs after consonants and ...
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“Bazaar” vs. “bazar”
Which of bazaar or bazar is better to use for the domain name of specialised marketplace?
Both are available according to the dictionaries.
Any advice which of these two is better to use in the URL?
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difference between American and British /ӕ/ sound
When I presented British /ӕ/ sound to three Korean English-familiar persons online - they are doing answering English-related questions activities [case 1; case 2], and asked what sound it’s like /ӕ/ ...
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What exactly is the "schwa" sound?
What exactly is the "schwa" sound? As a non-native speaker, I hear this sound as not being a pure and clean sound. I mean I know that every vowel sound may vary depending on whether the syllable is ...
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Coining new words from existing ones: Duplicate last letter?
I am trying to invent a word by taking an existing word and turning it into a noun a person can be called who is interacting with an object.
The trouble I ran into was the initial word's ending.
...
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What is the i with a dot on top and dot on bottom called?
I was watching a foreign film and I saw a "i" with a dot on the top as usual and a dot on the bottom. What is it called and is there a way I can find it and type it?
More details:
It was a ...
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What is modifying the "i" in Thumbelina and Carolina to alter its pronuciation?
While helping my daughter read (she is 5) we encountered two names in a story, Thumbelina and Carolina. The way I've come to pronounce the last four letters of "Thumbelina" is "LEE NAH" and the same ...
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Can we call something a "word" if it doesn't have a vowel? [closed]
It seems self-evident to me, but in the heat of a Scrabble game (no surprise), my opponent claimed that "sh" was a word. I think it's a diphthong, but the printed dictionary definition of "word" didn'...
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Why do you write "receive" with "ei" but "retrieve" with "ie"? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Why is it true that “I before E, except after C”?
Both words are similar in pronunciation but different in spelling. Why is it that receive is written with ei but retrieve has ...
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/u/ and /uː/ in pronunciation
What is the regularity of appearance of /uː/ and /u/ (or /ʊ/ in RP)? How can I be most sure deducing from spelling alone, that, say, "ooze" is pronounced /uːz/ and "wool" as /wul/? I know that English ...
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What do the letters ï and ô mean? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
What is the distinction between “role” and “rôle” [with a circumflex]?
What is the significance of the “ô” character in “rôle” in this work?
What is the standard rule ...
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Long vs. short vowels in English words of Latin origin
Is there any way to determine if a vowel is short or long in English words of Latin origin? I've noticed that u is usually long in Latin words (e.g., Jupiter) but what about other vowels?
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Sound changes of "wild" and "wilderness" [duplicate]
I'm having a heated a discussion with a friend and we cannot really get on the same level.
In the original pronunciation of the word wild, the "i" was the short sound that we have in the word ...
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Pronunciation of Bank, Tank, etc.: Bay-nk, Ray-nk or Baen-k or Raen-k?
What is the standard US pronunciation for words such as the following:
Bank
Rank
At least in my dialect of US English (Inland Northern), the following seem like close transcriptions:
Bank: bay-nk ...
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Words using all possible vowels [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Is there a word that contains all the vowels?
Is there a word in English that contains the 5 letters that are exclusively vowels (a, e, i, o, u) as well as the 3 letters that ...
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How are 'marry', 'merry', and 'Mary' pronounced differently?
The way I pronounce these words is the same. Similarly for other words like these: I pronounce ferry and fairy the same, carrot and caret. Yet, dictionaries show different pronunciations for these ...
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Pronunciation of "catch"
I was curious about the different pronunciations of the word catch; more specifically, the difference between /kætʃ/ and /kɛtʃ/.
The Oxford dictionary lists both pronunciations as correct; is this ...
user23794
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Pronunciation of "Nevada" [closed]
People in the state of Nevada insist that it should be pronounced /nəˈvædə/ (with the vowel of TRAP)—this "issue" always comes up during campaigns—while much of the country typically pronounces it /...
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Is it "flotation" or "floatation"?
Is the difference between flotation and floatation a US/UK difference or something else?
I think I did see floatation in some physics book.
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Waiteen for waiting
While it's reasonably common for people to drop the g in words such as waiting, hating, and dating, I seem to be stumbling upon a number of Americans additionally drawing out the final syllable of ...
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How do we differentiate long vowels from short vowels in English
I was finding a school for my toddler. I saw this new theory called long vowels and short vowels
The teacher talk about apple, which she read something like "eiple" and the hat, which she claims use ...
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Why does a silent "-e" at the end of a word lengthen vowels?
There's a common pattern in English spelling where "short" vowels are pronounced as "long" vowels with the addition of a silent "e" at the end of the word.
E.g.
bit → bite
mat → mate
pet → pete
Is ...
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Any rule for pronouncing “e”?
I hear three different sounds for the letter e in precious, bean, and Peru.
