What is a vowel?
Q: What is a vowel?
A: A vowel is a particular kind of speech sound made by changing the shape of the upper vocal tract, or the area in the mouth above the tongue.
Q: How many vowel letters are there in English?
A: There are five vowel letters in the English alphabet - A, E, I, O, U and sometimes W and Y.
Q: When does Y represent a consonant sound?
A: Y can be used as a consonant sound at the beginning of words such as when, where and wet.
Q: What is meant by "Y is sometimes a vowel"?
A: This means that Y can represent both vowel and consonant sounds depending on its usage within a word. For example, in words like cry, sky, fly, my and why letter Y represents the vowel sound /aɪ/. In words like myth and synchronize it represents /ɪ/, while in only quickly and folly it represents /i/.
Q: How often does W represent a consonant sound?
A: The letter W can be used as a consonant about 2.5% of the time.
Q: Does English spelling help us figure out what English sounds are?
A: No - there are many more vowel sounds than letters in the English alphabet so this makes it difficult to accurately determine which sounds each letter should make.
