words without vowels
scharle
about "words without vowels". I'm no linguist, but here's my first
stab at it. Please correct this, but keep the flames low.
"Vowel" can be understood two ways -- a particular kind of sound,
called by linguists a "segmental"; or a letter of an alphabet.
Let's take the vowel-letters first.
English is notorious for its spelling poorly reflecting the
pronunciation, but the standard for English vowel-letters is "a, e, i,
o, u and sometimes y". It is not surprising that there should be
English words which are not spelled with vowel-letters. Perhaps the
most common is "nth" -- pronounced /EnT/. Another, more rare, is
"cwm" -- pronounced /kum/.
Other languages written in the Latin alphabet have other
vowel-letters. For example, Czech has as a vowel-letter "r". There
are many words written in Slavic languages using the Latin alphabet
which do not have the standard English vowel-letters. That, of course,
should be no surprise: that there should be a conflict between
languages.
In Romanization of some Chinese "dialects" there are unusual
vowel-letters, such as in the family name "Ng", pronounced /N/.
In the Cyrillic alphabet, there is a parallel phenomenon, where
a letter of the alphabet which is not a vowel-letter in Russian, called
"yery", is used as a vowel-letter in Bulgarian. Once again, no
surprise.
Some words, shared among Slavic languages, do not have any
vowel-letters, notably the prepositions "v", "s" and "k".
These are genuine words in these languages without vowel-sounds.
The catch is that these words never stand alone. They are always
pronounced as part of the next word. For example, Russian "v mire"
("in the world") is pronounced /'vmi rE/.
Seemingly, the only cases of words which can stand alone and
have no vowel sounds are interjections. Examples such as English
"tsk" pronounced /t!/, a "click". However, the interjection "hmmm",
pronounced /m/, does have a vowel sound. The cases of "psst",
pronounced /s/, and "sh", pronounced /S/, are problematic, and
hint that there is no clear-cut distinction between vowels and
consonants as sounds.
(I particularly would like linguists to comment on whether
only interjections can be vowel-less, stand-alone words.)
--
Tom Scharle
Room G003 Computing Center |sch...@lukasiewicz.cc.nd.edu
University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN 46556-0539 USA
Jacques Guy
> "Vowel" can be understood two ways -- a particular kind of sound,
>called by linguists a "segmental"; or a letter of an alphabet.
Three ways:
1. letter
2. vocoid
3. vowel under a particular phonological analysis, e.g. a syllable peak,
as r in Czech krk.
Peter Moylan
> Some words, shared among Slavic languages, do not have any
>vowel-letters, notably the prepositions "v", "s" and "k".
> These are genuine words in these languages without vowel-sounds.
> The catch is that these words never stand alone. They are always
>pronounced as part of the next word. For example, Russian "v mire"
>("in the world") is pronounced /'vmi rE/.
> Seemingly, the only cases of words which can stand alone and
>have no vowel sounds are interjections. [...]
Ask a Russian "what is the Russian word for 'with'?".
I imagine that there's some chance of getting a one-word
answer. This would be an example of a vowel-less word
standing alone.
--
Peter Moylan pe...@ee.newcastle.edu.au
file://ee.newcastle.edu.au/pub/www/Moylan.html
Alan D Corre
>scharle (sch...@lukasiewicz.cc.nd.edu) wrote:
>> Some words, shared among Slavic languages, do not have any
>>vowel-letters, notably the prepositions "v", "s" and "k".
>> Seemingly, the only cases of words which can stand alone and
>>have no vowel sounds are interjections. [...]
>Ask a Russian "what is the Russian word for 'with'?".
>I imagine that there's some chance of getting a one-word answer.
When v, s and k occur before a word beginning with a consonant cluster they
take the form vo, so, ko. You can bet this was an earlier form, preserved in
front of clusters. An interesting one is o, which takes the form ob before
vowels and obo in some other circumstances.
