Typically, y represents a consonant when it starts off a word or syllable, as in yard, lawyer, or beyond. Technically, this sound of \y\ is considered a semivowel or glide, which is a less prominent vowel speech sound that occurs in the articulation of two consecutive vowel sounds unequal in prominence.
Even though "y" is technically a consonant, there are many more instances in which it functions as a vowel. You'll hear it work as a long /e/ sound (as in city or party), short /i/ sound (as in cyst or symbol) or long /i/ sound (as in fly or shy) depending on the word it's in. It can also be part of a vowel team.
The letter y has always been a vowel. It was imported into the Latin alphabet in Roman times from the Greek alphabet. It was the Greek letter upsilon which was a vowel that didn't exist in Latin.
Pronouncing /y/ as a Vowel
In a one-syllable word, /y/ is pronounced as an /ai/ (I) sound, such as in the words: my, fly, try, cry, shy. If you have a /y/ in the first syllable of a word it is pronounced as a short /ih/ sound. An example of this pronunciation occurs in the words cyst, Lynn, gym, and gymnasium.
The /w/ and /y/ are called semi-vowels because, although the vocal tract is relatively unrestricted during the formation of both of these sounds, they are not syllabic (meaning they do not force a syllable to occur).
The words without vowels are why, hmm, hymn, xlnt, wynd, myths, thy, dry, cyst, etc.
Q: Why is the letter “w” called “double u”? It looks like a “double v” to me. A: The name of the 23rd letter of the English alphabet is “double u” because it was originally written that way in Anglo-Saxon times. As the Oxford English Dictionary explains it, the ancient Roman alphabet did not have a letter “w.”
Shh, psst, and hmm do not have vowels, either vowel symbols or vowel sounds. There is some controversy whether they are in fact “words,” however.
In writing systems based on the Latin alphabet, the letters A, E, I, O, U, Y, W and sometimes others can all be used to represent vowels. However, not all of these letters represent the vowels in all languages that use this writing, or even consistently within one language.
Y as a long I: The letter y makes the long sound of i when it comes at the end of a short word that has no other vowel. Examples: cry, try, my, fly, by, hi. Y as a long E: When y or ey ends a word in an unaccented syllable, the y has the long sound of e. Examples: money, honey, many, key, funny.
The Y rule: When a root ends in y, change the y to i when adding a suffix (easy + est = easiest; happy + ness = happiness). Exceptions: Keep the y if a vowel comes before it (play + er = player; joy + ful = joyful). Keep the y if adding the suffix -ing (cry + ing = crying; study + ing = studying).
EUNOIA is the shortest word in English which has all five vowels.
Here's an example: in Old English, a letter called thorn (þ) represented the th sound (as in that) in Modern English. In the Latin alphabet, the Y was the symbol that most closely resembled the character that represented thorn. So, thorn was dropped and Y took its place.
A, E, I, O, U, Y, and, as we'll see, W, are called vowels, but let's get technical. They are symbols (letters) that represent a special type of speech sound called a vowel. According to phoneticians, a vowel is a speech sound that is made without significant constriction of the flow of air from the lungs.
Schwa – The Lazy Sound
Schwa is related to the short vowel sounds because it can be spelled by any of them, including the semi-vowel 'y'. I like to refer to it as the 'lazy' vowel cousin.
All the vowel sounds in English are represented by only 5 letters of the alphabet (e.g. a, e, i, o, u). However, there are approximately 19 vowel sounds spoken in Standard Australian English.
It is because English uses the Roman alphabet, which was originally used for Latin, and in that alphabet the vowels were a, e, i, o, and u, and the rather rare y, which was used for borrowings from Greek. In Modern English, y is also still sometimes used as a vowel, for example in the word 'city'.
Unfortunately, there are no words in English that are made up entirely of vowels, so we will have to settle for the next best thing: a five-letter word containing four of them.
“scent” is derived from the Latin/French verb “sentire/sentir”. As you can see there is no letter “c”. It was added to the English version some centuries ago for some unknown reason. Therefore the letter “c” is silent in this case.
In words of Spanish origin, such as jalapeño, English speakers usually pronounce ⟨j⟩ as the voiceless glottal fricative /h/, an approximation of the Spanish pronunciation of ⟨j⟩ as the voiceless velar fricative [x] (some varieties of Spanish also use glottal [h]).
The first distinction between the letters "u" and "v" is recorded in a Gothic script from 1386, where "v" preceded "u". By the mid-16th century, the "v" form was used to represent the consonant and "u" the vowel sound, giving us the modern letter V. U and V were not accepted as distinct letters until many years later.