How to write vowels

Vowels: Types of Vowels

by Craig Shrives

This Page Includes...

Video
Printable & Sendable Test
Why Vowels Are Important
Key Points

What Are Vowels? (with Examples)

The letters A, E, I, O, and U are called vowels. The other letters in the alphabet are called consonants.

There is a debate over whether Y is a vowel or a consonant. We will discuss this later.

Formal Definition for Vowel

A vowel is classified as "a speech sound produced by a comparatively open configuration of the vocal tract, with vibration of the vocal cords but without audible friction."

Short and Long Vowels

In English, the sounds of the vowels are group into two pairs: short vowels and long vowels. The short vowels are pronounced as follows:

"a" as in
"bat"
"e" as in
"bed"
"i" as in
"bit"
"o" as in
"bog"
"u" as in
"but"

The long vowels are pronounced as follows:

"a" as in
"haze"
"e" as in
"he"
"i" as in
"hi"
"o" as in
"hope"
"u" as in
"human"

Unfortunately for those learning English, these vowel sounds can be created with lots of different spellings. It is even common for a single vowel to create the sound of a different vowel (e.g., the "a" in "any" creates a short "e" sound). Here are some examples:

Some alternative spellings for the short "e" vowel:

many
bread
said
leopard

Some alternative spellings for the long "a" vowel:

pain
prey
pray
puree

When teaching vowels, it used to be a common practice to show the short vowels as lowercase letters (aeiuo) and the long vowels are uppercase letters (AEIOU). However, as both sets usually appear as lowercase letters in words, this practice has largely been dropped from teaching materials.

That's Interesting!

Every Syllable Has a Vowel Sound

A vowel sound (but not necessarily a vowel in the actual spelling) will be present in a syllable.

Interesting Words

Here are some interesting words with regard to their vowels:

The word "Iouea" (a genus of sea sponges) contains all five vowels and no other letters.
The words "abstemious" and "facetious" contain all five vowels in order.

Is Y a Vowel?

Using the formal definition above, the letter Y in words like "hymn" and "shy" is also a vowel. However, in words like "beyond" and "yes," Y is a consonant because the breath is partly obstructed.

So, is Y a vowel? Well, sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't, which is why it is often called a semi-vowel. The argument for classifying Y as a consonant (which most do) is based on this: When Y is a vowel, it is really just an I. When it is a consonant, it is being itself.

Why Vowels Are Important

Here are two good reasons to think more carefully about vowels.

(Reason 1) Be clear on when to use "an" and "a."

Use "an" (not "a") before a vowel sound. The important word here is sound.

Get the Rule Right!

This is the rule:

Use 'an' before a vowel sound.

This is NOT the rule:

Use 'an' before a vowel.

Knowing when to use "a" and "an" is all about the sound of the next letter. (It is not about whether the next letter is a vowel or a consonant.). Look at these examples:

an apple. a apple.
an RTA. a RTA

While we're on this subject, it's worth reminding ourselves that the words "an" and "a" are called the indefinite articles.

An unidentified man with a unicorn tattoo rented a house an hour ago.

sound

Becoming a eunuch wasn't a one-off deal it was a two-off deal.

(Reason 2) Use assonance to add rhythm and musicality to your writing.

Assonance is a literary technique created by repeating the same vowel sound in neighboring words. It is used by lyricists and poets to encourage their readers and listeners to consider the near rhyme created by the assonance. (NB: Assonance contrasts with consonance, which is a similar literary technique in which nearby words repeat the same consonant sound.)

Here are some examples of assonance:

His fleet feet seem impossible to beat.
"A host, of golden daffodils" (Extract from "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by poet William Wordsworth)
"Hear the mellow wedding bells" (Extract from "The Bells" by American writer Edgar Allen Poe)

Read more about assonance. Here, for comparison, is an example of consonance:

I earn my keep by cracking locks or picking pockets.

Key Points

Try our drag-and-drop test on the types of syllable.

Video Lesson

Here is a 12-minute video summarizing this lesson on vowels.

Printable Test

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Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A vowel is a particular kind of speech sound made by changing the shape of the upper vocal tract, or the area in the mouth above the tongue. In English it is important to know that there is a difference between a vowel sound and a [letter] in the [alphabet]. In English there are five vowel letters in the alphabet.

The sounds of American English are written with letters in the English alphabet, as either vowels or consonants. All English words are written with vowel letters in them.

These letters are vowels in English:

A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes W and Y.

It is said that Y is "sometimes" a vowel, because the letter Y represents both vowel and consonant sounds. In the words cry, sky, fly, my and why, letter Y represents the vowel sound /aɪ/. In words like myth and synchronize, Y represents the vowel sound /ɪ/. In words like only, quickly, and folly, Y represents the vowel sound /i/.

