Vowels are sounds without closure of the throat or mouth, while consonants have one or more points of air stoppage. Most languages require at least one vowel per word. Vowels may not be crucial to a word’s meaning in some languages, but rather give specific inflection. Some letters can represent both consonant and vowel sounds, such as y and w in English. The letters a, e, i, o, and u always represent vowels in English, but can have multiple sounds depending on the word.
A vowel is a type of sound for which there is no closing of the throat or mouth at any point where vocalization occurs. This can be contrasted with consonants, which are sounds for which there are one or more points where the air stops. In almost all languages, words must contain at least one vowel. While, in English, a word can be formed without consonants – such as the words I or a – no word can consist of only consonants.
In many languages, vowels are not crucial to the overall meaning of the word. Rather, one in these languages – many of which are Semitic languages – acts more to give specific inflection than to differentiate the word from other distinct words. A parallel to this in English can be seen in the example of dive and dove or lay and lie, where the central word is the same, but the modified vowel denotes tense. Languages that have this kind of structure often don’t even mark all of these sounds in written text. Both Arabic and Hebrew are good examples of this, where many vowel markings are not needed in writing.
Because a vowel refers to a specific type of sound, some letters may orthographically represent a consonant in some circumstances and a vowel in others. In English, this can be seen with the letters yew, which are more often used to produce consonant sounds but do not require the closing of the throat which is common to consonants. In the case of y, for example, people can compare its use in the words over there and day. In the word over there, it acts distinctly like a consonant, with the center of the tongue blocking the airflow to one side by touching the palette of the mouth in what is called a palatal approximant. In the word day, on the other hand, it is forming a sound similar to if the word were written in English as gods.
In the case of w, the words woo and like can be examined. In the word woo, the letter acts as a consonant, with the back of the tongue blocking the airflow to one side touching the palette of the mouth – what is called the labiovelar approximant. In the word how, it serves as a vowel, which could be represented in English writing as hao.
In English, there are five letters that always represent a vowel when written: a, e, i, o, and u. These five letters represent more than five sounds, however, depending on the word, or if they are combined with other letters. Readers may compare the letter a in the words hat and hate as one of many examples.
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