Sometimes y and w

Hope you don't mind if I ask a question that has bothered me for some time. When did elementary schools stop teaching the vowels as "a,e,i,o,u and sometimes y and w." My children (16,15,and 7) have just learned "a,e,i,o,u and sometimes y."
I hadn't thought of it before but maybe not all elemetary schools in the 70's taught the W as mine did.

Wow! Is that a word made up of solely vowels?

Hello wyolib, and welcome to LibraryThing.
Couldn't help but notice that you joined just today (and haven't added any books to your catalog -- in time I suppose). And yet you found this group (of which I, also, am not a member).

I was born in the early 50's, attended a private school K-8, and started public high school in 1966. I don't recall "W" being mentioned as a vowel, EVER. It seems to be a terrible President as well.

Please stop by the Green Dragon sometime. We have cheese and ale, and good conversation.

No W for me as a kid--public schools, Midwest, late 60s-70s.

I've never heard of w as a vowel and I went to elementary school in the late 60's in a suburb of LA.

No W for me either, NYC late 50s/early 60s.

And thank goodness no W after January 20.

So the deterioration of American public schooling began, apparently, in the late 50's to early 60's. I started school, if I calculate correctly, in 1949 in Springfield, Massachusetts, and I remember first studying the alphabet in kindergarten. Along the way I learned that the vowels were a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y and w. I never understood the inclusion of w, but it was there for us.

It induced in me and many of my classmates lip rounding. We distinguish who from hoo. In linguistics, in graduate school, we learned about glides, and a w like thing can be a vocalic glide. Perhaps in grade school we were taught an underinformed mash up of orthography and linguistics.

Robert

But I was taught the alphabet by my father, who was born in 1909 and went to elementary school in NYC in the 1910s, so maybe this was something local to your area. By the way, I am not an expert on linguistics in any way; I just watch this group because I love language.

Distinguishing who from hoo is purely a dialectal issue that has nothing to do with the deterioration of American schooling. As for vowels, I would say that l, r, and d are frequently syllabic and hence in a sense vowels in English. I'm not sure what the point of trying to assign phonetic values to the English alphabet is--any solution is going to be a large step from reality--but I'll assume that the slightly arbitrary distinction of vowel and consonant properties is useful; it fails to follow, however, that the inclusion or exclusion of w is a matter of much significance.

The Wikipedia article on vowels gives gym as an example of y as a vowel and cwm as an example for w. If cwm is the best that they could come up with then I guess it's no wonder they dropped the w is sometimes a vowel thing.

ETA: How do you pronounce ku:m?

Maybe the existence in English of Welsh loan word cwm was what the instigator of the "w is sometimes a vowel" theory had in mind. It's a perfectly valid statement for Welsh, but not (as far as I can see) for English, except in this rather unusual instance.

cwm /ku:m/ rhymes with tomb /tu:m/, zoom /zu:m/.

Vindicated at last! I remember "sometimes ...w" but have found very, very few others that don't think I just wasn't paying attention in class...

I went to public school in NC in the '60s and we also had "sometimes y and w". I consulted my best friend, who I went through school with, and she remembers it as well.

Edited for a grammatical error that is a reflection on my haste and not my vowel confusion.

Wow, this is a first for me. I've never heard of "sometimes w." I attended primary school in upstate NY. This is a new turn for me. I think I'll check with my other half & find out what his experience was in Florida, Tennesseee & Arizona.

Public school in 50's and 60's and no W in set of vowels for me.
Try reading David Crystal's "The stories of English" for a vowel background. You'll come away wondering how anyone ever came to decide on just which letters should be vowels. LOL

Hum, as someone who went to NY public schools starting in 1989, I only learned that w could be a vowel when I studied Welsh in college. I suppose because in modern American English there are no words -- that I can think of -- that have w as the sole vowel, whereas there are words where that is the case for y.

I started kindergarten in '89, and I can remember sometime during early elementary hearing rumors, just whispers, of w being a vowel. Maybe one teacher threw it out there one time, just as an interesting fact. Anyway, no one ever taught words that might use w as a vowel, or required us to add w to the aeiouy list. But I definitely knew.

When my mom went to a Catholic school in the '60s, she was taught "sometimes y and w," but when she went to public school the next year she was corrected for considering "w" to be a vowel. (She attended Massachusetts schools, though, so I don't know if that changes the regional theory or not.)

Personally, I was never taught that, but I'm from ambushedbyasnail's generation.

Does 'sometimes y' mean that /y/ in /yes/ should be considered a consonant, while it's a vowel in /anything/? I had never thought about it. Be that as it may, in France, we include /y/ in the vowel list, without any restriction. And NEVER /w/.

A funny thing is that there is a swap of /w/ and /y/ beween the English /vowel/ and the French /voyelle/...

We were taught "sometimes y and w" in my school, Texas--mid to late 80s.

I learned "sometimes y and w" in Iowa in the 1950s and 60s. And since "w" is two "U"s, I have often wondered why we don't spell the word "vacuum" as "vacwm". Then it would be clear that "w" can be a vowel. But other than words from Welsh, I've never seen a "w" vowel. Unless, of course, it is a vowel in the word "vowel."

I occasionally heard "sometimes y & w" but the reasoning given to me was that w was a vowel in the mixed vowel sounds, such as "ou" & "ow" (& stuff like "oa" "ie" "ei" "au" "ay" "oy", etcetera)

I'm sure there are other combination vowel sounds that may use consonants... and I think there is one more consonant that is also considered a "sometimes" vowel.

My understanding was that "sometimes w" (which I've heard, but wasn't explicitly taught in school) was a reference to the use of "w" in various diphthongs ("ow", "aw", "ew").

"diphthong"!!!!

That's the word I couldn't remember!!

