§ 4

The classification of speech sounds The English Vowels

The name "vowel" is often used for the symbols that represent vowel sounds in a language's writing system, particularly if the language uses an alphabet. In writing systems based on the Latin alphabet, the letters A, E, I, O, U, W and Y are all used to represent vowels, although not all of these letters represent vowels in all languages (some of them, especially W and Y, are also used to represent approximants); in addition, extensions of the Latin alphabet have independent vowel letters such as Ä, Ö, Ü, Å, Æ, and Ø.

The phonetic values vary by language, and some languages use I and Y for the consonant [j], e.g. initial I in Romanian and initial Y in English. In the original Latin alphabet, there was no written distinction between V and U, and the letter represented the approximant [w] and the vowels [u] and [ʊ]. In Modern Welsh, the letter W represents these same sounds. Similarly, in Creek, the letter V stands for [ə]. There is not necessarily a direct one-to-one correspondence between the vowel sounds of a language and the vowel letters. Many languages that use a form of the Latin alphabet have more vowel sounds than can be represented by the standard set of five vowel letters. In English spelling, the five letters A E I O and U can represent a variety of vowel sounds, while the letter Y frequently represents vowels (as in e.g. "gym" or "happy"); to an extremely limited extent, W can also represent a vowel (e.g. the borrowed word "cwm").

Other languages cope with the limitation in the number of Latin vowel letters in similar ways. Many languages, like English, make extensive use of combinations of vowel letters to represent various sounds. Other languages use vowel letters with modifications, e.g. Ä in Finnish, or add diacritical marks, like umlauts, to vowels to represent the variety of possible vowel sounds. Some languages have also constructed additional vowel letters by modifying the standard Latin vowels in other ways, such as æ or ø that are found in some of the Scandinavian languages. The International Phonetic Alphabet has a set of 28 symbols to represent the range of basic vowel qualities, and a further set of diacritics to denote variations from the basic vowel.

Use of vowels in languages

The importance of vowels in distinguishing one word from another varies from language to language. Although it is possible to construct simple English sentences that can be understood without written vowels (cn y rd ths). In most languages, vowels serve mainly to distinguish separate lexemes, rather than different inflectional forms of the same lexeme. For example, while English man becomes men in the plural, moon is not a different form of the same word. Vowels are especially important to the structures of words in languages that have very few consonants, and in languages whose inventories of vowels are larger than their inventories of consonants.

Classification of Vowels

It is necessary to remember that articulation of vowels is determined by the position of several organs of speech, which form the resonance chamber and influences the quality of a sound. Vowels are classified according to the position of the tongue, the lips, the degree of tenseness, the character of the end of a vowel, length and stability of articulation.

It is necessary to compare vowels of the native language with English to avoid interference of the native language. The main distinctions concern mixed vowels in English, more front articulation of front vowels [i:], [ı], [e] in comparison with Ukrainian vowels [i:], [u], [e], tense and long articulation of English vowels unlike labialized Ukrainian ones.