"Rhythms" IS Spelt With a Vowel
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 มี.ค. 2022
- Low-effort video.
Written and Created by Me
Art by kvd102
Translations:
Leeuwe van den Heuvel - Dutch
Ivan - German
Breno Miorim - Portuguese
Rubýñ - Spanish (Latin America)
Ted Pitman - Spanish (Europe)
antonla - Danish
Ok, someone please bring some hindsight to me. I'm not a native english speaker, but wouldn't the n- at "nth" also count as a vowel? phonetically written it's "ɛnθ" and the same argument from why the -y - is a vowel in rythms can be made for nth
:D that's the right question my friend. Really there is no such thing as a "vowel letter" just letters we use to represent vowel. in the word "nth" the en is representing two phonemes. it's kind of a silly argument, which is the original point of the video - though that isn't completely clear aha, because the target audience of this was originally a few friends not over half a million people lol
@@kklein oh I see. Even then, it was a fun exercise to think about and mess around with. Thanks for the quick reply!
Damn, got to see the pin in real time
not that far of a nitpick since it's a common feature of english to use "a" before consonant sounds and "an" before vowel sounds, regardless of the written letters
Therefore “psst” truly is the longest word. Onomatopoeia counts as words, trust me bro!
I grew up with "and sometimes Y" so my takeaway from this video is that psst is not only the longest word of the English language without vowels but also its longest word period
Hold my cat while I pswswswswswswswswsws
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, I'm not so sure it's _the_ longest word, But certainly _a_ longest word.
The length of “psst” (in letters) is s (s being the number of S’s) + 2 (the p and the t). So in theory, if you were to get a word that could also be extended infinitely, but with more letters besides that (example: if there were a word like psst but was spelled psstn or something)
@@icantthinkofaname8139 I think you mean ps...stn't
in fact this is the word of the universe, the bigbang was the loudest P possible and the background radiantion is the Ss
its the longest word by a long shot, a 13.8 billion yo word
So you're telling me that the US educational system did something RIGHT???
Yeah here in Canada we're also taught there are 6 vowels. A, e, i, o, u and sometimes y
I'm from UK I was taught this dunno about everyone else
@@ayszhang romania recently changed the rules slightly and now y is an official vowel
It should be Y and W, because since Y in "say" counts as a vowel, so does W in "sew"
@@Liggliluff sew does it via 'ew' not just w
otherwise 'ough' means... g is a vowel? h is a vowel?
say is a finnicky example.
I love how “John” tried to argue that “psst” is not a word. Yes it is. It’s an onomatopoeia. A WORD representing a sound. You could also do “pspspsps” a sound for summoning thy cat. But I digress.
I LOVE CATS.
An even better one to shut him up, literally: "shhh" or "shush"
@@louisrobitaille5810 shush has a vowel
/Ps/ is accually a letter in greek (Ψ, ψ)
So agree with you !
A little note for those of you who think y being a vowel is crazy:
In German, the letter "r" can act as a vowel.
Yes, I'm serious.
Do you have an example?
@@Bobby-ud4xk
- Uhr [uːɐ̯]
- sehr [zeːɐ̯]
- Meer [meːɐ̯]
@@ZenoDovahkiin very similar to words like Cwtch or Crwth I'd say, maybe not the same sound but the same line of thinking.
Its dependent on the dialekt and accent where I live we pronounce the „r“
In American English the r can also be a vowel. In most rhotic accents (where one pronounces the r at the end of syllables), there is a phenomenon called 'r colouring' where the r influences the preceding vowel similarly to how w does in words like saw, new, bow, etc... For example, many words ending in r have this type of vowel: chamber, colour, worker (both vowels are r coloured). Unlike w, however, r-coloured vowels have their own distinct vowel symbol in the ipa. In a dialect near my hometown, the word wash mysteriously developed an r-coloured vowel, often being pronounced as 'warsh', with the ar being the same as in 'war'.
