White Flag -- "rythm", no vowel in

[Ronald Butters]

This is not something that a linguist would say, really. It confuses spelling and pronunciation, for one thing. I think the schoolmarms and -masters  were thinking of the <y> in "yes" as a "consonant," but I am not sure what they were thinking of in calling <w> a vowel.

Some analysis of English would see the difference between /ow/ (as in "boat") and /oy/ (as in "boy") as involving the difference in the vowel offgflides; a minimal pair would be "toe" and "toy".

On Mar 19, 2012, at 6:01 PM, Larry Sheldon wrote:

> I am really going to have to show my ignorance now.
>
> When I was little, the officially sanctioned vowels were "AEIOU and
> sometimes W and Y".
>
> All theses years since I have (when four-leaf clovers are plentiful)
> searched for an occurrence of an English "w" making what seems to me to
> be a vowel sound (what ever THAT turns out to mean), and one of "y" that
> does not.
>
> (For me, a "vowel sound" is one that allows me to pronounce successive
> sharp-edged consonants.)
>
> Would somebody pleas point me to an example of each?
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