What makes y a vowel

Here at Sporcle we say:. By Sporcle standards, there are more than 5 vowels in the English language. This is because Sporcle uses the primary definition of vowel, which distinguishes a vowel based on sounds rather than letters. By this definition, letters themselves are neither vowels or consonants.

Letters represent the sounds that vowels and consonants make. So what exactly makes a sound a vowel versus a consonant? The rules of vowel determination depend on mouth conformation when pronouncing a sound. As always, different places have different conventions. Last Updated On: October 3, Have you seen our most recent badges? HAL The ultimate showdown between man and computer.

Look at the word mystery. The letter Y appears in the word mystery twice. The first Y is a vowel because it is in the middle of the syllable MYS The final Y is a vowel because it is at the end of word before a consonant and has the long E sound. Some people will say the word mystery only has one vowel because it only has one E which is one of the five traditional vowels. I would disagree strongly with decoz. In the case of "Sydney", it is part of a way of writing a simple vowel sound; in "Kay" it is part of a way of writing a long vowel sound or a diphthong, depending on dialect.

A diphthong consists of two vowels or a vowel and a semivowel depending on how you want to analyse it. It can also be used as part of a digraph, where two vowels written together are considered to have one sound.

Examples would be ay in May and ey in Sydney. This is similar to the way other digraphs are used, such as ea in eager or ie in friend. The following excerpt from decoz. When the letter serves as a vowel, and in fact sounds like one, it is a vowel. The same is true when the Y serves as the only vowel in the syllable. However, if the Y does not provide a separate vowel sound, as when it is coupled with another vowel, it is considered a consonant. In names such as Maloney or Murray, the Y is a consonant, because the vowel sound depends upon the long E in Maloney and the long A in Murray.

In general, the Y is a consonant when the syllable already has a vowel. Also, the Y is considered a consonant when it is used in place of the soft J sound, such as in the name Yolanda or Yoda.

In the names Bryan and Wyatt, the Y is a vowel, because it provides the only vowel sound for the first syllable of both names. For both of these names, the letter A is part of the second syllable, and therefore does not influence the nature of the Y. Also not being an English speaker, I mostly seem to default to the logic used with an i in Latin. That i acts like a consonant j when it appears before another vowel except for diphthongs.

Consequently, the Latin alphabet did not officially have a j. As far as I can tell, this is the case with the y in English, though I don't have any sources or statistical evidence to back that claim. NB: If you had Latin in school and the j was used eg. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top.

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