Why do we call a.e.i.o.u as vowel?

A child asked me the following questions:

1. Why do we call a.e.i.o.u as vowels?
2. Why do we call the others as consonants?

Could anybody help, please?

Thanks.

Why do we call the brown things with leaves on them "trees"?

Because that is the name we use in English.

Now, if you want to know what the difference is between vowels and consonants, then consider that you must move your lips or tongue to form consonants, but not vowels.

SoothingDave said:

Now, if you want to know what the difference is between vowels and consonants, then consider that you must move your lips or tongue to form consonants, but not vowels.

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I don't agree. Both lips and tongue are important in the formation of vowels. The key difference between vowels and most consonants is that the passage of air from the lungs is not restricted in any way in the production of vowels.

Incidentally, the word ‘vowel’ comes from the same root as ‘vocal’ – vowel sounds are made only with the voice. ‘Consonant’ comes from words meaning ‘with-sounding’. Most consonants (voiceless fricatives are an exception) cannot be pronounced without an accompanying vowel sound.

5jj said:

I don't agree. Both lips and tongue are important in the formation of vowels. The key difference between vowels and most consonants is that the passage of air from the lungs is not restricted in any way in the production of vowels.

Incidentally, the word ‘vowel’ comes from the same root as ‘vocal’ – vowel sounds are made only with the voice. ‘Consonant’ comes from words meaning ‘with-sounding’. Most consonants (voiceless fricatives are an exception) cannot be pronounced without an accompanying vowel sound.

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Thanks,5jj.

The child told me that he noticed every word must have a vowel in it. Is he right?

Winwin2011 said:

[STRIKE]The [/STRIKE] A child told me that he noticed every word must have a vowel in it. Is he right?

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Very nearly. Personally, I'd accept hmm, hmph, sh, psst, and the sounds often represented by the spellings tsk and tut as words. Non of these has a vowel sound.

To produce vowels the tongue doesn't have to touch anything inside the mouth . I have a book that considers r sound a vowel or semivowel because to produce r the tongue doesn't touch the roof or anything else.

Not a teacher

Winwin2011 said:

1. Why do we call a.e.i.o.u as vowels?
2. Why do we call the others as consonants?

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These are not vowel sounds. They are vowel letters. Traditionally, there are five vowel letters in English and twenty-one consonant letters. The vowel letters are

A E I O U

and the consonant letters are

B C D F G H J K L M N P Q R S T V W X Y Z

As you can see Y is among consonant letters, even though it represents a vowel sound in the word "happy". The trouble with letters and sounds is they are not in a bijective correspondence. One letter can represent many sounds and one sound can be represented by many letters. But as a rule of thumb, vowel letters are used to represent vowel sounds and consonant letters represent consonant sounds. There are very many vowel sounds in English, much more than just five. You can find something about English vowels here. As you can see, they are definitely not A, E, I, O and U. There is an important difference between sounds and letters.

For words without vowel letters, there is "Mrs." for example. But it does have vowel sounds, two in fact.

There are words without vowel sounds in my native language, that is "w" and "z", which mean in and from respectively. In most cases, it wouldn't be possible to notice that they are separate words in normal speech. When I say "w kraju" (in the country), I pronounce it ['fkraju], as if the two words were one word. The same goes for "z kraju" (from the country), which is ['skraju].

birdeen's call said:

bijective correspondence.

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Another new expression for my collection. Thank you.

5jj said:

Another new expression for my collection. Thank you.

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You're welcome. I though I'd throw it in because I was too lazy to think of another way of saying it shortly. I still don't know if there is one.

"One-to-one correspondence" would probably be how I'd say it.

Winwin2011 said:

Thanks,5jj.

The child told me that he noticed every word must have a vowel in it. Is he right?

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The most oft-quoted word in English with no vowel is "rhythm" but as you'll have seen, the "y" acts as a vowel as far as pronunciation is concerned.

SoothingDave said:

"One-to-one correspondence" would probably be how I'd say it.

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I prefer to avoid this term because "one-to-one" can also mean injective. Wikipadia says that the difference is that a one-to-one function is an injection and a one-to-one correspondence is a bijection. But I have never seen any book making such a distinction, and it doesn't really seem a good idea to me.

PS: It doesn't seem a good idea to me because it's ambiguous when someone says "f is one-to-one" without saying whether they mean "function" or "correspondence".