--
Alan D. Corre
Emeritus Professor of Hebrew Studies
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
XXdant
> English is notorious for its spelling poorly reflecting the
>pronunciation, but the standard for English vowel-letters is "a, e, i,
>o, u and sometimes y". It is not surprising that there should be
>English words which are not spelled with vowel-letters. Perhaps the
>most common is "nth" -- pronounced /EnT/. Another, more rare, is
>"cwm" -- pronounced /kum/.
Another is crwth, a type of stringed musical instrument. Both cwm
and crwth are borrowings from Welsh where W is a vowel. Also, BB
should be considered a word with no vowels (the fact that it's
capitalized is irrelevant). It's not an acronym or abbreviation. There
is
(was?) a system of names/codes for different sized shot that had
BB as one of the sizes. Look up "shot" in Websters Second
International for more.
Since the letter W comes from combining two U's, there are a number
of old spellings that use it as the vowel. For example, "xwld" is an old
spelling of "should".
--
Dan Tilque
Ivan Derzhanski
In article <3o3k4h$e...@news.nd.edu> sch...@lukasiewicz.cc.nd.edu (scharle) writes:
> IMHO, someone should make a FAQ for alt.usage.english and sci.lang
>about "words without vowels". I'm no linguist, but here's my first
>stab at it. Please correct this, but keep the flames low.
Okay, I'll try. <adjusts flametorch to `low'>
> English is notorious for its spelling poorly reflecting the
>pronunciation, but the standard for English vowel-letters is "a,
>e, i, o, u and sometimes y".
I'm not sure what this `standard' is useful for.
Incidentally, I don't see _gh_ on the list; it stands for [@]
in _Edinburgh_, so I contend that it is a vowel. (I'm serious.)
>It is not surprising that there should be English words which are not
>spelled with vowel-letters. Perhaps the most common is "nth" --
>pronounced /EnT/. Another, more rare, is "cwm" -- pronounced /kum/.
_n_ in _nth_ is not a letter; it is a logogram comparable to _4_ in _4th_,
and it is pronounced [en], so the word is not vowelless.
_w_ in _cwm_ stands for [u], so that word is not vowelless either.
It is true that _w_ is a `vowel letter' less frequently than, say,
_y_, but that is hardly relevant to anything.
> In the Cyrillic alphabet, there is a parallel phenomenon, where
>a letter of the alphabet which is not a vowel-letter in Russian,
>called "yery", is used as a vowel-letter in Bulgarian.
You haven't been paying attention. _Ery_ is a vowel letter in Russian;
in Bulgarian it has been out of use for more than a hundred years now.
But who cares anyway? A text written in Thai does not contain a single
English `vowel letter'; are all Thai words vowelless (and consonantless)?
> Seemingly, the only cases of words which can stand alone and
>have no vowel sounds are interjections. Examples such as English
>"tsk" pronounced /t!/, a "click". [...]
I do have to take issue with the use of phonemic brackets here. It is
hardly relevant that English has a phoneme which is normally realised
as the interjection demanding silence, and the regret/reproach click
is not an English phoneme anyway.
--
`Haud yer wheesht! Come oot o the man an gie him peace.' (The Glasgow Gospel)
Ivan A Derzhanski (i...@cogsci.ed.ac.uk; i...@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)
* Centre for Cognitive Science, 2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW, UK
* Cowan House, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Park Road, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK
Iain Farquhar
>
>Incidentally, I don't see _gh_ on the list; it stands for [@]
>in _Edinburgh_, so I contend that it is a vowel. (I'm serious.)
>
For those Americans puzzled by this, the common pronunciation of the capital of
Scotland in Britain is e-din-bru. Of course, Americans say e-din-burg, so it is
pronounced here!! I read somewhere that the gh is a soft consonant in Gaelic,
sort of like a vocalized ch. As my last name attests, the English had ( and may
still have for that matter) severe difficulty pronouncing the ch sound of Gaelic,
so i can imagine that they preferred not even attempting to pronounce the Gaelic
gh sound!
Iain
scharle
am, quite frankly, out of my depth on the phonological analysis/
vocoid business, and I feel rather diffident about taking this on,
but I think that this is a frequently asked question, so should be
an FAQ. If you don't think that it's worth an FAQ, I'll drop it.