(my brain cells are leaking out much too fast)

This really brings me back. At my public elementary school in Southern California, this actually became a schoolyard argument. The "sometimes 'y' and 'w'" view was being taught by one (probably only one) of the teachers there, whose students vigorously defended it against those of us taught merely the "sometimes 'y'" version to whom the notion of 'w' as a vowel was patently ridiculous. Some details are fuzzy but I do remember clearly the word "cwm" eventually presented as the example; I don't think diphthongs were ever at issue. A close friend of mine with a fierce passion for language even then reported that he was able to dig up the word in an old dictionary, where the entry did indicate it to be of Welsh origin. Since this word, nor any other with 'w' as a vowel, was not to be found in any newer dictionary, his conclusion as I recall was that case for 'w' as a vowel in (our) English was very weak. This may seem implausibly sophisticated for a grammar schooler, but know that my friend, unsurprisingly, went on to become an academic linguist. It is to him I owe my fascination, avocational only, with language. It remained cause for comment throughout our school years whenever he was able to produce a word or phrase from some other language spelled without canonical vowels.

So the letter "w" in a word like 'crowd' functions like a vowel, just like adding a "t" to the word 'leap' changes the sound of the long "ea" to a short "e". So, is "t" somewhat like a vowel also?

re #24: you argued about diphthongs in elementary school?!?!?!?
We argued about whether The Hulk could beat up The Bionic Man, or which Angel was foxy-est...

I remember being taught that "y" was sometimes a vowel, when I went to school on Long Island in the 50s and 60s, but "w" was never identified as a vowel.

I found it interesting what the lexicographers, Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster, and the grammarian, Goold Brown, had to say about w being a vowel.

In Grammar of the English Tongue, which is prefixed to his Dictionary of the English Language, Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) wrote:
"Of w, which in diphthongs is often an undoubted vowel, some grammarians have doubted whether it ever be a consonant; and not rather as it is called a double u, or ou, as water may be resolved into ouater; but letters of the same sound are always reckoned consonants in other alphabets: and it may be observed, that w follows a vowel without any hiatus or difficulty of utterance, as frosty winter. Yet I am of opinion that both w and y are always vowels, because they cannot after a vowel be used with the sound which is supposed to make them consonants."
Note: The last sentence is omitted in the 1785 6th edition and later editions of the Dictionary.

In his 1828 edition of his American Dictionary of the English Language, Noah Webster (1758-1843) wrote:
"W is properly a vowel, a simple sound, formed by opening the mouth with a close circular configuration of the lips. it is precisely the ou of the French, and the u of the Spaniards, Italians and Germans. With the h vowels it forms diphthongs, which are of easy pronunciation; as in well, want, will, dwell; pronouced ooell, ooant, ooill, dooell. In English, it is always followed by another vowel, except when followed by h, as is when; but this case is an exception only in writing, and not in pronunciation, for h precedes w in utterance; when being pronounced hooen. In Welsh, w, which is sounded as in English is used without another vowel, as in fwl, a fool; dwn, dun; dwb, mortar; gwn, a gun, and a gown.

Ih his 1823 book, The First Lines of Grammar, Goold Brown (1791-1857) wrote:
"W or Y is called a consonant when it precedes a vowel heard in the same syllable, as in wine, twine, whine, ye, yet, youth; in all other cases, these letters are vowels, as in newly, dewy, eyebrow."

#27: I am SO cutting-and-pasting that. Saving as w.txt. Cherishing forever.

Thanks for bringing this up - my husband and I have tussled over this very question.

I was taught sometimes Y and W during the 60's-70's in WA state.

He was taught sometimes Y during the 60's-70's in CA.

#27 - Great! Let me add the opinion of the Demonic lexicographer himself, Ambrose Bierce:

W (double U) has, of all the letters in our alphabet, the only cumbrous name, the names of the others being monosyllabic. This advantage of the Roman alphabet over the Grecian is the more valued after audibly spelling out some simple Greek word, like επιξοριαμβικοσ. Still, it is now thought by the learned that other agencies than the difference of the two alphabets may have been concerned in the decline of "the glory that was Greece" and the rise of "the grandeur that was Rome." There can be no doubt, however, that by simplifying the name of W (calling it "wow," for example) our civilization could be, if not promoted, at least better endured.

But W in France is called "double V", so, for me, it's a double consonant... ;-)

On the lighter side -Re #26: As I said, diphthongs never came up. Truth be told - my friend the future linguist excepted - we likely did not know the word, although certainly we understood that the sound of a vowel could be altered by placing it in combination with another letter. At this distance, I cannot quote quotes or name names, but in the spirit of "truthiness" I offer the following reconstruction:

"What, 'w' is a vowel?! No way! That's dumb!"
"It's true!"
"Prove it! Name a word where 'w' is a vowel."
"I forget, but there are some. Mr. Brown said so and he knows everything!"
"Yeah? Well, Mrs. Smith never said anything about 'w' and she knows tons more than Mr. Brown!"
"She does not."
"Does too!...and the Fantastic Four could smash the X-Men any day of the week!"

Re #29: This was in CA; maybe our "Mr. Brown" was from WA - he certainly wasn't Welsh.

More seriously, with thanks to moibibliomaniac (#27): can anyone tell me the current opinion on status of ‘w’ as a vowel? Maybe the whole question is now considered passé or just a pedagogical matter. There are many aspects of context in the written word that may change the value of a vowel symbol and some might be quite complex. Does the fact that in some cases, this context boils down to a single phonetic symbol make that symbol a vowel – especially if it, as in the case of ‘w’ (unlike ‘y’) in American English anyway, it seems to possess no value as a vowel in isolation?

I remember hearing about dipthongs in the 7th grade. But I did not hear about w making the preceding letter into a dipthong (don - down).

What I remember was that the proper pronunciation of the word "I" was as the dipthong Ah-ee, and not as AH. I was in a school in north Florida at the type.

Well, _I_ learned y and w, but I was born in 1934. . .

As for W being a terrible president, I would have to agree loudly 8-)

w is certainly a vowel in Wales. Try to pronounce the name of a town so that a local will recognize it some time!

1970s public and private schools here. I was taught "y and w." Examples I remember from back then of "y" as vowel: thy, try, sly, wry, why, cry, fly, my. "W" as a vowel was always combined with another vowel, as in "now, new, law."