In Polish 'y' is always a vowel. It sometimes not being a vowel was very confusing to me when I started to learn English. Of course Polish is mostly phonetic so we don't have the issue of a letter representing like 15 sounds randomly.
Ahh jes.
Same here. Y is always a vowel in Finnish, and I was similarly confused when I learnt that it is often a consonant in English. The consonant Y sound in English is usually represented as a J in Finnish.
How about the letter i? It's just like the letter y in English. Sometimes it's the IPA /i/, /ji/ or /ʲi/ but sometimes just the /ʲ/, for example
goi - /gɔji/ (roughly: goyee)
lina - /lʲina/ (roughly: leena)
but...
pies - /pʲɛs/ (roughly: pyes)
biega - /bʲɛga/ (roughly: byega)
@@jacekpawelski104 please for the love of God use IPA, nobody in Poland pronounces as /meega/ xdd
@@Ptaku93 Yes, of course, but unfortunately not everyone knows know to read IPA
Honestly I think "y" is more often used as a vowel than a consonant. Usually the consonant y is at the start of a word before a vowel, like "yes" "yack" "yellow", and so on. Most adverbs use y as a vowel, and a lot of other words do too, like "energy" "polygon" "duchy" "synthesis" and so on.
Your pfp is scary
Actually the "y" in "layer" is a vowel too, since it's spelt as one in IPA: /leɪə/.
@@SJEche I'm assuming you're going off the English pronunciation, because the ending character is a schwa, indicating non-rhotic. In the American pronunciation, not to seem dense, they "y" seems to get enunciated more since we do enunciate the "r" at the end of the word. The IPA spelling (according to Google) for the American pronunciation is "ˈleɪ.ɚ", where the "ay" make an "ei" sound. Okay, yeah, I guess. Still, to me it sounds like there's a distinct "y" sound, like "Lei-Yurr". I'll concede to that, however, my point still stands... actually I realize now what you said was intended to make my observation even stronger lol.
@@user-il4mh4fz4j Thank you
I bet yes is more often used than alot of y words
Also, in old and middle English, some words actually used "Y" instead of "I", like with "Kyng" (King). Hell, Middle English had three different "S" letters and had letters after "Z" (Which are actually typed in the phonetical pronunciation of modern words).
In modern day Australia, they use "tyres" instead of "tires."
In Turkish, we are using all letters for their purpose and we have different letters, i mean we are using 'ş' for 'sh' / 'ç' for 'ch' / ğ for 'gh' (yoghurt) also we have different vowels ö and ü, The ö letter in example, Earth the pronounce at the start 'Ea-' part we are just saying like 'Örth' not 'Earth' they have same pronounciations but different letters, also the Ü letter is just like in the popular C. Ronaldo quote 'SIUUUUUUUU' but in Turkish, 'SÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜ'
@@obis-noreply I thought ğ just extended vowels
I was going to say_____ what a delicious and fabulous presentation, then I was going to comment in 1955 I learned A-E-I-O-U and 'ofttimes' U. then I realized my mind is mired in 1940, think, and I am Senile, old decrepit dodger on the dole, with 2 cats, 10 guitars and free-range German Cockroaches, which has absolutely nil to address your wonderfulness's do you solve equations using the null factor law? I shan't be the null factor police and charge you in breech of law. Have a jolly good day, sirrah._____My son's name is John Fitzgerald Bernays, -suggestion is you had 'prior knowledge' when you attacked my poor feeble minded child. _____ i am losing this battle, too much marijuana.
@@jells_2749 Actually no
Even if you discount “rhythms”, there is still a word in English that has 7 letters and no vowels. That word is “tsktsks” which is accepted in most dictionaries, is unambiguous in the number of letters, has absolutely no vowels, and can be used naturally in a sentence
the word cwtch is accepted in a lot of dictionaries but its only 5 letters
@@sofargone88 the w in cwtch would count as a vowel just like the y in rhythms
@@kormagogthedestroyer damn
This reminds me of that BrainMax episode from Regular Show
Mordecai: TskTsk, wait till you see my 20 page research backing up my theory
Rigby: TskTsk, wait till you see my *21* page research backing up MY THEORY, and proving YOURS WRONG!
