Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was: I...
| From: | Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, February 7, 2005, 5:52 |
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On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 20:47:37 -0800, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:
> That was an historic event.
>
> Aha! 'H' is a vowel! I always wondered about that.
> ;-)
No. 'H' is a letter; it's neither a consonant or a vowel.
Saying that "the vowels are 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u' [and sometimes
'y']", referring to letters as vowels or consonants is a
simplification that may be appropriate in grade school, but vowels and
consonants refer to *sounds*, not *letters*.
Often, vowels are represented by "grade school vowels" and consonants
by "grade school consonants", but not always -- for example, silent
letters such as "h" in "hour" (and, for some people, "historical") and
the initial glide in "long u" words such as "university" mess things
up.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
Watch the Reply-To!