I never got an example for "w" being a stand-alone vowel until I started playing competitive Scrabble, when I learned of "cwm" and "crwth." Both of which are, of course, properly classed as Welsh words, not English.

I think it probably has to do with the English vowel shift, that the dipthongs wound up becoming long vowels, and the ws were less emphasized. The example I keep wanting to see here is "Snow". The W, acting as a vowel, lengthens the O. This is why it is not pronounced like the O in clog or fog. Of course, the O in "no" is caught in the vowel shift, itself, and you can see little stragglers in variants like "nah."

Well, educated in the 1970-80's down under...W as a vowel just didn't make it to the southern hemisphere!

How can "e" and "o" be diphthongs?

"e" and "o" are letters of the alphabet. In English they can sometimes be used to SPELL diphthongs, just as some 2-letter spellings can represent a monophthong, as in "hoot".

The reason the letter o can be a dipthong is in its pronunciation. For, instance when one pronounces the long o sound (the o in bone), ones mouth slightly begins to close. So the sound kind of begins like the ou of bought and kind of ends up like the oo of tool. This all happens in a mini-second. A dipthong is really two sounds glided together, and, as erilarlo said, they can be spelled as one letter or two.

The single letter "e" can even represent a triphthong, as in the word "yes" in certain regions of the southern US :-)

(IPA jei@s)

>37 karhne:
I can't think of a single English word which ends in a short "o", so I can't see how the "w" in snow is lengthening the vowel. If it was spelt "sno", surely it would still be pronounced the same way.
Monosyllabic words ending in "-o" have a long vowel, though it is not always the same one (diphthong in fro, go, no, so; but pure long vowel in do, to, who).

I learned "sometimes 'y' and sometimes 'w'" in rural central Ohio, early 1990s. Though, my parents never believed me, and they went through the same school system a couple decades earlier.

I think there is a w in snow for etymological detritus reasons. Proto-Germanic is *snaiwaz.

#45: gesundheit.

(could you translate what you just said, please?)

Things hang on from earlier versions of a language. Proto-Germanic is WAY further back than Old English--which is a Germanic language. German is full of such things--all those umlauts are the result of similar processes.

English spelling is obviously not all based on sounds. Unneeded letters are left in (hint, the detritus) to point to a word's heritage. English isn't like Finnish or Norwegian which have formal orthographical changes from time to time to keep up with sound changes in words.

Thank you both very much....

in other words, language evolves.... with things left over from former need.

And shards of English words have archeological value.

I went to school in the Bay area in the early 60's and I was taught "sometimes Y and W" and my mother was surprised to learn this as she was never taught this and had no idea that I was....I cant recall now what word or words satisfied the "w as vowel" exception but I know at that time we were taught some (or one)....

I'm a senior in high school right now, and I was taught "sometimes y and w" when I was in elementary in the late 90s- early 00s. My teacher never explained why, though, and even some of my friends who went to the same school don't remember learning that. Clearly, the teaching of the vowels is very inconsistent!

The w in words like when and what can be held just as long as an a, e, i or u. So can the y in you, for instance. They can also be expressed phonetically like vowels. It's one of our many spelling oddities.

Well, the letter m can be held for a long time, as in the archetypal mantra -- om (or aum).

Oh, m, n, ng, l, and many others can be held, too 8-) It's hardly the only test! But it is something true of vowels that could let y and w sneak into the edge of the group.

W?? As a vowel??
Say what?
I have never heard of this.
Weird.

Some of my friends from the South add "w" to the end of that rhyme about vowel letters. It makes sense when you think about the letter "w" being used to help spell the vowel sounds: /ow/ as in "cow" or /o-e/ as in "snow" because you can even hear/feel the /w/ on the release of those vowel sounds. But when it comes to the spelling of English words, the letter "w" can't really be put in the same category as the letter "y" which can stand alone to spell a vowel sound (as in my, gym, or funny).

I teach my students to look at the "w" as consonant letter that acts as part of a team to spell vowel sounds (just as "r" helps to spell the vowel sounds /or/, /ar/, and /er/) but also have them notice that in both cases the vowel letter always has to come first.

Well, there is cwm.

Not an English word! The letters "j" or "g" spell vowel sounds in other languages, but that doesn't mean that we call those vowel letters in English.

This may be of interest
from reference.dictionary.com :

semivowel   

–noun Phonetics. a speech sound of vowel quality used as a consonant, as (w) in wet or (y) in yet.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Origin:
1520–30; semi- + vowel; r. semivocal

Yes, you're right. Both /w/ and /y/ are part of the release of other vowel sounds (/w/ at the end of /oo/ and /y/ at the end of /ee/) but you can't say either sound for a long time (a key characteristic of a vowel sound along with vibration of the vocal cords). I'm talking about vowel letters, not vowel sounds. The letter "w" is called a consonant letter in English but it does help to spell various vowel sounds. It just doesn't spell any vowel sound in the English language by itself, while the letter "y" does.

@61
The point is w's status as a semivocal, not a pure consonant. As the German Wikipedia IPA table puts it, the English w amounts to a /u/-sound functioning as a consonant. "Wish" could be rendered as /u/-ish. Cooperate contains no consonants between the o's, yet the sound represented by one ('w') can clearly be heard when the word is pronounced, just as onion contains the sound usually represented by y. The distinction between vowel & consonant is not always clear cut.

It's impossible to make the sound represented in English by 'w' (as consonant) without making the /u/ or the /ʊ/ sound, just as it's impossible to make the sound represented by 'y' (as consonant) without making the /i/ sound. Even when y and w are used to represent consonants, their vocal nature is clearly present.

I agree with your statement that w "doesn't spell any vowel sound in the English language by itself," (with the exception of words borrowed from Welsh, etc) but at the same time I'd suggest that 'w' by itself doesn't spell any sound at all.

>62 Nichtglied:

"I'd suggest that 'w' by itself doesn't spell any sound at all."

Well, it has to spell some sound or we wouldn't be able to hear and differentiate that particular sound from other sounds--but we do! You can recognize the difference between "wed" and "ed," right? And we recognize the kids who have speech problems when they continue to say /wed/ for /red/ long after their peers.