Mordecai: TskTsk, is that so?
Rigby: TskTsk yeah!
Mordecai & Rigby: TskTsk TskTsk TskTsk
*_intense montage music of 2 geniuses writing research papers_*
@@kormagogthedestroyer Ah so that was the word for cw
Psst is even in the dictionary, so seems pretty solid as a word choice.
Yes, but pssst isn't
@@waldolemmer it can be added to the dictionary using a marker, or a crayon if no markers are available.
@@waldolemmer no matter how long it is, it still means something, but its meaning intensifies.
Psst is to take someone's attention.
Psssst is to take someone's attention and slightly annoying them.
Psssssssst is annoying someone and everyone around you.
Pssssssssssssssst is probably a snake at that point.
PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSST is a snake rushing towards you.
@@cye2310 *PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSST* is when you REALLY need someones attention and they ignore you
PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSST
As a non native anglophone, when I was a kid, I never understood how and why Englishmen classified "y" as a consonant. I mean it almost always plays as a cool "i". That's the reason in many languages, like portuguese and spanish, the "y" is called either "epsilon" or "greek i"
French: I grec
epsilon is an "e" sound as in "set".
iota is the i
and upsilon (ypsilon) is the y.
that's definitely the origin of those letters, but as far as latin is concerned, Y is called "i graeca," which means... "greek i."@@Tasorius
@@irishmanfromengland25 Which is why I find it weird when people call y "epsilon" in any language... The "Greek i" makes sense, because Latin rarely uses y.
which is funny because the greeks literally had gamma which looks almost exactly like y
These videos feel like they were made quickly to prove you were right in an argument, and I absolutely love it.
Unsurprisingly the music world is indeed full of Johns... this came up as a quiz question in my orchestra residential a couple of weeks ago. I shall ensure to educate everyone at our next rehearsal.
The longest word without vowels in it is definitely whatever my orchestra teacher used to yell out when he was pissed and on a rant destroying a kid's life 😂
Just look at the mass of elitist musicians trying to act all high and mighty and saying only classical music is real music. Eugh.
@Nana Macapagal meanwhile Mozart was infamous for breaking music rules to piss off the ancient music elitists back then
@@goodboi1725 the irony
5
"'Vowel' and 'consonant' are properties of sounds, not properties of letters" is something I have never heard, and which is implied against by the common "these 5 or 6 letters are vowels" lesson and its context of learning how to spell. I imagine if you opened here, John would disagree with you, and then at least seem like he has some kind of thought process. Frankly, in general, charging on without establishing entirely arbitrary definitions is going to set up a bloody proxy war over semantics. (You seem to know all this, but I still it's worth putting into such plain terms.)
As with this, I completely disagree that vowel/consonant can be a property of sounds, as that then has to include double-letter vowel sounds as separate vowels (or, ar, uh, oo, air, etc), as well as considering silent letters as neither consonants nor vowels when they turn up
it comes from the problem of people often thinking language is *prescriptive* instead of *descriptive.* there is no objective standard for spelling, pronunciation, words, letters, vowels, consonants, etc. its all agreed-upon meanings and is used to communicate ideas. there is no higher authority that dictates what the objective rules and meanings are and if you dont follow them you're "doing it wrong"
@@fgvcosmic6752 it doesn't make sense to talk about vowels and consonants in any context other than the sounds themselves. The sounds are what define the words "vowel" and "consonant". It has never been spelling and letters that define what vowels and consonants are, that is only a crutch we learn in elementary school.
@@josephblattert6311 They are properties of phonemes; the way a sound is interpreted, not the sound itself. The exact same sound will be described differently by different people depending on their mother tongue, education, etc.
