Vowels

A vowel () is a speech sound pronounced without any in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, loudness, and length. They are usually voiced and are closely involved in prosodic variation such as tone, intonation and stress. The nucleus, or "center", of a syllable typically consists of a vowel sound (though this is not always the case).

thumb|American English pronunciation of "no highway cowboys" , showing five diphthongs:

In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are y and w in yes and west, respectively. Written in IPA, y and w are near to the vowels ee and oo in seen and moon, written in IPA. The term glide may alternatively refer to any type of transitional sound, not necessarily a semivowel.

A monophthong ( ) or pure vowel is a vowel sound characterized by a relatively stable articulatory configuration throughout its duration. During the production of a monophthong, the tongue does not undergo significant vertical (height) or horizontal (front–back) movement toward a different position of articulation. For this reason, monophthongs are commonly referred to as pure vowels.

occurrence of two vowel sounds in adjacent syllables, with no intervening consonant

pronunciation of a vowel through the nose as well as the mouth

In phonetics, vowel roundedness is the rounding of the lips, or lack thereof, during the articulation of a vowel. It is the degree and kind of labialization of a vowel. In the International Phonetic Alphabet vowel chart, rounded vowels are the ones that appear on the right in each bulleted pair of letters, and the corresponding unrounded vowels are the ones on the left, with (when central) and the unpaired vowels and being neutral or unspecified. In most dialects of English, the vowel with the greatest degree of rounding is , as in the word too, though some languages have significantly greater

In phonetics, a triphthong ( , ) (from Greek , ) is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement of the articulator from one vowel quality to another that passes over a third. While "pure" vowels, or monophthongs, are said to have one target articulator position, diphthongs have two and triphthongs three.

consonant which either forms a syllable by itself or is the nucleus of a syllable

duration of a vowel sound

concepts in poetic meter

standardised set of speech sounds

vowel sound which is used with each unmarked or basic consonant symbol in abugida

phonetic sound in some languages

Wikimedia list article

phonetic phenomenon

contrasting states of the root of the tongue during the pronunciation of vowels