Five vowels, traditionally, maybe six? Nah. Maybe dozens.
The saga of “English vowels are not necessarily A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y” continues.
Most of us have learned that A, E, l, O, U, and sometimes Y are vowels, and specific to that precise classification I offer no argument (with the exception, of course, of the waggish additions in the entries above and below). However, as I tick off the letter list in the previous sentence, I count i, 2, 3, 4, 5, and sometimes 6 vowels . . . even though when talking about vowels, there are actually in the range of 14, 15, 16 . . .
Specifically, the components of our oft-detailed list above are vowel letters, vowel symbols, used to record and express vowel sounds, and in fact the word vowel was used to denote the sound (as early as the 1300s) before being applied to the letter (in the 1500s). Vowel comes from Old French vouel (single u instead of double-u, and so much truer to the spirit of the word, though I find it fascinating that one English spelling of vowel was wowell). Old French vouel in turn traces back to Latin vocal, and meaning a sound produced with the vocal cords (as opposed to consonant sounds, produced by bursts of air controlled by lip, tongue, etc.). So a single vowel (letter) has
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Bill Brohaugh
multiple personalities—for instance, the letter A does a Sybil to become long-A made, short-A had, schwa-A ma, and then teams up with other letters to create, for instance, the sound in haughty.
But even if we stick to limiting our discussion to symbols as vowels, the AEIOU/Y rule is not strictly true today. More accurately, perhaps, “The vowels are A, I, O, U, and sometimes E and Y.” In the original sense of the word vowel, the letter E in the word made is not a vowel at all—unvocalized, it loses its true vowel status. Granted, the E does work as an indicator of how the A should be pronounced, but once upon an Old English/Middle English time, that E would have been pronounced. (We could begin to question the permanent vowel status of the other letters by digging into their activities—we’re keeping our eye on I, as in the word parliament — but this book has only so many pages.) So these days the letter E pretends to vowel tenure by clinging to its technical classification as a letter. I suspect it’s trying to retain its pension.