Coming up next on Kindergarten... triangles.

STOP IT MY WORLD IS FALLING APART.

SlashXLA wrote:

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Y is always a vowel, and so is W, linguistically speaking. Your kindergarten teachers just spread lies.

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vowels and consonants are sounds, not letters.  letters are more of suggestions for sounds that should be made when spoken. 

for instance, "yet" and "wet" feature semivowels y and w; whereas the w in "cwm" is a vowel, as it makes a vowel sound

-- Edited by MATHSEX at 00:57, 2009-02-16

Careful Ozpunker, you don't want to spell punk rockers name's wrong, MATHSEX will start crying.

-- Edited by Pizza at 06:52, 2009-02-16

Pizza wrote:

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Careful Ozpunker, you don't want to spell punk rockers name's wrong, MATHSEX will start crying.

-- Edited by Pizza at 06:52, 2009-02-16

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 i only care about good musicians

MATHSEX wrote:

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vowels and consonants are sounds, not letters.  letters are more of suggestions for sounds that should be made when spoken. 

for instance, "yet" and "wet" feature semivowels y and w; whereas the w in "cwm" is a vowel, as it makes a vowel sound

-- Edited by MATHSEX at 00:57, 2009-02-16

 

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Right.  The letters that represent semi-vowels, usually called a "glide" in English, is a left-over from various runic alphabets.   In Latin, and in some dialects of English, W and Y were never used because people recognized that those sounds are created through a diphthong.   Those letters represent vowel sounds; they cannot make a consonant sound.