But, I understand what you're saying about the sound /w/ being a semivowel. It is, after all, the tail end/release of /oo/ (which means it also plays a part in the sounds /ow/ and /o_e/) so I'm agreeing with you on that. I even have a vague memory of the letter "w" used originally to spell a vowel sound--maybe /oo/?

Do I think it is "impossible" to produce the sound /w/ without the /oo/ before /w/? No. I think the opposite is more true, that it's almost impossible to end a word with the three vowel sounds above without getting some /w/ at the end (e.g., pow, toe, boo). Just as it's to difficult to say "tree" without that release and the resulting /y/ at the end.

Looking back, maybe I'm misunderstanding when you're talking about a sound or a letter? I'm trying to make the distinction between sounds versus letters. For example, the sounds /er/, /or/, and /ar/ are considered true vowel sounds by many linguists. And I agree, as they fit the criteria of being both "loud" (vocal cords vibrating) and "long" (you can stretch each one of these sounds out for as long as you have breath). But the letter "r" is not considered a vowel letter.

Some people stretch out the beginning of the consonant sound /r/ (which should be a quick tongue curl and release, closer to /ruh/ without the /uh/) by adding /er/. Yes, you can get to /r/ that way and when you do it fast, people will recognize it as the consonant sound (e.g., errred). But when they do that, they are adding a separate and distinguishable vowel sound to the beginning of a consonant sound that doesn't need/have to be there. Just because they can do it, doesn't mean they should! :-) These are two separate sounds. The first is a vowel sound, the second a consonant sound.

What I meant about 'w' not spelling a sound by itself is this: I don't think there is an /oo/ "before" the w without which the w couldn't be pronounced. I'm saying the /oo/ is the 'w' sound and what we're hearing as w is actually the byproduct of moving from one vowel sound to another...

The difference between "ed" and "wed" is the the "u" sound at the beginning of "wed" (/u/-ed) vs. "ed" without the u-sound at the beginning. The w-sound is the direct byproduct of, in the case of "wed," the unrounding of the lips associated with moving from u to e. If you were to say, "Oooh, ED!" fast you'd have "wed." The reason 'w' doesn't spell a sound by itself is this: If you try to pronounce it in isolation, you're either just pronouncing /u/ or you're forced to add a second vowel sound to create the sound we think of as the consonant w. We can say "we, wa, wo," but how do we say "w?"

W is a symbol. It represents a vowel sound that serves in the role of a consonant. As a letter, it would be easy to do without in the English language. Its sound is present in many words where the letter itself fails. Langwage.

Edited to add: I once knew a German who, when saying the word "world" used the German 'w' sound: "Vorld." But after I asked him to say "oui" in French, then had him take the "ou" sound from "oui" and place it in front of "orld" he was able to pronounce "world" as it's said in English. I don't believe (though I could be wrong) that either o or u is considered a consonant in French, but the shift from the /u/ sound to the /i/ sound creates the sound of a w in-between.

Your points regarding R are good ones...R does often sound like it includes at least a schwa sound in front of it. The difference is that 'w' (like 'y') is naturally produced on the way from one vowel sound to another. R you have to go out of your way to say...

w can have a sound, usually as part of a diphthong, both initial and final. It IS possible to hold either sound longer than a stop, of course, but this is hardly the only "test" for a vowel, as m, n, ng, l, r can all be held as long as one pleases and use vibration of the vocal cords as well.

Note: "won" and "one" may have the same diphthong, but "what, why, when", etc., do not have homonyms without the w.

64> I don't think it's possible to pronounce the letter T without putting some vowel behind it, but it's still a consonant.

The difference is that the t-sound is an actual sound that's independent of any vowels that may come before or after it whereas the 'w' requires two vowel sounds to be heard...The 'u' as consonant and the sound following it. You can make a t-sound without a vowel sound following it unless you count the expulsion of air associated with its production as a "vowel sound" or you feel the need to use your vocal chords in the process, but since 't' is voiceless that shouldn't be necessary.

The only point I'm trying to make regarding 'w'--but using far too many words to do it--is that it definitely belongs with 'y' in the half-vowel category, even if saying "and sometimes w" may be taking it a little too far. Saying "it's a consonant" and leaving it at that doesn't tell the whole story.

If you add vocal cords to a voiceless stop like "t" it becomes "d".

And of course you're not pronouncing a letter. A letter is a written symbol for a sound, and which sound a letter represents varies with language spoken.

You're pronouncing a sound the letter represents, and as long as two speakers agree on the sound values represented by the letters, a discussion is possible. No one's claiming the letter itself makes a sound,

Of course the sounds of some of them vary within languages too. The 't' is a good example, since some people speaking English pronounce it as a glottal instead of as a dental stop.

You're right. It does become d if you voice it...No, wait. It becomes the sound a "d" represents.

I think the English language t is more alveolar than dental. Pronouncing the t as a glottal stop (usually in words like bottle) is mostly done in some British dialects. It's fairly rare in the U.S.

One neat trick that the English language does to help people differentiate similar one syllable words is to pronounce the vowel slightly longer if it is followed by a voiced consonant. So, the a in pad is held a millisecond longer than the a in pat. Both a's are pronounced with what is sometimes called a short a, (although some dialects have what is called a broader sounding a). Note, what is called a long a in English is really a long version of the short e followed by a short version of the long e. (I had to put this in to confuse everybody).

I am blown away by this conversation. I especially appreciate >27 moibibliomaniac: from moibibliomaniac. Many of the comments are beyond my ken, such as all that stuff about glottal stops etc., but I am so glad I joined this group. Thank you all.
P.s. I went to grammar school in the Bronx, NYC, back in the '40's, and I was taught "sometimes y" but I never heard of "sometimes w" till now.

I started school in 1979 and learned the "sometimes w and y" rule. However my wife, who is only 1 year younger than I am, did not. Our schools were in the same county and only about 45-60 miles away from one another.

Our kids did not learn this rule either.