My personal feeling is that this is too long, but I don't know how
to cut it short. I've marked off some comments with ???? in a few
places where I'm particularly uncomfortable.
"Vowel" can be understood (1) as represented in writing
(2) phonetically or (3) phonologically.
1. As represented in writing a vowel is a vowel-letter (or, more
generally, a part or all of a combination, as "i...e" in "bike").
???Here I'm also thinking of parts of writing, as in Devanagari?????
English vowel-letters are a, e, i, o, u and sometimes y. It
should not be surprising that there are English words which are not
spelled with vowel-letters. Perhaps the most common is "nth",
pronounced /EnT/, as in "the nth degree". Another, more rare, is
"cwm", pronounced /kUm/, a geological feature. But a word such as
"by" cannot be considered as a word without a vowel-letter.
Certain uses of letters for sizes or shapes, such as "BB" for
a size of shot, or "T" for a style of shirt, may be considered as
words without vowel-letters.
It should be no surprise that different languages have different
systems for writing vowels: a, e, i, o and u seem to be universally
used for vowels only in Latin-based writing systems, but various
languages add some more letters.
For example, Czech and Slovak have sometimes-vowel letters "r"
and "l" (which represent non-vocoid syllabics -- see below). Thus
the Czech and Slovak word "vlk" /vlk/ "wolf".
In Welsh, "w" can be a vowel-letter as in "cwm" /kUm/.
In Romanization of some Chinese "dialects" there are unusual
vowel-letters, such as in the family name "Ng" /N/. (A non-vocoid
syllabic.)
In the Cyrillic alphabet, there is a similar problem when going
between languages. A letter of the alphabet called "yery", which does
not serve as a vowel-letter in Russian, does serve as a vowel-letter
in Bulgarian.
In Hebrew and Arabic, vowels are ordinarily not well represented
in the writing. The Devanagari alphabet, used for Hindi, Sanskrit
and other languages, and derivative alphabets do not explicitly
indicate the vowel "a" /V/. Thus, in a trivial sense, there are words
in these languages written without vowel-letters.
2. Phonetically, a vowel is a vocoid.
Vocoids are sounds produced without constriction of the air flow,
that is, the "usual" vowel sounds /a/ and so on. It is fairly common
to have a syllable (and hence a word) without a vocoid, such as the
second syllable in English "button" /'bVt n/, or as in Czech and
Slovak work "vlk". In some English dialects "her" /hr/ is an example
of a word without a vocoid.
3. Phonologically, that is, when studying the sounds as a productive
part of the language, a vowel is a syllabic.
Syllabics are the "high point" or "most sonorous" part of a
????????????
syllable. While this may make it appear impossible by definition to
have a syllable without a vowel, interjections often represent special
cases for phonological analysis.
Thus the English "tsk" /t!/ may be considered to be a word without
a (syllabic) vowel, and likewise "psst" /s/.
????should these be [t!] and [s], as they are not English phonemes?????
And, as another way of getting around the "impossibility", it is
possible to have a word without a syllable.
The common Slavic prepositions "s", "v" and "k" are words without
any vowels (in any meaning of the word), but each is not a syllable in
isolation. (Except in an expression such as "slovo `v'" "the word
`v'".) They are regularly pronounced as only *part* of a syllable.
For example, Russian "v mire" ("in the world") is pronounced /'vmi rE/.
?????I'm wating for a response to David Librik's question about?????
??????vowel-less words in Bella Coola ?????
Summary
A few words without vowels (in some sense or other):
English unusual spellings: "nth", "cwm".
Slavic non-syllabic words: "k", "s", "v".
Words in which all the syllabics are non-vocoids: "vlk", "her".
Many interjections in many languages.
Sergio Gelato
>>Ask a Russian "what is the Russian word for 'with'?".
>>I imagine that there's some chance of getting a one-word answer.
>
>When v, s and k occur before a word beginning with a consonant cluster they
>take the form vo, so, ko. You can bet this was an earlier form, preserved in
>front of clusters. An interesting one is o, which takes the form ob before
>vowels and obo in some other circumstances.
