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Definition
 The
terms vowel and consonant refer to the sounds which
make up the spoken language.
Vowels
are open sounds and consonants are relatively closed.
The
idea that English has five vowels - a, e, i, o,
and u - is slightly misleading. This statement refers to
those letters of the alphabet which can be used to represent some
of the many open sounds of the language.
Examples
Here
are some examples of words which end with a vowel:
| agenda |
bar |
go |
queue |
tea |
empty |
Here
are some examples of words which end with a consonant:
brick |
hat |
grab |
tap |
plum |
fuss |
does |
which |
belong |
Use
The
terms vowel and consonant are fairly loose terms for the vast variety
of sounds which make up any language.
Most
people are comfortable with words which are spoken as
vowel-consonant-vowel-consonant
This sequence of sounds is easy to articulate - as in potato.
Consumer
products are given such terms because they are easily repeated
and memorised:
Speakers
are less comfortable with clusters of consonants which occur in
such words as
texts |
crisps |
wasps |
handbag |
There
are approximately forty-two vowel sounds and fifty consonant
sounds in English.
The
written code which attempts to represent all known sounds in
all known languages is the International Phonetic Alphabet.
The
symbols comprising the code are used in dictionaries to indicate
the pronunciation of a word:
hat = /hæt/
The
code can be useful to non-native students of any language
as a guide to pronunciation — provided they understand the
code.
If
the code has been learned, a speaker can—in theory!— read
out a paragraph in any language without understanding its meaning.
[Accomplished actors have been known to use this technique.]
Phonology is
a complex and detailed study of language sounds in which the
smallest unit of sound is known as a phoneme - one single sound
which cannot be split up into anything smaller as part of a particular
language.
English
spelling and English pronunciation have an extremely loose connection.
This is a product of the history of the language, the wide-ranging
mixture of speakers, and the important fact that speech and writing in
any language are two separate systems.
Linguists
regard speech as primary and writing as secondary.
We
acquire speech naturally, just as we grow taller or get a second
set of teeth. Writing on the other hand has to be learned - in
the same way as we learn to drive a car. |
