Macmillan Holdings, LLC. Grammar Girl, Grammar Girl's, QDnow, and Quick and Dirty Tips are all trademarks of Macmillan Holdings, LLC. "Cwm" and diphthongs. J Parcher grammar W as a vowel: I am 76 and, in elementary school, was taught: The vowels are A E I O U and sometimes W and Y. Examples given; in YELLOW, Y is a consonant and W is a vowel. In WILLOWY, the first W is a consonant and the second is a vowel, as is the Y. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx?commentid=18928#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx?commentid=18928#Comments Sun, 06 Sep 2009 04:53:38 GMT David R Smith grammar There is in this thread an item contrasting German with Latin. This is a falacy. Old German was a dialect of Vulgar Latin. It still has most of the declined forms, and German grammar is still very close to what Latin was. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx?commentid=18418#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx?commentid=18418#Comments Fri, 14 Aug 2009 12:03:35 GMT Ghoul grammar As far as "pwn" or "pwned" as an example of a "w" as a vowel, it is a poor one at best. The word is a wordplay on "owned" and is substituting the vowel for parody sake, not generating a vowel sound by itself. Also, "pwned" is sometimes debated as being a shorted "pawned" as in the chess piece, with a different vowel sound. Also, can "cwm" be truly called English? It's a borrowed word that wasn't converted unlike so many other Celtic words. Are there other "w" vowel Celtic words that were converted to standard English vowels? That would dissuade me from accepting its inclusion in English dictionaries without conversion. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx?commentid=18195#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx?commentid=18195#Comments Sun, 02 Aug 2009 23:06:34 GMT Neal Whitman grammar To consolidate and add to what Marsh and Steve said, NONE of the vowels in "again," "good," or "author" is a diphthong. The "ai" in again, "oo," and the "au" in "author" are DIGRAPHS -- single vowel sounds that happen to be written with two letters in English. The most easily recognized diphthongs in English are those that (like digraphs) are written with two letters. There is the diphthong in "boil" (an "aw" sound followed by a vowel close to a short I) and "cow" (a short A followed by a long U). In addition, what is commonly called long I is actually a diphthong: a short A sound (or perhaps a short O or schwa sound in some dialects) followed by a vowel somewhat like a short I. (Southerners often turn this diphthong into a single sound by leaving off the short I sound at the end: "Ah don't lack it" [for "I don't like it"].) Long I is often not recognized as a diphthong because its name implies a single sound, and it's not written with two letters like "oi" and "ow/ou/au." Even harder for English speakers to perceive as diphthongs are the long O sound (which actually has a long U sound at the end) and the long A sound (which actually has the quasi-short-I at the end). Failure to undiphthongize (monophthongize) these sounds is one of the obstacles to English speakers learning to speak (for example) Spanish with a native accent. "Te amo" becomes "Tay amow". Finally, as to whether "w" is a vowel, the parallel between "w" and "y" is real, but not as presented here. When the sound used as the consonant "y" turns up as a vowel, it's known as long E. Thus, the vowel in "keep" is really the vowel correspondent of consonant "y". The vowel you get when the letter "y" is written down to represent a vowel sound might also be long E (as in "happY"), but very often it's short I (as in "gypsum"). As for when the "w" sound is used as a vowel, we call it long U. Thus, the vowel in "true" or "spook" can be thought of as a "w" in its vowel incarnation. But unlike "y", "w" is never WRITTEN to represent a vowel sound in English, except for in the weird loan word "cwm", or as the long U part of the diphthong "ow." I'm a fan of the podcast, but I'm afraid this episode has confused a lot more people than it helped. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx?commentid=16264#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx?commentid=16264#Comments Fri, 27 Mar 2009 03:18:47 GMT annette grammar Where I come from (Southern California), the "w" is NOT silent in "wren," "wring," "wreck," "wrangle," "wreath." There is a slight difference between the way "wring" and "ring" are pronounced. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx?commentid=16171#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx?commentid=16171#Comments Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:00:51 GMT goofy grammar Chris, you're right that English is a Germanic language. But I think that when GG said "Latin-based languages like English", she was talking about the writing system. The English alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx?commentid=16109#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx?commentid=16109#Comments Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:35:22 GMT red grammar I can't believe you overlooked the most used w-vowel word in pop culture: pwn. As in, "You got pwned!" or "Total pwnage". http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx?commentid=16068#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx?commentid=16068#Comments Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:57:41 GMT Chris grammar First I have to say that I love your podcast. Grammar is one of the more under appreciated constructs of communication, especially today. I also have to mention that I was surprised to hear you say, "...Latin-based languages like English..." in this podcast. While taking Latin in high school, we were taught that English isn't Latin based. It's German based. While there are a number of Latin derived words, English as a whole is a west Germanic language. I looked for conformation online and found several references to this. I am certainly no English (or Latin) expert, so if this is incorrect, I would certainly like to be corrected. Once again, love the show. Chris http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx?commentid=16049#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx?commentid=16049#Comments Tue, 10 Mar 2009 02:22:07 GMT Nick Rees grammar I was stunned and intrigued by your mispronunciation of the French poet Rimbaud's name. Your first name suggests some French heritage (hence the intrigue). Does anyone ever mispronounce your first name? I would guess, not too often, given how pervasive French culinary terms are in English. But it also raises another point. When we refer to people with foreign names we attempt to pronounce their last name correctly but often we anglicize the first name e.g. Arthur Rimbaud, Albert Einstein, Frederick Chopin, Richard Wagner (although Richard Stauss is often pronounced more like the German form). So in this case nobody would object to the way you pronounced "Arthur". Interesting, n'est-ce pas? http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx?commentid=16025#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx?commentid=16025#Comments Sat, 07 Mar 2009 21:33:09 GMT Mimi grammar I think I can help clear some of the confusion regarding this podcast. The confusion stems from using the term vowel on its own. There are vowel sounds and vowel letters. This distinction is generally not taught explicity in American schools. For example, AEIOU and sometimes Y are vowel letters. When we say "long a" sound, we are talking "a" as a vowel sound. Or when Mignon stated that vowel (sounds) are made without stopping the breath. Vowel letters are printed, vowel sounds are pronounced. These are two different things. So the consonant letter W is often used in vowel sound spellings, like the "ow" in how. There are many consonant letters used in vowel spelling and vice versa. I have written a book on this "The Phonogram Tile System." You can read most of it on the See Inside feature if you want more of an explanation. http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx?commentid=15995#Comments http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx?commentid=15995#Comments Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:55:49 GMT Sun, 06 Sep 2009 04:53:38 GMT http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/when-is-w-a-vowel.aspx feedback@quickanddirtytips.com (Managing Editor) feedback@quickanddirtytips.com (Webmaster) en-us