Vowel

Vowels beside dots are: unrounded • rounded

A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal a collection of matters sharing a common attribute of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels reorientate in quality, in loudness and also in quantity length. They are commonly voiced together with are closely involved in prosodic variation such(a) as tone, intonation and stress.

The word vowel comes from the Latin word , meaning "vocal" i.e. relating to the voice. In English, the word vowel is normally used to refer both to vowel sounds and to the statement symbols that constitute them a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y.

Monophthongs, diphthongs, triphthongs

A vowel sound whose brand does not modify over the duration of the vowel is called a monophthong. Monophthongs are sometimes called "pure" or "stable" vowels. A vowel sound that glides from one style to another is called a diphthong, and a vowel sound that glides successively through three qualities is a triphthong.

All languages gain monophthongs and many languages hit diphthongs, but triphthongs or vowel sounds with even more target qualities are relatively rare cross-linguistically. English has any three types: the vowel sound in hit is a monophthong /ɪ/, the vowel sound in boy is in nearly dialects a diphthong /ɔɪ/, and the vowel sounds of flower, /aʊər/, form a triphthong or disyllable, depending on dialect.

In phonology, diphthongs and triphthongs are distinguished from sequences of monophthongs by whether the vowel sound may be analyzed into distinct phonemes. For example, the vowel sounds in a two-syllable pronunciation of the word flower /ˈflaʊər/ phonetically form a disyllabic triphthong, but are phonologically a sequence of a diphthong represented by the letters ⟨ow⟩ and a monophthong represented by the letters ⟨er⟩. Some linguists use the terms diphthong and triphthong only in this ponemic sense.