I teach music and have challenged students to find another word that has no vowel (not even a "y") but yet is a syllable. The word I DO know that has that is "rhythm" with the "thm" being the syllable with no vowel. I tell them that onomotopoeias don't count.

Anyone have one? I knew if I asked here someone would tell me others.

English cwm from the Welsh for 'valley'. In Welsh both y and w are vowels. Pronounced /ku:m/.

I would say that the suffix -ism is two syllables and, depending on how you divide it, the m or the sm is a syllable without a vowel. Also nth is a whole word without a vowel.

Shhh.

I was thinking of written vowels, not actual vowels. Anything with a stop in it is right out, but as Olly demonstrates, fricatives (and nasals) can be articulated and sustained without recourse to vowels. The Mandarin word for four sz is an example of a word with a vowel. English sss, the sound a snake makes or as a show of disapproval, sh to shut somebody up. Also, English uses clicks, but not as words as some Khoisan languages do. Tsk, giddyup, and kiss are usually articulated as clicks.

Do you mean without a vowel? It's normally spelled sì, isn't it? It definitely contains a vowel sound, at least it sounds like a vowel to me.

Some say Nuxálk has long strings of consonants, for instance here. I can't copy it because this board doesn't handle unicode well. Anyway, it looks like a string of consonants, but I think there'd be some phonetic vowels in there somewhere.

Do you mean without a vowel? It's normally spelled sì, isn't it? It definitely contains a vowel sound, at least it sounds like a vowel to me.

I just read up on it, and there does seem to be a vowel in it. I may have been misled by listening to Mandarin spoken by speakers of other kinds of Chinese. Yes, pinyin should've been si.

[Undid the missled verb.]

For those of us not up on our Mandarin, what's "four sz" and why is there a word for it?

For those of us not up on our Mandarin, what's "four sz" and why is there a word for it?

I am sorry. I was in a big hurry yesterday and posted in haste. I should just delete it. The Chinese word for 'four' is si /szi/. I've never been able to hear the vowel, hearing only the /sz/ which can be sustained without a vowel. I didn't look up its proper Pinyin spelling and fell back on some pseudo romanization scheme. It occurs in the Chinese toponym Sichuan meaning literally 'four rivers'.

Funny, I assumed that GwynneF was looking for words in English.

Hmm, not sure if I can think of one. Welcome, Gwynne! You're only the second person I've met who spells the name that way. T'other was a long-ago bridge partner.

looking for words in English

Yeah. Innit?

I keep making that error too! (and with plain old 'led/lead' as well). Misled is such a strange word. I used to think that it was pronounced 'Mizled' (maizəld), like in miserly.

How about schism?

and with plain old 'led/lead' as well

Yeah, that is one spelling I nearly always get wrong.

"ism" was mentioned before but many (most? all?) words that end in -sm are pronounced with an "um" like spasm, microcosm, orgasm, cytoplasm, ...

heh

myr said....





cytoplasm

I guess that depends on your idiolect. The same could be said about rhythm. I believe I pronounce them with a syllabic M. And did we ever decide whether we're looking for words with pronounced vowels or words with written vowels?

Hmm, I'm really not sure...

Maybe GwynneF will tell us when she shows up again in 2015.

now that's a slow rhythm.

No written vowel is what her post seems to indicate.

Thanks, but yes, I was looking for English words ... although Welsh is close!

Yes, Jackie, I have been saddled with this spelling since my mother wanted to name me after a cousin who was Guinevere, but they always called her Guin - but she didn't like that spelling. It is also a man's name in Wales, they tell me. We have a daughter Jacquie (Jacqueline) who we fought with in early school years how to spell her shortened name!

Yes, that is exactly what I was looking for -- the 'ism' and 'nth' are the types of answers I knew you all would know. Thanks for your attention to this answer, even without my being back here!

How time flies!

BTW, when replying to a post that isn't immediately above your reply, it is helpful to quote from the post you are replying to. Otherwise it is sometimes hard to tell just what the reply means.

BTW, when replying to a post that isn't immediately above your reply, it is helpful to quote from the post you are replying to. Otherwise it is sometimes hard to tell just what the reply means. [/quote]

Thanks Faldage -- perhaps I will get back to this forum more often. I am always happy to learn from other linguaphiles!

Careful, we're addictive.

"cwm" is an English word.

as is crwth.

-joe (I wonder how they'd say that in Looahville?) friday

um, that's LOUuhvle

Ha!

I'd say, "krooth".

I would say that cwm and crwth wouldn't count towards the score whether they're English words or not. The w is a vowel in both of them.

My Microsoft Bookshelf says cwm is Welsh:

cwm

cwm (k?m) noun
See cirque.

[Welsh, valley.]

OneLook lists ~16 English dictionaries that list cwm as an English word -- it's every bit as English now as, say, yenta.

And W is still a vowel in them. Don't make me say irregardless!

And W is still a vowel in them.

Yes. That's why it dawned on me earlier in this thread. Was GF asing about words with no graphemic or phonemic vowels. That's why I mentioned clicks (link), nasals, and (af)fricatives. I'd consider tsk /|/, hmm /m:/, and sss /s:/ to be interjections (a kind of word). None of them has either kind of vowel in them.

I'll need some help on this one...

In a scrabble game this word came up: byrls. I have tried to find a definition online, but to no avail. I would like to know:
1) the meaning
2) the pronunciation
3) if it qualifies

Thanks in advance! :0)

from the official online Scrabble [Hasbro] lookup:
BYRL
(BYRLED/BYRLING/BYRLS)
to birle

defined in the typical Scrabble dictionary manner!

edit:
oh, here's the link, for future reference
Scrabble lookup

"and he goes birling, birling down the white water.
The log driver's waltz pleases girls completely."

This one interests me, and will have to get back to it. I know you all are looking for English words, but other languages have, as we all know, different ways of doing things. I am reminded that when big oil Exxon switched from Esso, they searched everywhere for any language with a double 'x',and found it only in Maltese, where exxon is not a word.
And there are the !Kung in Africa: a nation with lots of clicks in their lingo, and the ! refers to one of them.

Thank you. I don't understand why so many people have trouble pronouncing the name of the cultural center of the universe (including me).

you're welcome! but thank Jackie for it, she's the one who taught me! /hug

Russian has two whole words that are each nothing but a single consonant. B and C. No that's not a bee and a cee; it's a vee and an ess.

Curiosity got to me.
What do the C and B ( vee and ess ) mean when translated?

What do the C and B ( vee and ess ) mean when translated?

They are prepositions: B 'into, in', C 'from, with, off'.

B becomes BO before "heavy consonant clusters". In Russian I think by "heavy consonant cluster" they mean more than about five consonants.

working like that often creates BO.