It can also be a consonant sound called a glide as in the beginning of these words: yellow, yacht, yam, yesterday. Y is a consonant about 2.5% of the time, and a vowel about 97.5% of the time.^[1]

The letter W can sometimes be the second part of a vowel sound as in words like such as cow, bow, or how. In these words the vowel has the sound of /aʊ/. The letter W can be used as a consonant sound at the beginning of in the words when, where, wet. In some languages, like Welsh, the letter W represents the vowel sound /ʊ/, like cwm (a kind of valley).

In written English the six vowel letters are used to represent the 13-15 vowel sounds (depending on the variety) in English.^[2] This means there are many more vowel sounds than letters in the English alphabet, and the English spelling systems doesn't always help us figure out what the English sounds are. This can be confusing.

The rest of the letters of the alphabet are consonants:

B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, X, and Z.

Simple vowels are called monophthongs. The letters, like /ɪ/, are the IPA letters for each vowel sound in English. (The IPA is the International Phonetic Alphabet). In the IPA, each symbol represents a different sound, so using the IPA is helpful in pronouncing words.

Common monophthongs in English (these are for General American English) include:

/i/ as in police, feet, eat, and silly
/ɪ/ as in it, sit, kick, myth and bitter
/ɛ/ as in end, bet, less, and letter
/æ/ as in at, apple, fat, and matter
/u/ as in cool, tune, soup, and kung fu,
/ʊ/ as in cook, should, pudding, foot, and rook
/ʌ/ as in bus, blood, come, and up
/ə/ as in kingdom, photography, philosophy, ketchup, and hundred
/ɚ/ as in butter, collar, flavor, firm, and burst
/ɔ/ as in all, fought, hot, and bot
/ɑ/ as in father, walk, arm, heart, wasp, lager, envelope and aardvark

Diphthongs are a combination of two different vowel sounds, one vowel sounds turns into another sound as you say them. If you pronounce the words below slowly, you can hear the two vowel sounds of the diphthongs.

Common diphthongs in English include:

/eɪ/ as in ate, reign, vain, flavor, slay, and convey
/oʊ/ as in toe, row, go, boat, mode, and chateau
/aɪ/ as in eye, I, pie, cry, cypher, climb, lime, light, kayak, Thai, and height
/aʊ/ as in loud, house, cow, about, Daoism, and Macau
/oɪ/ as in boy, moist, and Freud

Like other languages, there are many dialects of English, and different dialects often use different vowel sounds. But the IPA symbols can tell us which vowel sound a dialects uses. For example, some American English speakers differentiate between the vowels in the words cot and caught, while in other dialects these words are homophones. People who study the differences between the dialects of English often study the different way vowel sounds are pronounced.

The difference between the way English is spelled and the way the words are pronounced came about because all languages change, so spoken English changes, but the spelling system does not.

The study of speech sounds is called phonetics.

Orthography
Dialect
Diphthong

↑ Edward Fry (2004). "Phonics: A Large Phoneme-Grapheme Frequency Count Revised". Journal of Literacy Research. 36 (1): 85–98. doi:10.1207/s15548430jlr3601_5. S2CID 146226795.
↑ Crystal, David 1995. The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language. Cambridge. p237

Vowel sounds and letters.

How many are there in Russian?

We will teach you how to write without mistakes and tell stories in an interesting way

Start learning

The correct pronunciation of words is one of the components of a beautiful and literate speech. To achieve this, you will first have to study the sounds themselves. In this article, we will figure out together what vowel sounds are, how many vowels are in the alphabet of the Russian language, and what sounds they can represent.

What are vowels and sounds

Vowel sounds are those sounds that we freely convey with our voice. Hence their name comes from: voice means "voice". When pronouncing, air exits through the mouth and does not create noise, and the position of the tongue and lips determines which vowel sound we will pronounce.

There are much fewer vowels in Russian than consonants. There are 6 of them in total: [a], [o], [i], [s], [y] and [e]. To understand whether a vowel sound is in front of you or not, try to sing it. For example:

a-a-a ,
woo
s-s-s .

If it works, then the sound is a vowel. You can't do that with consonants.

There are more vowels than sounds - there are 10 of them: a, i, u, u, o, e, e, e, i, s . This difference is due to the fact that some of these letters can represent two sounds and are pronounced using a combination of a vowel and a consonant [y']. For example, in the word spruce the letter e expresses two sounds - [y'] and [e]. Let's look at the table all the vowel sounds and the letters that represent them.

Letter	Sound	Example
a	[a]	pharmacy
i	[a] [d'] + [a]	change anchor
y	[y]	moon
	[y] [y'] + [y]	love skirt
about	[o] [a]	horse milk
e	[e] [th'] + [e] [and]	victory raccoon great
e	[o] [d'] + [o]	rope hedgehog
e	[e]	evolution
and	[and] [s]	caviar life
s	[s]	choice

Demo lesson in Russian

Take the test at the introductory lesson and find out what topics separate you from the "five" in Russian.

How vowel sounds are related to syllables

Vowel sounds form syllables - sound segments of words that we pronounce with one breath. One syllable can be either a vowel with one or more consonants, or a vowel alone. There is even a rule by which syllables can be counted: how many vowels in a word - so many syllables.