Is there a rule that covers the different pronunciations that a written letter e can represent in speech?
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Why is "go" spelled with the same vowel as "do" and "to" since it is pronounced differently?
These two-letter words ending in -o are pronounced with the vowel /oʊ/: bo, go
ho, jo, lo, no, so, and yo whereas do and to are pronounced with the vowel /uː/. Is there an explanation for the ...
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How Many Diphthongs Are There In English?
I was talking to a person who said that there were only two. I think she said that the "ou" in house is one of the two.
I told her that the way the letter "i" is pronounced is a diphthong, and she ...
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Is "imbedded" a valid spelling of the word "embedded"?
I have seen this used on our marketing materials:
The technology imbedded in this solution will help improve productivity.
I was going to flag it as a spelling error, however Googling provided ...
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Do Americans pronounce "Ellen" and "Alan" in the same way?
Do Americans pronounce "Ellen" and "Alan" in the same way? I am especially concerned with the first vowel.
EDIT:
Here is a quote that may be a case in point:
Being a Brit also, the names "Ellen" ...
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Why is it 'speaking'/'speech' instead of 'speeking'/'speech' or 'speaking'/'speach'?
Why is it speaking/speech instead of speeking/speech or speaking/speach?
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Distinctive features of English diphthongs
I am looking for a table of distinctive features for English dipthongs along the lines of that available for other vowels here. I don't trust my purely book learned linguistic skills to produce an ...
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French speaker here — How to pronounce "r" and "l"?
I'm a French speaker and actually I have some problems with the sounds l , r and o in lawyer. Do you have any advice for me on how to place the tongue and so on?
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Pronunciation of vowel in vague as [æ] instead of [eɪ]
I have a friend who pronounces the vowel in plague, vague, and bagel as [æ] instead of the standard [eɪ] (so plague rhymes with flag, for instance). Interestingly, he apparently can't tell the ...
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Why do people pronounce "Naomi" as "Niomi"?
The Wikipedia page for "Naomi (given name)" says once said "pronounced nay-oh-mee" which is how I pronounce my daughter's name, but quite often people pronounce it "nigh-oh-mee" (that is, with a long "...
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Can vowels be combined in English without forming diphthongs?
Usually all combinations of vowels in English function as diphthongs. Are there any combinations of vowels in English that do not function as diphthongs? if there are no such examples - I would be ...
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Longest English word without a vowel sound
I am not an English student, by discipline I am physicist, so am asking this question in innocence.
I searched Google for the longest word without a vowel sound and I got these results:
The ...
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"Vowels have no attack"
What is the linguistic meaning of this sentence?
Vowels are always voiced, and have no attack of their own.
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Where did "sorry" get its vowel sound?
Sorry has two pronunciations in my dictionary: ˈsärē and ˈsôrē. The first is the one I am interested in because, as someone pointed out to me, the or pattern in English is nearly always pronounced as "...
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What is the overlap between "Y" and "I"?
My son and I were reciting the Spanish alphabet recently. "Y" is i griega, which means "Greek i." This got me thinking about the English letter Y and its function in our alphabet.
All of the words ...
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Pronunciation of "er" in "farmer" vs. "earth"
I'm confused about the difference in pronouncing "er" in words such as "farmer" and "earth". I hear them the same, but they have different phonetic symbols. Is there any difference in pronouncing "er" ...
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Why doesn't "ninth" have an "e", like "ninety"?
Is it just because "ninth" has only one syllable? That wouldn't make sense, though, because saying "NINE-ith" wouldn't be worse than saying "NINE-e-tee". If we were used to "nineth", we would have ...
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Why do "able" and "haste" have long a's?
(There are others, such as table, paste, and baste.) The rule I've heard is that a vowel is made long when succeeded by a consonant and then another vowel. Some words treat double consonants as a ...
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"An" versus "a" before a bracketed word that starts with a vowel followed by a non-bracketed word that doesn't start with a vowel [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
“A/An” preceding a parenthetical statement
Which of the following is right/preferred:
The request is fulfilled by an (ideally) close by node.
or
The request ...
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Are W and Y vowels? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicates:
When is “Y” a vowel?
Is the 'w' in 'cow' a vowel or a consonant?
Are W and Y vowels? I learned it depends on the conditions. But I don't know ...
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Whence came the different varieties of the "long i" diphthong?
What is the origin of “long long i” before voiced consonants (the [ai] of wide, while, & tribe) versus “short long i” before unvoiced consonants (the [ʌi] of white, wife, & wipe)? When did ...
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Is the 'w' in 'cow' a vowel or a consonant? [duplicate]
Is the w in cow a vowel or a consonant?
Assuming it is considered a vowel, would it likewise be so in how?
I learned that the vowels are "a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y."
If w can be a vowel, what ...
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