Re: vowels: are they necessary?

 --- # 1 <salut_vous_autre@...> wrote:
> When a consonant is fricative or trilled, it can be
> continued as long we want. Is there any languages
> that has some words that are only consonants without
> vowels?
Oh, quite a few. Russian comes to mind; 's' and 'v'
are both legitimate words (I think they're
prepositions). Many languages have a syllabic 'r' or
'l' (such as Czech, Slovak and Sanskrit).

> A little word that is only a rolled [r], a [s], a
> [v], without the vowel releasing. It would be
> conceivable.
Indeed. When DVD's first came out, I (jokingly)
pronounced the acronym as [dv=:d], rather than
[,di.vi."di:].

> Generally, consonant always means that there is
> vowel pasted to, but why?
Generally, most languages have syllabic constraints
that forbid isolated consonants without vowels. But
then again, many languages break those very same
rules; Mandarin, in certain interpretations, has
syllabic [s], [s`], [s\], [ts], [ts`], [ts\] and [r\].

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