@@fgvcosmic6752 The distinction between consonants and vowels is only relevant or even meaningful in as much as how they relate to the pronounceability of words, so it makes complete sense that they should be defined in terms of sound (or phonemes). Most of the time there's a reasonably good correspondence between letters and the sounds they represent, to the point that we can broadly classify letters as either consonants and vowels, but the heart of the matter concerns sound, so it absolutely makes sense to talk about them as properties of it. A purely written language would have no need for such a classification of its symbols.
Oh my gosh the sarcasm in this video was so entertaining and brutal 🤣
*“What can I say? I can’t help being annoying if John is going to annoy me.“*
those are some very true words
I have never thought that some people would not consider Y as being a vowel, interesting topic.
it's because y is a crappy letter, always has been, it can also be "th" when you see a sign that says "ye olde" how you are meant to pronounce it is "Þe olde". and obviously you got y as I and what not
@@-._A2._- It’s more than likely that whoever created the sign intended it to be read as “yee old,” though.
@@Tom-jw7ii in the modern era, but that y is a þ and they would have read it as such. The reason it was replaced with y was because it was just a letter that could be use to replace the missing þ letter that german and Italian doesn't have
Learned that the 5 and a half vowels of the English alphabet were, and I quote, "a,e,i,o,u and sometimes y" I never considered y a vowel even when it stood in for one.
I remember being 11 and fighting my teacher and class over this.
"you shouldve defined what a word is john"
john: "shut up ringo"
Australian schools sometimes leave out the y as well, however I have heard the extension, “and sometimes y” being mentioned by teachers during early primary school
At first I was skeptical and had a counter argument, but have thought about it. You are correct, and you do not realize the new tool you've given me to annoy people with. I thank you kindly, sir.
The funny thing is though, psst IS technically a word. Its considered onomatopoeia (i dont have autocorrect), so whoever is saying "no, psst doesnt count" is removing all onomatopoeia from the "official" english languages meaning words like meow, bang and thud arent official words despite being used on a common basis as a part of the english language
No, psst doesn't count.
There's your sentence!
He led out a quiet psst.
Define official.
@@elweewutroone There is no "official" english language, but onomatopoeia is generally recognised as a part of our language and can even be translated to other languages (like meow in english, miao in italian, miau in spanish, nya in japanese and so on)
@@elweewutroone
And that's the problem with English, there's no institution regulating the language like we in France have with L'académie française, or The one the Spanish people have.
And so that's why I'm kinda worried for English because if it continues like this it will disappear by being split into many different languages because of accents and stuff. Like, English is the language of peasants (not trying to make fun of people here, just the idea that even those without education could understand it back in time.), really easy, to the point of nobody caring about speaking it right.
Although rare, “W” is also sometimes a vowel in English. The words cwm and crwth (borrowed from Welsh) are in many English dictionaries. These are not words without a vowel, in this case the ‘w’ is the vowel.
“R” can also be also be a vowel in loanwords such as Krk (from Serbo-Croatian).
Dare I ask what this “cwm” is
“Is this a vowel?”
“Depends on the language”
@@RadenWA According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it's pronounced /ko͝om/ and means "a steep-sided hollow at the head of a valley or on a mountainside; a cirque."
Yes I was looking for someone who had learned that w was also a vowel, I learned the rhyme “sometimes y and sometimes w” but realized nobody else learned the same rhyme lol
Love it! I started to give myself a headache trying to come up with an answer before clicking on this video but failed. Thanks for the awesome vid 💐💕
John saying fuck off after losing is the most internet thing in the internet
Here in Australian schools we were also taught "sometimes y" too; although the exact explanation I was taught was that "Y" is a semi-vowel. Some of the other comments also have mentioned "W" also sometimes being a vowel; and Wikipedia's page about semi-vowels does say both "W" and "Y".
Well, the name is "double-u", not "double-v". I'm no linguist, but I think it has actually originates as exactly that, and it is kind of a phonetic midpoint between v and u.
That's probably because [w] and [j] sound very similar to vowels ([u̯] and [i̯], respectively), and are also structurally similar to them.