A few years ago at the dinner table my preschool aged daughter was reciting her vowels and said "and sometimes y". I applauded her for having done such a good job, but asked if it wasn't "sometimes w and y" anymore only to receive bewildered looks from my wife, son and daughter.

Its certainly not taught in schools anymore and has apparently been in the process of being phased out for decades.

Only an extremely small amount of words use "w" as a vowel and most of those seem to be Welsh in origin.

While manning an information table at Arizona State University this weekend (my table devoted to genital integrity), I entered into a rather lively conversation with four young fellows, two of whom were dressed rather colourfully ... or, shall we say they were dressed with style, but darkly and drably? One of them, the tall one, wore a black cutaway with a top hat, while the other fellow wore a black T-shirt with black trousers.

Printed across the front of his black T-shirt was a white cross followed by an apparent acronym: "PWNED".

During a lull in our conversation a third fellow asked the signification of the letters "PWNED". It seemed a logical questions, but to our surprise,the fellow declined at first to answer, saying that we wouldn't want to know. Of course that only intrigued us the more. After a bit of hemming and hawing, he finally admitted that the letters had a religious meaning, but he refused to say more.

A bit exasperated by this, I insisted that if it was possible for me to openly advertise and discuss male genitals in a public setting, surely he could reveal the religious significance of a simple acronym.

At that challenge, he finally did give a rather esoteric, new-wave, crypto-religious import to the letters, which turn out to be not an acronym at all, but a word: "PWNED", pronounced poned, whose meaning only has import to a very, very select few. Don't ask, and I won't tell.

>73 Rood:
Sounds like you got pwned yourself.

;)

> 73 : Urban Dictionary - http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pwned

Just joined. Great discussion.
However, no one has mentioned my favourite example: w in pwka. (Also pooka and poocah.)
It means ghost, and was prominent in the famous stage play "Harvey" by Mary Chase. Movie starred James Stewart.
Another w use from my Web publication
www.korky.ca/nfirc.html follows:
The word "nude" has long been tainted by people who exploit it for money, especially in a sexist way. But I realized that we have a real crisis when my innocent nude e-mail got caught in a "spam" filtre! So I decided that we must take action!
Nudists of the world arise! Dodge those spam filtres (and butterfly nets)!
Use new spellings for nude in e-mail, such as "n*de", "nood", and one I just coined: "nwd". The "w" in "nwd" has the same sound as the "oo" in "mood". A "w" is also used like that in a few other words, such as pwka (meaning ghost).
But some British might want to match their pronunciation by spelling it "nywd".
— 2010 September 17~ and 20.

I learned "sometimes Y and W" in S. California ~1955.
Now I live in Canada.

I've always wondered if the Welsh use of "w" for "oo" ultimately comes from the Greek omega, which in minuscule (ω) sort of looks like w.

In Simon Callow's DVD "Dickens" (see at Amaxon.com The Mystery of Charles Dickens Starring Simon Callow (DVD - 2003) There is a court witness, whose name begins with a "W": the prosecuter asks him if he pronounces it with a "W" or with a "V". His reply "I would say its up to the speller; I have not had an ocasion to spell; If I did, I would spell it with a "Wee".

I would guess that this was an example of a German pronunciation (W pronunce as V) still practiced in early rural England.

I remember some comedian making a joke about the game-show Jeopardy: the answer was "nine double-you", what was the question?

{"Do you spell your name with a 'V', Mr. Wagner?"}

I would guess that this was an example of a German pronunciation (W pronunce as V) still practiced in early rural England.

What do you mean by 'still'? Surely Englishmen speaking German still pronounce "w" like "v"...and I can't imagine why they'd do it when speaking English...

I pronounce it "vagner" and I'm an American speaking a German surname. I do the same when speaking a Spanish name if I know that they normally pronounce it in the Spanish. I do it out of respect. I do it to the best of my limited linguistic abilities.

I had a terrible time trying to pronounce "Jerry"! but I was forgiven for trying.

For me, it is a matter of respect & courtesy for another person. That's all.

> 18 I usually pronounce "vowel" as if the /w/ were indeed a vowel -- to rhyme with "growl," more or less. So I can see it; or should I say, hear it.

I cannot recall at all what I learned about sometimes-vowels, and I am not going to lose any sleep over it. It was so very long ago, my elementary school days. I got very good grades, was an excellent speller, so I am sure to have learned something.

#79

In one English dialect (broad Norfolk) Vs were once pronounced as Ws. So vicar was pronounced wicker.

We subscribe to many Teaching Company lecture series. In the Seth Lerer (professor of linguistics at Stanford) lectures on the History of the English Language, he goes into great detail concerning the geographic spread of dialects in Britain; from the Catholic church Latin to the Viking (Norse speakers) raids and settlements to the Norman (French speakers) conquest, there were many influences on pronunciation as Britain evolved from a trilingual to a bilingual and finally to a "common jargon". The London dialect presently appears to be the elite (BBC) dialect. Professor Lerer also traces the geographic patterns of American English.

#84 The London dialect presently appears to be the elite (BBC) dialect.

That is a huge simplification.

You seem to be confusing dialect and accent slightly. Also which London accent? There are a number. The BBC tended to favour RP but have far more regional voices now. Finally I don't think that RP is particularly associated with London, although there is some associative connection.

> 83 So vicar was pronounced wicker.

Hmm... that makes him a wicker man? ;-)

As Daniel Jones described RP: "The pronunciation ... which I believe to be very usually heard in everyday speech in the families of Southern English people who have been educated at the public schools (note: 'Public schools' in the English sense, not in the American sense.')".

There is to RP thus a regional aspect, but also a class aspect.

About Londoners he says: "It is probably accurate to say that a majority of Londoners who have had a university education, use either this pronunciation or a pronunciation not differing greatly from it.

It sounds all pretty vague to me.

#87

You are right about the class aspect.

I don't think Jones is right when he says that a majority of Londoners who have had a university education use RP (or something akin to it) - well not if he is talking about 'right now'. Maybe in the recent past that was the case - but then the number of university graduates were a smaller percentage of the population and the cues such as accent were taken notice of more as class signifiers.

