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stranger
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OP
stranger
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Poor "y", always left out! What is wrong with "abstemiously" or "facetiously" (my personal favorite)?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Seems like you are right, hello Anne Lee, Anu absenciously minded, maybe?  Or is the Y maybe no vowel at all?
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Joined: Apr 2007
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stranger
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stranger
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This used to be one of my favourite quiz questions. List any three words in the english language that contain all five vowels in alphabetical order.
My list of four are abstemious, abstentious, arsenious and facetious. I wonder what the others are.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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from May 17, 2006.. the worthless word for the day is: gravedinous
[ad. L. gravedinosus, fr. gravedo, heaviness]
obs. rare : drowsy, heavy-headed {in Bailey}
this is one of those words that contains the
5 vowels (aeiou) in alphabetical order without
repetition; some that are more(?) common:
facetious, abstemious, arterious, arsenious,
adventitous, abstentious, bacterious, and
tragedious -- the shortest word of this type
seems to be the obs. term aerious (7 letters),
meaning "airy" (if you'd like to include 'y',
you can add -ly to these; e.g., facetiously)
hence, gravedinously, I suppose
8-)
-tsuwm
http://home.mn.rr.com/wwftd/
(hi Anu!)
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old hand
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old hand
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There are Thirteen characters in the Rarotongan alphabet, Five are the above mentioned vowels.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Still I would be grateful to know WHY the Y is excluded from the vowel party. Did it come in late? Was it something else before? It's not just used to put - ly after a word. It's used in so many ways.
Where is the expert of the house?
We count the six of them: a- e- i- o- u- ij. The double is counted as a good normal vowel.
That game sounds like a nice game.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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The "long" versions of the five traditional vowels aren't even pure vowels, but diphthongs: /ɛi, i:, əi, ɔu, ju/. The letters [i]y and w are sometimes called semivowels, because than can be vowels or consonants. In English, w is a vowel only in a few Welsh loanwords, e.g., cwm. If we're talking how many vowels (vocalic phonemes) does English have phonologically, the answer is usually 23 for RP and 19 for General American, (though these numbers include diphthongs).
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Thanks ZM, this is not the easiest stuff, but it gives a little more insight in the matter. Many of us have our little obsessions. Mine is to be pleased to see how close our languages have been in the past. So the Y has once been a G ;...
[ Similarly day (from Old English dęġ ) and way (from Old English weġ ) ]
Again I find here present Dutch words ; dag and weg.
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Carpal Tunnel
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this is not the easiest stuff, but it gives a little more insight in the matter.You're welcome, BranShea. The past participial form of verbs in Old English used to be prefixed with the particle ge-. In Middle English this was reduced to a y-. Present-day English dropped it completely, except in some archaic forms like yclept, from clepe 'to call, name'. A similar change happened WRT the voiceless variety, OE h as in miht 'power', cf. NHG Macht, PDE might. This gh has several different realizations: e.g., enough, through, though, bough.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Welcome, Lee Anne! I was taught that w and y can be considered vowels only when the "regulation" a, e, i, o, and u were absent.
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Thirteen characters in the Rarotongan alphabet Tell me more, please, Olly.
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