On Tuesday, Sep 10, 2002, at 01:56 Asia/Tokyo, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> glides, and GOK what else. Of course, Mark was only differentiating >> between "vowels" and "non-vowels," but that may not make things much >> easier; I still wouldn't know where to put English "y". > > Off-hand, it seems that in English "y" mostly* is [j] if in initial > position, > otherwise it's either [i] or [ai]. So it's either one consonant, or > one or two > vowels... Or diphthong... As all English users know (with certain degrees of pain), you can't tell how you pronounce a given letter until you see the whole word or even the whole sentence. In that sense I doubt how relevant to categorize alphabets between vowels and consonants -- unless you are playing Wheel of Fortune (I would love to tantalize the TV director by saying "It's bogus that I can't buy a 'Y'!" :). And how about an 'e', a letter that most would believe 100% vowel? See "Cate" vs. "Cat". That particular 'e' is not a vowel; it is not even pronounced! It's a modifier that turns the previous vowel into diphthong. And how about an 'h' in "hour"? And how about an 'i' for "Linux"? A vowel ? or a diphthong? I am no linguist but so far as I see, such languages are rather rare that a given "letter" in that particular language is definitively and unambiguously classified as a vowel or a consonant (one great rarity is Korean). For most cases we can only tell 'vowelish' or 'consonantish'.... [Da][n] [Ko][ga][i], 5 Japanese Syllables, 3 English Syllables
