The tongue can be at various heights in the mouth (such as high, mid, or low) and at various positions (front, central, or back). Bat is and bait is, for instance.Īccording to phoneticians, a vowel is a speech sound that is made without significant constriction of the flow of air from the lungs. To get around the limitations of written systems, linguists use what is known as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), a set of symbols used to represent the sounds in all the world’s languages regardless of how they are written. Their spellings are similar, but their vowel sounds are quite different. What is the difference between a vowel and a consonant?Ĭonsider the words beet and beat, which feature different spellings for the same sound ( homophones). In this article, we’ll explore the difference between consonants and vowels and explain why certain letters are considered vowels-and why some can fall into either category depending on which sound they make. Vowels and consonants are two different categories of sounds that linguists (in the branch of linguistics called phonetics) use to explain how speech sounds work. You might be able to recite the letters considered vowels in the English language: A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y.
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