Also RP has changed quite a lot over the years - more so than some regional accents. You only have to listen to BBC Radio recordings from the past 70 years to see that.

>88 andyl: I forgot to mention that the quotation of Jones is from the introduction to the 13th edition of his Everyman's English Pronouncing Dictionary (1967). So he is indeed describing the situation of over 40 years ago.
Another quote: "When I was in America in 1925, several American teachers (mostly from New York and the North-Eastern part of the United States) informed me, somewhat to my surprise, that RP or RP with slight modifications would be a suitable standard for teaching in American schools. This view is probably no longer held. In any case, I cannot think that any attempt to introduce this pronunciation into America is likely to meet with success."

Interesting comments about RP and BBC announcers. There is, I think, a tendency for continuity announcers (and presenters in general) to adopt a RP drawl while often retaining vowel sounds characteristic of one or other region, so that even an untrained ear can hear someone from the Midlands, Tyneside or the West Indies. This tendency to assimilate the drawl is not really a problem, I suppose, for the general public.

What mildly irritates me though is the recent and increasing UK tendency to pronounce the word "to" with a schwa inflection, resulting in a "tuh" or "ter" sound rather than a more traditional "too" sound ("I'm going ter read a book" instead of "I'm going tuu read..."). This may be the influence of Estuary English or perhaps even a modification of North American "tah" ("Gotta go" = "got tah go"). At least, that's my theory.

I'd like to qualify what I wrote earlier: "tuh" seems mostly confined to use of the infinitive ("used tuh be", "want tuh go") but often becomes a "too" sound when implying direction ("going too the zoo"). But it doesn't seem consistent. I'll have to listen a lot more before being so pedantic in future!

#92

Well I don't mind the to turning into "tuh" - after all that is customary practice for some accents. But the vowel sound becoming long is something I haven't noticed but would probably annoy me.

>78 Nicole_VanK:

I always understood that Welsh and Ancient Greek were equivalent offshoots of Sanskrit, which adds an intriguing twist to the role of omega here.

Thank you >78 Nicole_VanK: BarkingMatt for posting the very question I just googled.
>94 CliffordDorset: CliffordDorset could you point to further layman's resources to track the welsh w / greek omega link back through to Sanskrit.

Neither Welsh nor Greek are "offshoots of Sanskrit", and I'm sure the use of w in Welsh has no relation to greek ω...

I suspect that Welsh "w" is just literally that, double-u, giving a long "u" sound (where English is inconsistent: cf 'do' and 'loo' or 'put' for the equivalent sound). Welsh "u" has been nabbed for (mostly) an "ee" sound -- typically as in Cymru, "Wales" -- and so wouldn't do. It's highly unlikely that the Greek alphabet (except for the Christian use of Alpha and Omega) affected written medieval Welsh, which like most European medieval languages survived using the Latin alphabet.

>97 ed.pendragon: ...where English is inconsistent
Inconsistency is the consistent quality of English spelling, I think.

Where I come from 'put' is pronounced with a short u sound.

99: I'm guessing this may be Cumbria or thereabouts. Sorry if I appeared to disregard exceptions (or the norm, depending on your point of view!), but a henkl says, inconsistency may be the rule here.

>95 Reformer:

If I could do that I'd probably be up there chatting to all the other Sanskrit speakers!

My apologies for confusing everyone with my hearsay-based comment. I'm happy to plead total ignorance.

According to Seth Lerer, in Teaching Company lecture series, the History of the English Language. The Germanic languages (e.g. English, German, Scandinavian, etc.) are off-shoots of Indo-European, whose root language is Sanskrit.

The root language of the Indo-European languages is proto-Indo-European. Sanskrit is one of the Indo-European languages; the languages of which it is the root are the modern Indian languages such as Hindi. See the chart, for example, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

Robert

Naren559: I think you must have misunderstood Lerer. The Germanic languages, including English and German, are one branch of Indo-European; the Indo-Iranian languages, including Sanskrit and modern languages such as Hindi and Farsi (the language of Iran), are another branch; and the various forms of Greek form yet another branch. Each of these branches is descended from Proto-Indo-European, as Mr.Durick said; none of them are "derived from" each other, but they are all related in that they have a common ancestor language. This ancestor language existed before writing, but linguists have been able to reconstruct what it must have been like from similarities in the various languages descended from it.

Sanskrit has more inflections than nearly all currently spoken Indo-European languages. It gives a nice window into the type of complexity that used to exist. We do not have proto-Celtic or proto-Germanic sources as old as early Sanskrit. It has a lot of written texts, not all from the same time period, so one can see the language changed over the centuries. The direct descendants of Sanskrit are mostly spoken in northern India, such as Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, et al (also Sinhalese spoken in Sri Lanka).

I'm so glad to find out I'm not imaging what teachers in Redmond, Oregon schools taught in the mid-1950s. I've never met someone who ever heard of "y" and "w" sometimes being vowels.

Thanks to all for the further thoughts on the omega thing and welsh/greek. Looks like a link is not easily demonstrated, despite the common ancestor.

This discussion has made me think about the dual nature of W, which is more apparent perhaps in other languages and writing systems. The Arabic letter و (waw), can serve as either a consonant (w) or a vowel (u:), depending on its place in a word. Other Semitic languages have similar letters. Just to complicate things, though, Hebrew has the letter vav, where the vowel sound is still u: but the consonant value is v, not w. Hebrew, like German, doesn't have the w consonant.

Linguists do define the sound of initial W as a consonant, viz. the voiced labiovelar approximant.

This thread also reminds me of how a North American Indian tribe came to be called "Osage" in English.

When French explorers first encountered this native people, they probably heard them call themselves "wažaže." They wrote it down in French as "Ouasage." (English speakers would probably have rendered it "Wasosh" or "Washoshee.")

Later, English speakers took over the French spelling (Ouasage), simplified it to Osage, and sounded it out englishly. So now the tribe's name in English is pronounced as if one were beginning a speech to a small evergreen perennial: "Oh! sage."