You misunderstand. The word "semivowel" does not refer to letters, but to sounds (much like how "vowel" refers to sounds and not what are properly called "vowel letters"). In the case of the letter "Y," the consonant sound it makes, /j/, is a semivowel, because it is a consonant with certain properties typical of vowels, and which can for some intents and purposes be treated as though it were a vowel. The letter "Y" itself is not a semivowel. It is what many people informally call a "sometimes vowel," as it sometimes signifies a vowel sound, and other times a consonant sound.
The sound the letter "W" makes, /w/, is also a semivowel, much like /j/. But semivowels are still considered consonants. Since the letter "W" only makes that one consonant sound, and no vowel sounds, "W" is not a "sometimes vowel," but rather an ordinary consonant letter.
Both Y and W are used as vowels in Welsh
I've never been taught "sometimes y" in any of my schools, always been told it's a consonant. I guess it's mixed in aus ?
In Norwegian (similarly to other Northern Germanic languages), "y" is considered one of nine vowel letters, and represents a high front rounded vowel, [y] in IPA.
How simple and straightforward, you guys know what you are doing
Y is considered a vowel in literally all languages that uses latin script except for English and Turkish
@@wezzuh2482 nah, in Spanish it is mostly a consonant representing /ʝ/ if not at the end of diptongs, at the end of words or alone as its own word meaning "and". Then, it sounds /i/. (Quick note, in here j=/x /)
@@user-bz9qz7fg4u yes, and it's interesting that the plural in words ending in Y with I sound changes to have the J sound (rey -> reyes)
@@MarioFRC32 yeah, if there are vocals after the y, you got yourself a palatal fricative. Doesn't matter the root word nor anything else. It would be a bit strange in Spanish phonotactics to pronounce it as an /i/ in that context.
Thank you for enlightening me
It's amazing that he's considering politeness in a hypothetical conversation.
You clearly recognized the issue of defining "official", "English", and "word", but you forgot completely about defining "vowel". Does vowel refer to a letter, or a phoneme? If it refers to a phoneme then "nth" contains a vowel. If it refers to a letter, then we need to agree on which letters are or aren't vowels, which it is obvious there isn't a full consencus on. It could be argued that the British definition for vowel is a letter that is only used in the representation of vowel phonemes, which would exclude y and n, and rhythms would contain any vowels. I think this definition is not necessarily the best, but reasonable. When looking online, it seems that most formal definitions center around sound.
That's what I was thinking. He got pedantic on everything except what really mattered, what is a vowel?
@@spagetiman2500 well this is what happens when a man-child who clearly lets his emotions dictate how he should act instead of logical thinking operates. Notice how he pretends to not see OP's comment and not own up to his mistake.
The question is "spelt with a vowel", not the longest word without vowels; the e in the pronunciation of nth is not represented in the written word, but the i in rhythms is represented by the y
Asking for a word that is _spelt_ without a vowel means it's a letter, not just a vowel sound. Both "rhythms" and "nth" are _pronounced_ with a vowel, even though they're spelt without one.
@@Jivvi the y represents a vowel sound, no letter represents the vowel sound in nth
“Nth” technically has a vowel in it. It’s how you pronounce the letter N, similar to the vowel in the word “rhythm” which you later mentioned.
You could pronounce it without a vowel though.
It doesn't have a vowel, vowels aren't about sounds but spelling, and Nth can only be spelt 2 ways, and that's by whether you choose to capitalize the N variable. It's only 2 consonants.
@@KatherynneF In the video, he argued that "rhythm" technically doesn't have a vowel in the spelling, but the vowel exist as a sound. He wasn't being logically consistent and didn't realize that pronunciation of letters do count by that logic considering that isolate vowels cannot be pronounce without an inherent vowel
@@machinedramon3532 You could, but in practice people pronounce it as Enth not Nnnth.
It was implied that the question meant "vowel letters" and not "vowels," the overall point being that Y is a vowel letter sometimes.
Alright John, thats lovely.
While "nth" is spelled without vowels, it has a vowel phonetically. The IPA-compliant pronunciation you used, /ɛnθ/, starts with the same pronunciation of the letter "N", /ɛn/.
