Most English speakers know the vowels as “a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y”. The reason for y’s ambivalent status is because it is often used as a consonant, as in “yes”, “you”, “kayak”, and “player”. It can also be used as a vowel, as in “sky”, “psychology”, “byte”, and “city”. Less often considered…
Tag: phonetics
Stories in the history of written language (part 3)
In Part 1 and Part 2, we looked at some of the ways in which written languages have developed and creative ways in which they have been used. Here, we’ll look more into the interactions between languages and the relationship between language and speech. Writing another language’s sounds When two language communities come into contact,…
thoughts on mind 