Originally Posted By: Jackie

I was thinking the other day about the w in why, and realized that for me at least it's a diphthong: kind of an ooo-wuh, the whole being sort of like ooo-wuh-eye. Hmm--correction--more like ooo-wuh-eye-ee. Not quite Hawaii! smile


The first sound in "why" is the semi-vowel /w/. /w/ is pretty much the same as /u/ (the vowel in "boot") - the difference is that /w/ is the onset of the syllable while /u/ is the nucleus. If that helps.