Poor "y", always left out! What is wrong with "abstemiously" or "facetiously" (my personal favorite)?

Seems like you are right, hello Anne Lee,
Anu absenciously minded, maybe?
Or is the Y maybe no vowel at all?

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.

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!)

There are Thirteen characters in the Rarotongan alphabet, Five are the above mentioned vowels.

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.

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).

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 dæġ ) and way (from Old English weġ ) ]

Again I find here present Dutch words ; dag and weg.
.

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.

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.
===============================================================

Thirteen characters in the Rarotongan alphabet Tell me more, please, Olly.

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/rarotongan.htm

Rarotongan (Māori Kūki 'Āirani/reo ipukarea)
Rarotongan or Rarotongan Maori is an Polynesian language spoken on the island of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. It's closely related to Taihitian and Maori.

Thanks, Maven, and welcome to you. No b, c, d, f, j, l, q, s, w, x, y or z, eh? Is ' considered a character? If so, what is it called?

If so, what is it called?

In English, it's called a glottal stop. Hawai`ian, it's called `okina. (The latter link includes the Tahitian (`eta) and Tonga (fakau`a terms, too.

Whoa:

Code:

The `okina is considered a consonant. Just as you would never drop essential 
consonants in your spelling (ear for dear, for example), 
do not drop the `okina. It is well-depicted with a " ` ", 
which precedes vowels with `okina:`a, `e, `i, `o,` u. 

From: 'okina.

> (`eta)

:¬ )

`eta

Words that begin with a vowel in English actually begin with a glottal stop. Except for some dialects, that's just about the only place where glottal stops can occur. Cockney is famous for replacing intervocalic ts with glottal stops.

Kia orana Jackie,
As far as I am aware the glottal stop is not a character of the Cook Island Maori alphabet. I also don't have a contemporary translation for such diacritical marks as the Glottal and Macron.
The use of the Diacritical marks is a recently established initiative aimed at helping non native speakers to learn the language. Prior to the advent of the Bible, Cook Islands maori was not a written language and no visual aids were used to help people recite their language. The only Polynesian people I know of that had a writen language were those of 'Rapanui' or 'Easter Island'.
There are other consonants within the Cook Islands language F, S, L, W are also used in some dialects and the vowels can take on short or long form, with glottal or without glottal.