I went to a Welsh language primary school. And the term we learnt to remember the vowels was "a e i o u w y, ag weithiau h", and in Welsh, I've never come across a "h" noise thats explicitly a vowel. I've come across "h" were it's only there to stop a words starting with a vowl. Like "i’m henaid" instad of "i’m enaid"
Also in south Welsh "i" and "u" are pronounced the same, which is fun. And "y" also sometimes is pronounced like "i", for example "bywyd" is pronounced the same as "bywid" but the latter is never used.
Welsh is a fun language.
As someone not from Wales who's learning Welsh, That's so weird, I don't think I've seen 'H' as a vowel either, I mean sometimes it acts similar to one, E.G. taking "Yr" before it rather than "Y", But that doesn't make it one.
и, u and y have the same origin, but are used differently.
And of course in the word "cwm", pronounced [koom], the "w" is the vowel. I also like long strings of vowels such as in the word "onomatopoeia", or long strings of consonants as in the word "eighthly". Then there are QWERTY left hand words such as "stewardesses" and right hand words such as "lollipop".
I'm reminded of Matt Parker's video on longest words by distance travelled on a QWERTY keyboard (ie. distance between each pair of letters) - and by that metric, the longest word is papal.
Crwth
go to Hawaii, they have vowel strings out the wazoo
Or typing "skepticism" feels like playing ping pong
I'M CWMING!!!
This is a very supercalifragilisticexpialidocious video
I love the dry, facetious sassy wit of this video.
Y in English represents a vowel sound much more often than it represents a consonant sound. Also, w is sometimes a vowel, as in the diphthongs aw, ew, ow.
Exactly this.
The rhyme should be "and most of the time y", not "and sometimes y"
I wonder if in terms of use it is still more often a consonant than a vowel just because you is such a common word.
When is w not a vowel? I mean i just used it twice and now three times and it was always a vowel?(4)
@@SmashingCapital w was not a vowel in the majority of its instances in your statement. You provided six unique words; when, vowel, twice, now, was, and always. Of those six words w is only a vowel in vowel and now
My f*cking first name has Y as a vowel, and it is a strange name so I sometimes hear people say it as a consonant. People even sometimes use the wrong vowel sound...
Twyndyllyngs is the longest word in English that doesn't contain one of the five vowels (AEIOU). It comes from Welsh and is obviously rare, but it does appear in the Oxford English Dictionary.
It turns out that "twyndyllyng" (singular) is a 15th century spelling of the word "twinling," which means, in modern English, "twin."
Something about how slightly pissed off he is this entire video leads me to believe this video is the culmination of years of frustration
Thanks for giving me another tool for my know-it-all toolbox
If it's vowel phonemes... (and we're counting syllabic consonants) then 'purpled' maybe? Or 'wonderful' if you say it weirdly XD
Great video again!
yeah there was a longer version of this video where I went into this, but I decided to stick to this one thing just because it's a particular pet peeve of mine
@@kklein As a French speaker, considering as a vowel is natural for me (plus IPA /y/, even though that's somewhat unrelated), but most of my classmates in the UK just don't understand how it could possibly be a vowel since the 'a e i o u & sometimes y' mantra was never taught in English schools
@@CasualConlanger ikr, it annoys me to no end. My native language is Swedish where 'y' is always a vowel so I've always seen it as such too.
@@kklein If English didn't represent a post-alveolar affricate, we wouldn't have this problem.
If you're a Kiwi you could argue it's sixty-six
1:06 "Hey, john, PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSST."
You videos are really good
The fact that my Name is Rhythm
I was surprised by the title
Bcz from the childhood i was listening the same thing that my name is the longest word without a vowel
Some people say Y is *always* a vowel because its "consonant" sound is just a quick "ee eh" (long E followed by short E) sound.
Well that's not true, otherwise I'd be saying yes with two syllables!
That is, a glide.
I guess to them, is /jiɛu/.