For those of us who are unwilling to bet: is it really an earlier form?
Italian has (or has had: the usage seems to be fading) a rule that an "i"
is prefixed to words that begin with /sk/,/sv/,/sg/, etc. when the previous
word ends in a consonant. In some words this does correspond to an earlier form,
but that is merely a coincidence and does not hold in general.
Hence my question: is there independent evidence that vo, so, ko, obo really
reflect earlier forms of these prepositions?
Stewart Robert Hinsley
far...@primenet.com "Iain Farquhar" writes:
>
> For those Americans puzzled by this, the common pronunciation of the
capital of
> Scotland in Britain is e-din-bru. Of course, Americans say e-din-burg, so it
> is
> pronounced here!! I read somewhere that the gh is a soft consonant in
Gaelic,
> sort of like a vocalized ch. As my last name attests, the English had ( and
> may
> still have for that matter) severe difficulty pronouncing the ch sound of
> Gaelic,
> so i can imagine that they preferred not even attempting to pronounce the
> Gaelic
> gh sound!
>
> Iain
>
True(ish), except that, AFAIK, Edinburgh is not a Gaelic name.
Edinburgh is an Old English partial calque of Brythonic Din Eidyn
(Dunedin), with a folk etymology of Edwin's Borough. I've always
assumed that the 'burgh' is cognate to Modern English 'borough',
as in modern Scots, but 'barrow' (hill, tumulus) would be another
possibility.
Old English had a gh sound, which has typically been lost in Modern
English, but is retained in the written form (e.g. 'light', 'plough').
(In stage Scots it's often represented by ch; I don't know to what
degree this occurs in the vernacular.)
PS: the pronunciations edinb@r@ and edinbr@ are both used in the UK.
--
Stewart Hinsley Managers are the servants of their staff
Jacques Guy
> Here's my second stab at an FAQ entry for "vowelless words".
[etc]
As far as "vowel" taken in the phonological sense is concerned
I have come to think that we do not know the answer, only shreds
of it, and that the dichotomy vowel/consonant does exists, but
is a consequence of the statistical properties of individual
languages. A problem of numerical taxonomy. That in some
cases the distinction is not binary, but ternary (e.g.
vowel ~ consonant ~ semi-vowel) and that the three groups
being equidistant one cannot validly merge the offending
third group (semi-vowels or semi-consonants as the case
may be) with either of the first two.
scharle
me by an e-mail correspondent, "yery" should be replaced
by "tvordy znak" (or however one transliterates the name).
"Tvordy znak" is the "hard sign" in Russian, but is used as
a vowel-letter in Bulgarian. "Yery" is a vowel-letter in
Russian.
Peter.Conrad
:> In article <3o6hch$a...@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au> pe...@tesla.newcastle.edu.au writes:
:> >scharle (sch...@lukasiewicz.cc.nd.edu) wrote:
:> >> Some words, shared among Slavic languages, do not have any
:> >>vowel-letters, notably the prepositions "v", "s" and "k".
:> >> Seemingly, the only cases of words which can stand alone and
:> >>have no vowel sounds are interjections. [...]
:> >Ask a Russian "what is the Russian word for 'with'?".
:> >I imagine that there's some chance of getting a one-word answer.
:> When v, s and k occur before a word beginning with a consonant cluster they
:> take the form vo, so, ko. You can bet this was an earlier form, preserved in
:> front of clusters. An interesting one is o, which takes the form ob before
:> vowels and obo in some other circumstances.
:> --
:> Alan D. Corre
:> Emeritus Professor of Hebrew Studies
:> University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
I know a complete sentence without vowels in Chech:
Strc prst srkz krk!
The meaning is "Put the finger into the throat"
Douglas Harper
|In article <3ocjek$6...@news.cs.brandeis.edu>, i...@cs.brandeis.edu says...
|
|>
|>Incidentally, I don't see _gh_ on the list; it stands for [@]
|>in _Edinburgh_, so I contend that it is a vowel. (I'm serious.)
|>
|
|capital of Scotland in Britain is e-din-bru. Of course, Americans say
|e-din-burg, so it is pronounced here!! I read somewhere that the gh
|is a soft consonant in Gaelic, sort of like a vocalized ch.
