ENGLISH ALPHABET
ENGLISH ALPHABET
The English alphabet is now considered to consist of the following 26 letters:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Since
the ninth century, English has been written in a Latin alphabet (also
called Roman alphabet). Earlier Old English texts in Anglo-Saxon runes
are only short inscriptions. The great majority of literary works in Old
English that survive to today are written in the Roman alphabet. The
modern English alphabet contains 26 letters of the Latin script: a, b,
c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z
(which also have capital forms: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M,
N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z).
The modern English alphabet is a Latin alphabet consisting of 26 letters, each having an uppercase and a lowercase form:
- A a
- B b
- C c
- D d
- E e
- F f
- G g
- H h
- I i
- J j
- K k
- L l
- M m
- N n
- O o
- P p
- Q q
- R r
- S s
- T t
- U u
- V v
- W w
- X x
- Y y
- Z z
VOWEL
The letters A, E, I, O, and U are considered vowel letters,
since (except when silent) they represent vowels; the remaining letters
are considered consonant letters, since when not silent they generally
represent consonants. However, Y commonly represents vowels as well as a
consonant (e.g., “myth”), as very rarely does W (e.g., “cwm”).
Conversely, U and I sometimes represent a consonant (e.g., “quiz” and
“onion” respectively).
W and Y are sometimes referred as semivowels by linguists.
Written vowels
The name “vowel” is often used for the
symbols that represent vowel sounds in a language’s writing system,
particularly if the language uses an alphabet. 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 vowels in all languages, or even
consistently within one language (some of them, especially W and Y, are also used to represent approximates).
Other languages cope with the limitation in
the number of Latin vowel letters in similar ways. Many languages make
extensive use of combinations of letters to represent various sounds.
Other languages use vowel letters with modifications,
CONSONANT
The word consonant is also
used to refer to a letter of an alphabet that denotes a consonant
sound. The 21 consonant letters in the English alphabet are B, C, D, F,
G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, X, Z, and usually W and Y. The
letter Y stands for the consonant /j/ in yoke, the vowel /ɪ/ in myth, the vowel /i/ in funny, and the diphthong /aɪ/ in my. W always represents a consonant except in combination with a vowel letter, as in growth, raw, and how, and in a few loanwords from Welsh, like crwth or cwm.
In some other languages, such as Finnish, y only represents a vowel sound.
A consonant is a speech
sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal
tract. Examples are [p], pronounced with the lips; [t], pronounced with
the front of the tongue; [k], pronounced with the back of the tongue;
[h], pronounced in the throat; [f] and [s], pronounced by forcing air
through a narrow channel (fricatives); and [m] and [n], which have air
flowing through the nose (nasals). Contrasting with consonants are
vowels.
Since the number of possible sounds in all
of the world’s languages is much greater than the number of letters in
any one alphabet, linguists have devised systems such as the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to assign a unique and unambiguous
symbol to each attested consonant. In fact, the English alphabet has
fewer consonant letters than English has consonant sounds, so digraphs
like “ch”, “sh”, “th”, and “zh” are used to extend the alphabet, and
some letters and digraphs represent more than one consonant. For
example, the sound spelled “th” in “this” is a different consonant than
the “th” sound in “thin”. (In the IPA, they are transcribed [ð] and [θ],
respectively.)
Consonants versus vowels
Consonants and vowels correspond to
distinct parts of a syllable: The most sonorous part of the syllable
(that is, the part that’s easiest to sing), called the syllabic peak or nucleus, is typically a vowel, while the less sonorous margins (called the onset and coda)
are typically consonants. Such syllables may be abbreviated CV, V, and
CVC, where C stands for consonant and V stands for vowel. This can be
argued to be the only pattern found in most of the world’s languages,
and perhaps the primary pattern in all of them. However, the distinction
between consonant and vowel is not always clear cut: there are syllabic
consonants and non-syllabic vowels in many of the world’s languages.
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