What I’ve been taught in primary school about my language (not English and far from it) is that it’s not letters that are vowels and consonants, but sounds. Letters represent sounds for sure, but adjectives “vowel” and “consonant” describe sounds. Which makes absolutely all the sense. And that is coming from a language that is phonetic unlike English and doesn’t have one letter representing a million different sounds.
With that definition, the question doesn’t really make sense. I mean, even by your logic, isn’t ‘n’ in “nth” representative of a vowel schwa?
You've got it! That's the correct take-away from this video :D
The letter "n" in "nth" would represent /εn/ (the open-mid front unrounded vowel followed by the alveolar nasal consonant), but other than that you're exactly right. Native English speakers are usually taught (incorrectly) that "vowel" refers to letters. This way, they can more easily understand which of the language's many sounds are vowels as opposed to consonants. Because of this, even those of us who know what "vowel" and "consonant" really mean will often use those words to refer to letters for convenience. So, really, the question is asking what the longest word without vowel _letters_ is.
This is very interesting. But does that mean (please bear with me for this, I'm a layman) that you can't have a word without vowels? Doesn't psst also have a vowel sound? Or no?
@@usedtobegood1184 It depends on how you pronounce a word in a given dialect. So psst might have a vowel (pronounced [pəst] with a short schwa, for instance), or it might not (pronounced [pst]). But if you pronounce a word without a vowel, one of the consonants is said to be "syllabic," and acts as the nucleus of the syllable it's in, in place of a proper vowel. So the word psst, pronounced [pst], has a syllabic /s/.
@@gavinwilson5324 thx for the correction, I’m not good with phonetics
My name is Rhythm and I no longer feel unique
Even in Pre-School, I always thought Y being a vowel only _sometimes_ was incredibly stupid.
I was taught “a, e, i, o, u.” In a British school I go to.
Also, “psst” does have it’s own definition, look it up
Same here, but the TH-camr's point still stands, even if it wasn't properly explained (ie, what is a vowel) y in some cases acts as a vowel.
In the French language, the "Y" is certified as a vowel, it is considered a more complicated "I", and it is called "igrec".
on l'utilise surtout dans les mots provenant de l'anglais ou d'autres langues (yoyo,rugby) , mais bon pour un non-francophone difficile de savoir si on met un y ou i dans un mot car c'est exactement le même son. un peu comme 'o' 'au' 'eau' 'aux' 'eaux' 'os', os est un des pires mots de la langue francaise. Un os des os.
sinon c'est effectivement clairement une voyelle
It's "i grek", which means "Greek I"
@@DonutMaster56 I thought it was connected, but yeah the letter comes from the Greek
@@quenting4885 on l'utilise presque jamais, sauf pour remplacer le "I" dans certain mot, comme le verbe payer, le "Y" sert en faite à relier deux syllabes, on peut dire je te paie, ou je te paye, la prononciation est différente içi.
I was always told that Y is basically a double "i" lmao
I knew that Y is sometimes a vowel, but your video taught me two things:
1) This lesson is less common abroad, and
2) Nth is probably the longest word without a vowel.
Total joykill
"Strengths": Nine letters, one vowel, one syllable. It makes a good trivia question.
In German, when young kids first learn about vowels in school, they are taught only the basic 5: "A, E, I, O, U". Ä, Ö, Ü and Y are added to the list later and without much fanfare. Y is almost always a vowel in German, yet it's not taught as a vowel right away, and I don't know why.
My guess is that it’s not native to German (in that it appears solely in loanwords)
@@nexygamer6409 hmm... Interesting theory, and there's some truth in that it occurs mostly in loanwords, but those loanwords are usually of Greek origin and have been used within the German language since before German spelling became standardised.
it's not though.? growing up it always has been a,e,i,o,u (plus the umlaute) never ever heard anything else.
I have yet to see a "Y" in German. Maybe I have, but it's only been a year.