For example, in the word journey there are 5 vowels: [u], [i], [e], [i] and [e]. This means that it has 5 syllables: p-te-she-stv-e .

Test yourself!

Count the number of syllables in the words: try on, tanner, well-groomed, care, prefix, capital, wet, invitation, orange .

Vowel sounds and stress

Now let's see what groups vowel sounds are divided into. Sometimes their pronunciation depends on whether the stress falls on them, that is, whether we single them out with our voice. So vowel sounds are divided into stressed and unstressed. Here are some examples:

Sound	Impact position	Unstressed position
[and]	large	prize money
[a]	chess	spruce
[y]	frog	empty

Stress in Russian can fall on any of the existing vowel sounds. However, only 4 of them can be unstressed - these are [a], [i], [y] and [s]. In this position, we pronounce sounds weaker than under stress, because of which they can change qualities and sound differently.

Interestingly, the vowels [o] and [e] can only be stressed. There are only a couple of exceptions to this rule: for example, in words cocoa and canoe sounds [o] and [e] in an unstressed position.

How unstressed vowels are related to consonants

How an unstressed vowel sounds depends on the consonant that precedes it. Or rather, from its hardness or softness. If it is a hard consonant, it can be followed by unstressed vowels [y], [a] and [s]. When we talk about a soft consonant, it is followed by unstressed vowels [y] and [and].

After a hard consonant	After a soft consonant
[l]howl	p[r'i]kaz
[wa] yes	[s'u] yes
[woo]lcan	[v'i]trina

Free English lessons with a native speaker

Practice 15 minutes a day. Learn English grammar and vocabulary. Make language a part of life.

Test yourself

It's time to find out if you now understand well what vowel sounds are in Russian. To do this, we have prepared tasks for self-examination.

Task 1

List all the vowel sounds in these words:

screech,
fair,

rejoice,

doll,

distant,

buddy,

voting,

mirror,

story,

OK,

captivate.

Task 2

Name 5 words each in which the sounds [a], [i], [y] and [s] would be stressed.

Task 3

Name 5 words in which an unstressed vowel would come after a hard consonant and 5 more words where it would follow a soft consonant.

Task 4

Count the number of syllables in the words below (don't forget to use the rule you learned at the beginning of the article!):

weightless,

sunrise,

adventure,

painter,

perpetuate,

pleasant,

image,

category,

exciting,

melting,

snowflake.

The rules of phonetics help us to speak correctly, so it is important to master the topic of vowels well and avoid gaps in knowledge. If even after reading the article you still have questions on the topic, you can figure them out in the Russian language course at Skysmart. In online lessons, the teacher will help the student work out the theory and consolidate the result on non-boring tasks. So the student will be able to improve the quality of knowledge, and fall in love with the subject.

Russian cheat sheets for parents

All the rules of the Russian language at hand

Vowels and vowel sounds of the Russian language - diagram, table

Contents:
• Vowels and sounds
• Stressed and unstressed
• Iotated
3 Russian the language of vowels - 10, vowels - 6. Vowels: a, i, e, e, o, u, s, e, u, i. Vowel sounds: [a], [o], [y], [e], [i], [s]. In the school curriculum, vowel sounds are indicated in the diagrams in red. In elementary grades, they explain: vowels are called so because they “voice”, they are pronounced “voiced”, while consonants got such a name because they “agree” with vowels.
Scheme 1. Vowels and vowel sounds of the Russian language.
Stressed and unstressed vowels

There are vowel sounds:
unstressed: in about yes [a], from y dak [y], l e juice [i].

It is correct to say "stressed syllable" and "unstressed syllable". Instead of "stress falls on a vowel" say "stress falls on a syllable with a vowel." However, in the literature there are formulations "stressed vowel" and "unstressed vowel".

Stressed vowels are in a strong position, they are pronounced with more force and intonation. Unstressed vowels are in a weak position, they are pronounced with less force and may be subject to change.

Note. The designation of the letter e in a weak position differs in different school programs. Above we showed the sound [and], in other school programs the designation [e] is found, in the institute program - [e ^and] (e with an overtone and).
Scheme 2. Division of vowels into stressed and unstressed.
In Russian there are compound words with primary and secondary stress. In them, with a strong intonation, we highlight the main stress, with a weak intonation - a secondary one. For example, in the word foam blocks, the main stress falls on the syllable with the letter o, the secondary stress on the syllable with the letter e. In phonetic analysis, the vowel with the main stress is stressed, the vowel with the secondary stress is unstressed. For example: tricuspid, three-year-old.

Iotated vowels
The letters i, u, e, ё are called iotated and mean two sounds in the following positions of the word:

at the beginning of the word: tree [y'olka], Yana [y'ana], raccoon [y'inot];

after a vowel: hare [zay'its], button accordion [bay'an];

after ь or ъ: streams [ruch'y'i], rise [fall'om].

For ё and stressed vowels i, u, e, a replacement is made: i → [y’a], yu → [y’u], e → [y’e], yo → [y’o].
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