On Monday, February 7, 2005, at 01:09 , Mark J. Reed wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 06, 2005 at 04:45:37PM -0800, Gary Shannon wrote:
>> yesterday -> ee-esterdae-ee
>> sky -> ska-ee
>> sympathy -> simpathee
>
> The *letter* Y is *neither* a consontant nor a vowel.  It is an element of
> the Roman alphabet and can be made to stand for anything.

Yes, it can and is made to. [j], [i], [y], [1], [@], [ai(] all come
immediately to mind, and I have no doubt that there are others.

> In English, it
> sometimes stands for the consonant /j/ (as at the beginning of
> "yesterday"), sometimes for the diphthong /ai_^/ as in "sky", and
> sometimes for the vowel /e/ as in "sympathy"

Interesting, if /e/ is not a typo. This side of the Pond it is generally
either [i] or [I].

> (and arguably at the end of
> "yesterday", although that's really a case of the digraph |ay| standing
> for the sound /ei_^/ and it's not really possible to say the A stands
> for this part of the sound and the Y for that.).
[snip]

> So you can't say that the letter Y is either a consonant or a vowel.
> You can only talk about whether particular sounds represented by the
> letter
> are consonants or vowels.

Yep - just like any other letter.

[snip]
> And please stop going on about your lack of formal training.

Amen!
> Many of us
> don't have any formal linguistic training either; that's no excuse for
> not learning and using proper terminology.

AMEN!

I have no formal linguistic training. But I was brought up to aim to be
accurate. There is simply no point IMO in having terminology if one cannot
be bothered to find out what it means and try and use it in a generally
accepted way.
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> On Monday, February 7, 2005, at 01:17 , J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:
>
> On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 16:45:37 -0800, Gary Shannon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
[snip]

>> These sounds exist in a continuum and drawing the
>> boundries that separate one type from another within
>> that continuum is, regardless of what anyone believes,
>> arbitrary.
>
> This is only true when you're examining the acoustic waves. Another way to
> analyze speech sounds is the way of looking for phonemes, which are
> defined
> as the minimal distinctive unit. That criterion still requires
> interpretation, but it's not arbitrary.

Indeed, it is certainly not arbitrary. The criteria for defining phonemes
are well known. It may well be that Gary does not accept the phonemic
theory - not everyone does, tho phonemic analysis is very widely used.

But it is quite clear, as I had suspected, from Gary's words above that he
speaking strictly in _phonetic_ terms and not in terms of phonemes. This
is what is causing the problems in understanding.

>> I have choosen a
>> different system of classification for the sounds, one
>> for which the terms "vowel" and "consonant" are
>> apparently not appropriate.
>
> They're often used in the way you've used them.

Yes, I did say that also. Gary is using 'vowel' and 'consonant' as they
are defined _phonetically_. The trouble is that most of us have been using
these terms as they are defined in phonology; writing the sound as /j/
should have made that clear. Phonemes are written between slashes thus /j/
.

>  As Ray has pointed out, the
> terms _vocoid_ and _contoid_ coined by Kenneth Pike are less ambiguous
> terms
> for that use.

They certainly are. As I said, the sound at the onset of _year_ and _you_
is a vocoid (i.e. a 'phonetic vowel') but phonologically it is a type of
_consonant_ known as an approximant.
================================================
On Monday, February 7, 2005, at 01:38 , Tristan McLeay wrote:

> On 7 Feb 2005, at 11.45 am, Gary Shannon wrote:
[snip]
>> Granted, that is not the "conventional" system of
>> classification.  However, "unconventional" is not
>> synonymous with "wrong", and "conventional" is not
>> synonymous with "correct".
>
> True, but often a system is conventional because it's right.

Indeed so. I may be quite happy with an unconventional system of
classifying sub-atomic particles; but if I wanted to have any meaningful
discussion on quantum physics with other people then it would helpful if I
took the trouble to learn the conventional classification.

[snip]
> Linguists, like artists, can call the sounds (colors)
> anything they like, but I'm an engineer with training
> is physics and I'll just call them the way I see them.
> ;-)

Linguists are not like artists. The terms we have been discussing have
precise definitions. I am surprised that an engineer with training in
physics is not concerned at precision in the use of technical terms when
it comes to discussing sounds with a group of people in which a few have
formal linguistic training but more have simply taken the trouble to learn
the terminology and try to use it properly.

> If you're going to do that, you might want to use 'contoid' and
> 'vocoid'. You aren't the first person to notice the difference, and the
> distinction between 'consonant' and 'contoid', 'vowel' and 'vocoid',
> is, as we've seen, pretty important.

It is - and precision in terminology is IMO important if we are to have
meaningful discussions and not misunderstand one another.
================================================
On Monday, February 7, 2005, at 05:52 , Philip Newton wrote:

> On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 20:47:37 -0800, Gary Shannon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> That was an historic event.
>>
>> Aha! 'H' is a vowel!  I always wondered about that.
>> ;-)

Good grief! this thread is getting sillier & sillier.

> No. 'H' is a letter; it's neither a consonant or a vowel.

..and what's more, it's an upper case letter.  :)

> Saying that "the vowels are 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u' [and sometimes
> 'y']", referring to letters as vowels or consonants is a
> simplification that may be appropriate in grade school, but vowels and
> consonants refer to *sounds*, not *letters*.

Yep.

But some 50 years or so ago in school we were also taught that:
_an_ is used before vowels and *before words beginning with h- if the
first syllable was unstressed*.
_a_ is used everywhere else.

Hence, of course, _an historic event_.

Except that sounds very old fashioned to me now. In this neck of the woods
way people now almost always say _a historic event_.

More to the point in this thread is that people generally say "an onion"
but "a union".

Ray
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Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]