It would be interesting to know what relationship the current
Gaelic-influenced pronunciation of "Edinburgh" has to the Anglo-Saxon
original. How *was* the final syllable pronounced?
|As my last name attests, the English had ( and may still have for that
|matter) severe difficulty pronouncing the ch sound of Gaelic, so i can
|imagine that they preferred not even attempting to pronounce the
|Gaelic gh sound!
My ignorance of historical linguistics is showing (I read a.u.e, not
s.l), but *does* it attest to that, or does it just attest to a change
in orthography? Do you know when the English spelling of your name was
standardized? A lot of sounds have fallen out of English over the
years...
|
|Iain
--
Douglas Harper c...@oracorp.com +1 (607) 277-2020
Alan Leary
> I know a complete sentence without vowels in Chech:
> Strc prst srkz krk!
> The meaning is "Put the finger into the throat"
---Looks more like what you get when you do. :-)
Paul J. Kriha
ai50731@PROBLEM_WITH_INEWS_DOMAIN_FILE (Peter.Conrad) wrote:
[...]
>I know a complete sentence without vowels in Chech:
>Strc prst srkz krk!
>The meaning is "Put the finger into the throat"
>
I wouldn't know what that means in Chechen, but
I recognise the language as Czech.
For the thousandth time, believe the natives, there is
a vowel in every single word of that sentence and it
is exactly where it's supposed to be, in the middle
of each syllable.
Paul JK.
BTW it means: push a finger through the throat
Iain Farquhar
>
>In article <3oe9gl$i...@news.primenet.com> far...@primenet.com
>(Iain Farquhar) writes:
>|In article <3ocjek$6...@news.cs.brandeis.edu>, i...@cs.brandeis.edu
says...
>
>Gaelic-influenced pronunciation of "Edinburgh" has to the Anglo-Saxon
>original. How *was* the final syllable pronounced?
>
>|As my last name attests, the English had ( and may still have for that
>|matter) severe difficulty pronouncing the ch sound of Gaelic, so i can
>|imagine that they preferred not even attempting to pronounce the
>|Gaelic gh sound!
>
>My ignorance of historical linguistics is showing (I read a.u.e, not
>s.l), but *does* it attest to that, or does it just attest to a change
>in orthography? Do you know when the English spelling of your name was
>standardized? A lot of sounds have fallen out of English over the
>years...
As someone else pointed out, Edinburgh actually derives from the ancient
British language, the precurser of Welsh. I _was_ being a mite facetious
there!
My last name is spelt Fearchair in Gaelic, and like most Gaelic last
names was originally a first name meaning "dearest one". Needless to
say, the "ch" sound occurs at the back of the throat like the Germans.
When it was Anglicized, a "k" sound was substituted. However, the Gaelic
alphabet has no k in it, so somewhere along the way, the Francophone qu
with an added h was substituted. I pronounce my last name "Farker" not
"Farkwar". Other Scottish last names with similar spellings are
Colquhoun and Urquhart. I wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn that the
famous politician James Calhoun was originally a Colquhoun.
Iain
Alan Smaill
> In article <3oe9gl$i...@news.primenet.com> far...@primenet.com
> (Iain Farquhar) writes:
I read somewhere that the gh is a soft consonant in Gaelic,
sort of like a vocalized ch.
> It would be interesting to know what relationship the current
> Gaelic-influenced pronunciation of "Edinburgh" has to the
> Anglo-Saxon original. How *was* the final syllable pronounced?
I don't see any reason to think that Gaelic played a role here --
the Lothians have never been a Gaelic speaking area, for a start.
This is presumably just a different spelling for the English "borough".
Some Scots words ending in "gh" pronounce it as a (Scottish) ch,
not vocalised (eg laigh, haugh). That's the old English pronunciation too,
isn't it?
--
Alan Smaill email: A.Sm...@ed.ac.uk
LFCS, Dept. of Computer Science tel: 44-31-650-2710
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh EH9 3JZ, UK.