(The name has deteriorated further since then: I've heard a Kentucky gardener call the Osage orange (Maclura pomifera) an "old sage orange.")

Is this why 'Moskva' gets converted to 'Moscow'? Whether 'Moss - Coe', of 'Moss - Cow'.

I've always found it strange that double-u is written vv; in French it is called double-v, and sometimes pronounced as a v (wagon, wisigoth), sometimes ou (wallon, watt).

Two u's to indicate lip rounding have been in English orthography for a very long time, perhaps, although I couldn't confirm it with a superficial search online, since u and v were treated the same. Two English v's together would be a double u.

I was taught in an early French class that w was not native to the French alphabet but was used for foreign words. Words from English had w as lip rounding; words from German had w as an English v sound.

Robert

>111 overthemoon:
In some French missionary documents that record Algonquian words, the "w" sound is represented by a character that looks like the number 8. It represented "ou," a French approximation of the sound, with the "o" atop the "u" for brevity. The result looks like an 8 — which was convenient for printers when the manuscripts made it into print. Possibly it was preferred to "w" precisely because "w" can be pronounced either of two ways in French, the English way or the German way.

Just a thought: It may have mattered that the English in New England, just south of New France, were such implacable enemies that even their "w" may have been unwelcome to some loyal Frenchmen.

113> ȣ is in Unicode (which inexplicably calls it "LATIN SMALL LETTER OU", even though it's a Greek ligature...)

#114: Inexplicable in what sense? It is a letter of the extended Latin alphabet--it hangs out with a, b, c, etc., not α, β, γ, κτλ.

in the sense that it's actually a Greek ligature (it's really ου, not ou...and not a letter in either case), and "hangs out with α, β, γ, κτλ, not a, b, c, etc." :)

It's not a Greek ligature. The Greek ligature is unencoded; or rather encoded as ου or ου with the Zero Width Joiner control character in between. It's the letter used in some of the Algonquian languages derived from this Greek ligature. To quote Dictionnaire François—Onontagué:

Je t'aime, gonnonȣes. Tu m'aime, chkenonȣes.

Je l'aime, henonȣes. Tu l'aime, hêchènonȣes.

Il t'aime, heanonȣes. Il m'aime, hagnonȣes.

Il l'aime, hônonȣes.

Nous vous aimons, dedȣatatenonȣes.

Vous nous aimez, desȣatatenonȣes.

Ils s'aiment, dehontatenonȣes.

(I have converted the transcribed 8's to ȣ's; the original book clearly had the ligature, not the number.) That is the Latin letter, and definitely not the letter used in Greek. http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/unicode/other_ligatures.html#ou has some more information on the OU ligature and Unicode, including far more information about encoding Greek in Unicode than most people would ever want.

117, just to be pedantic, it should me Tu m'aimes, Tu l'aimes.

#118: In seventeenth century Canadian French? I don't know, I was just quoting.

If I may add another data point, schools in Seattle in the early 1950's (or, at least, Briarcliff Elementary School on the top of Magnolia Bluff) taught "or sometimes y or w". No one ever explained "w" to us, but I'm confident that Miss Tonka would have known if I had thought to ask her.

Wow - I'm really late to this post but I also remember sometimes y and w. I was in elementary school in the late 60's. I seem to recall that it was part of a song that we would sing??

I also recall that my mother had a set of records to teach phonetics that in my memory seem to be similar to "Hooked on Phonics". There were 4 advancing records and books to go along with them. I recall the first record having a way to remember the vowels as "Lady, I owe you some sugar" The a-e-i-o-u being the sounds from "Lady, I owe you." Not sure why that has stuck with me for 45 years...Does any one else remember this set of records?

Okay, I didn't take time to read all 120+ comments, but I attended elementary school in the Chicago area in the early 1950s. We did not learn the "sometimes y and w" rule, but I heard it from my father. I've always assumed it was passed down in his family due to Welsh ancestry, as in that language the letter w is literally pronounced as a "double u" sound, as in the Welsh word "cwm" cited above. The letter y is also used as a vowel in Welsh.

>20 EowynA:, In this most interesting subject that I just stumbled across, this post is the most delightful thing I have read in a very long time. From now on, I shall only use the vacwm cleaner.

As far as I understand Welsh spelling, in Welsh it would actually be vacuwm.

I grew up in Utah in the early 70's my 2nd grade teacher taught me "sometimes y and w" also. My other family members make fun at me when I say w acts as a vowel often. I found the perfect retort. I ask if the u in foul is a vowel, and it is always a yes. Then I ask if the w in the homophone fowl is a vowel. I think that the w in vowel is a may be a vowel.

I attended public school in the 1970's in Connecticut and learned the sometimes y and w. I have had people tell me that I was wrong about w because they never heard the inclusion of w in that saying. I am glad to have my memory validated by the folks here who also learned it that way!

I attended public school in the 70's and learned the saying as "...sometimes Y and W." But, they never did give an example of a word that used "W" as a vowel.

The only time I've seen w as a vowel of its own (outside of dpithongs like cowl) is with Welsh words that might have use in English. I am thinking of a hymn tune 'cwm rhondda'. The usual church worrds in English are: Guide me, O thou great Jehovah through this barren land. Sometimes, God of Grace and God of Glory... There are also Welsh football/rugby lyrics for this tune.

If u is a vowel as part of the dipthong in 'thou'
then w is a vowel as part of the dipthong in 'cow'.

I was born in the Bronx in 1952, but Started Kindergarten in Brentwood long Island and graduated from Brentwood High in 1970. I was taught "Sometimes Y and Sometimes W". So some NY people did learn that too.

I have an aunt who graduated from high school in 1953. She was taught that w can be a vowel but I had learned in first grade (1961) that the vowels are a,e,i,o,u, and sometimes y. I found out later, however, that she was right--w u=is considered a vowel in words like cow and new.

>6 Mr.Durick:
Although we were only taught "and y" in my New Jersey grade school, I distinctly remember being taught to say "hwhat", hwhen". and "hwhere" in second grade. Never to be discussed in further classes. Did any of you have that extra "h" sound taught?

