In English, at least as I learned it 40 years ago, the vowels are a, e, i, o , u, and sometimes y. I know that every word must have a vowel. But, what IS a vowel. Why is “a” a vowel and “b” is not?
Muchas gracias.
In: 7
Vowels happen in the throat and occur with an open mouth. You can make every vowel sound keeping your lips in the same position and mouth open since your lips, tongue and teeth have nothing to do with it.
Consonants happens in the mouth and are made using lips, tongue and teeth restricting air flow to make different sounds. B, P, M lips. SH, S, teeth. D, T, tongue. N, TH, ST, tongue/teeth, F, V, teeth/lips
Vowels are letters, whose pronunciation don’t have what’s known as a plosive. A plosive is a sound that’s affected by either stopping or restricting the airflow in your mouth by your palate, lips, or teeth. Vowel sounds don’t include such restrictions but are rather created by adjusting the shape of your mouth.
You can hold it.
It based on the sounds that yer meat-flappers in tha front o’ yer head make. open your mouth and put your lips into any certain configuration making a certain shape and breath out with your voice box buzzing. Don’t move your lips or mouth. It makes a vowel sound. Usually.
Jiggle your flippy flappers and tongue and jaw this way and that, beat-box a little holding and releasing pressure, you’re making consonants. You can’t told the “t” sounds perpetually. It’s defined by that release of pressure with the tongue at the top. You can hold the “uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh” part of “Ton”, but you can’t hold the “t”.
Words have vowels because that’s the sound that happens while moving your mouth into the shape of the next consonant.
Speech is made with airflow going from your lungs and out your mouth, right? Consonants are the sounds made by partially blocking that airflow. For example, your tongue might touch the roof of your mouth (like the sound, not the letter, “t”), or the back of your teeth (like “th”), or your teeth touch your lips (“f” and “v”).
Vowels are the sounds made by not blocking the airflow. Your tongue isn’t touching anything else, your teeth aren’t up to any funny business, etc. The sound is changed mostly by changing the tongue’s position in your mouth *without it touching anything else*. In fact, start going “ahhhhhhhhh” “ayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy” “eeeeeeeee” etc. and you can feel your tongue’s position changing! Some vowels are further forward or back, or up or down.
Also, consonants can be “voiced” or “voiceless”. If you want to know what that means, put your hand on the front of your neck and go “vvvvvv”. Now go “ffffffffff”. The only difference between those two sounds is your voicebox vibrates for v and not for f. Otherwise, the consonants are formed identically.
All vowels, however, are voiced. Again, you can try it! Hand on the front of your neck and start making vowel sounds and you’ll feel your voicebox vibrating.
Any sound that is coming from vocal cords and is going out without any interruption.
Watch [this](https://youtu.be/Tjf_MOyB0K4?si=oA9UVRXQ6ZTo0VGC) if you are interested in vowels.
in simple words, every english word contains atleest one of the letters (a, e, i, o, u) making them a different class to the rest of the letters and thus vowels. its how i learned lul
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