>132 Diane-bpcb: I was taught that in 3rd grade. By the teacher who also taught us that the 'n' in 'kiln' is silent.

>133 bluepiano:
Really? you don't mean the b in comb?

>132 Diane-bpcb: Because nobody's said it yet: Hwæt

(Our wh- words were actually spelled hw- in Old English, with the "h" being a remnant of what was originally a "k" sound in Indo-European. But more to the point, Wikipedia has an interesting discussion of the pronounciation of wh in various English dialects.)

>133 bluepiano: blue piano

The "n" in "kiln" is silent? And here I've been pronouncing it wrong all these years!

>135 spiphany: spiphany

Will have to look that up.

>136 Diane-bpcb: No, it's usually pronounced. Looked this up at some point and though there's a 'kill' pronunciation it's a rare one--seem to remember its being confined to a few widely scattered regions.

English seems to have a number of these odd variables in pronunciation. I have occasionally encountered old-fashioned English people who pronounce "golf" with a silent -l- (as in "calf": rhymes with "oaf").

>138 MyopicBookworm:

Not old fashioned - just upper class (at least in England) in much the same manner as Ralph Fiennes is pronounced "Rafe". Gowf is actually much closer to the Scottish word which evolved into golf and there is a Golf Club called Loudon Gowf Club - so I wouldn't be surprised to hear Scots speakers still use a pronunciation closer to it.

14 Just tuned in and am enjoying the give and take over "w". No sometimes in Westchester County in the '50s. Enjoy reading David Crystal for fun. Something wrong with me?

I learned the Y/W rule as well and remember the song (from the 60s) Never got the W part till I visited Wales twenty years later....ah, thats it then.

>141 cindydavid4:

No need to go to Wales. If 'u' is a vowel in "faun", surely 'w' is in "fawn".

cwm (koom) n. cirque (def. 1 ... "circle or ring" 1850-55;

Combe: (koom), n. Brit. a narrow valley or deep hollow, esp. one enclosed on all but one side. Also, comb, coomb, coombe (OE cumb valley

When I started 1st Grade in Fairfax County (Virginia) in 1965, we were using a "speller" that instructed the vowels as "A, E. I, O, U, and sometimes Y and W". I remember this explicitly. In fact, it's why I ended up at this page, by conducting an internet search for the term "sometimes Y and W."

So, yes, this vowel scheme WAS taught in some public schools at one time.

But, I also remember that our teacher, Mrs. Foster, could not think of any use of "W" as a vowel. And, I remember my parents, when I came home from that first day of school and recited that rhyme, were surprised and baffled by it, as well.

The ONLY example I can think of, in which "W" is used as a vowel, is the word "TWO" (as in the numeral 2). Here, that letter clearly isn't acting as a consonant. My guess is that this might be a holdover from Middle English or from Welsh. Nevertheless, it does seem to work.

>145 ScottByrd:

I'd say the 'w' in "two" is simply silent. Historically it was lost in Middle English but as so often the spelling didn't follow suit.

As has been pointed out by myself and others above, 'u' and 'w' are used interchangeably in combinations like au/aw and ou/ow, so unless you think 'u' is a consonant in a word like "faun", 'w' is used as a vowel in one like "fawn".

Can anyone give me an example of w used as a consonant? Where it can't be considered part of a dipthong?

>147 MarthaJeanne:

I guess you could construe a word like "win" as containing a rising diphthong, but that would be a non-standard analysis. English clearly treats it as a consonant morphophonologically - it's a win, not **an win as you'd expect if there was an initial vowel.

>147 MarthaJeanne:

Cwm

>150 andyl:

Cwm is a loan word from Welsh, related to the older borrowing combe.

I don't think it is any more relevant than the y in pyjama (Commonwealth spelling; pajama in US English), borrowed from Persian.

>150 andyl:, >151 Cynfelyn:

MarthaJeanne asked for a word where 'w' is used as a consonant, which it patently isn't in "cwm", whether a Welsh loan counts or not.

>151 Cynfelyn:

Well originally from Welsh but I think it counts as an assimilated word. Same as ersatz, lingerie, macho etc. I would equally claim pyjama as an English word now. I would not italicise any of them in a sentence.

>152 AndreasJ:

Yep. Oops - I can only blame the temperature. What about walk, week, wake - the W functions as a consonant in all of those.

WOW?

>147 MarthaJeanne:

Wise? vs Size, where I believe 's' is clearly consonantal.

Anyone interested in posting to topics in this group so that it won't become archived after a year of no action? Once it's archived you can look up old posts, but no more posting. The group becomes 'frozen'. Of course you can always start a new group on the same subject but then you lose all the past conversations and have to scramble up members from scratch.

I recall "a,e,i,o,u and sometimes y" during the third grade (1978-1979 school year). Don't recall the w. I went to a elementary in Mississippi.

>140 misskate: MissKate - You mentioned David Crystal. A few years ago I attended a fairly casual presentation by him about Shakespeare's English. At the end, we asked him to speak to us with a Shakespearean accent, and he briefly started Henry V--We could only just identify the famous speech. What a delight.

>10 MyopicBookworm: In Welsh, cwm has a short vowel.

>159 llyfrbryf: I am grateful for the information: but it is still a vowel!

I came to this page after a Google search. This phrase "a e i o u, sometime y and w" pops into my head from time to time but I don't consider "w" a vowel in general. I was raised in and around Forrest City, AR. I was born in 1988 and went to elementary school from 1993 to 1998. I KNOW THIS SAYING. It had to come from Caldwell Elementary School which I attended from Kindergarten to 4th grade (which was in Caldwell, Arkansas). The school is now defunct. A church bought it and remodeled it for their purposes. I'm so happy to know I didn't imagine this phrase!

In thou the u is a vowel as part of the ou dipthong, right?

So, in cow-- which exactly rhymes with thou except for the initial consonant-- the w stands in for the u. Most instances where w is a vowel it functions as a u. It is in fact a "double u".

>162 Crypto-Willobie:

As in OE cú, ME cou, among other spellings.

>163 librorumamans:

mú!