@@dannypipewrench533 Mostly in words originating from Greek, so Typ, Polyp, Tryptichon, Ypsilon, Koryphäe, mysteriös, polyphon etc. The non-vowel version is in Yacht, Yak, Yoga.
I grew up with “a, e, i, o, and u, and sometimes y and w.” Which makes, some sense in hindsight, lumping the semivowels with the vowels.
Clicked this video because it told you the word in the thumbnail instead of using clickbait.
I grew up with "A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y and W". Though W only seems to be a vowel in like two Welsh loanwords ('crwth' and 'cwm'), so it was probably only added because it rhymes.
don't forget pwn
It's the vowel in "ewe," that's the main example I could think up.
@@doomyboi is it really now? :x
@@4rumani its pronounced "yoo" and e's have a bad habit of not speaking up in english. I didn't make the rules
@@doomyboi
e sound then a w sound
"ew"
the second e may be silent but the vowel sound is definitely not just "from the w"
comp. old English eowu /eo.wu/
shows where the sounds are coming from
This is why people annoyingly say Welsh has too many consonants in its words. Because w and y are used to spell vowels in Welsh, but English speakers can’t tend to fathom y being a vowel, let alone w.
[j] and [w] are such weird consonants. Like, aren't they just what happens when you transition from [i] and [u] to another vowel? Can you even pronounce [j] and [w] _without_ ending up saying [jə] and [wə]? I *need* answers!
@@nuvaboy I mean theoretically you could pronounce /iə/ and /uə/ not as [jə] and [wə], But I feel like it'd still become [ijə] and [uwə] or [iʔə] and [uʔə].
I mean, There are words like "Aml", Which only has one vowel in writing, But is usually two syllables, And I've even heard pronounced like "Amal", With a seemingly unwritten 'A', While I think people do mostly say that because of 'Y' and 'W' being common vowels, I think it's also partially due to syllabic consonants (Or unwritten vowels) as here, Or even due to the large number of "Double Letters", Like 'Ll' or 'Ff', Which are less common in English as they aren't distinct letters (Although they are both still used, As in "Teller" (Or "Still" right there), Or "Riff".).
@@rateeightx you might be right on this one! I'd conclude [j] and [w] are anatomically vowels that happened to have gained the quality of consonants by their use
Crwth is the longest word without vowels that I can think of.
I live in the uk and i somehow remember when i was like 5 that teachers always told me that Y could be a vowel but as it is inconsistent so is generally a consonant.
I still don't think you answered the questions as "nth" is not pronounced [nθ] but is pronounced [ɛnθ] with [ɛ] being the vowel. "psst" is also of indeterminate length, with its minimum length being 3
there's no e here
But that's part of the whole play with the fact that the question is very malformed and impossible to answer correctly: "nth" doesn't have any vowel letters, but it's pronounced with a vowel, but that's the problem with the question.
@@FernieCanto try pnbsdfbrlkdfhgkjdfhlgk-th
On a tangent, voiced consonants can sometimes substitute for vowels. In Chinese, 死 ("death") is pronounced /sz̩²¹⁴/.
Wasn't the question "longest English word SPELT without a vowel" though? According to that, even if it pronounced with a vowel, as long as the vowel isn't spelt (as if it were an abjad) it should still count.
Or at least I think so, not 100% sure XP
I remember watching Pointless and there was a question about countries with only one vowel in their names. One of the apparently correct answers was... Kyrgyzstan :)
I remember there was this one show on PBS back when I was growing up that had a vowel jingle that basically went AEIOU and sometimes y is a vowel too, and I specifically remember that because it rhymes and sounds cool it stuck with me
in my language vowels are letters that can sound by themselves. a,i,u,e,o. any other letter cant sound without their help. the sounds are: a like in "ah", i like in "link", u like in "glue", e like in "reign", o like in "grow".
Ridhm, shi, happi, mith
"w" can also be used as a vowel in English, in words like "crwth". It's in the name of "w" that it can be a vowel, "double-u".
Thats the name of an instrument, the name is swedish right? That's not really english.
@@TopOfAllWorlds It's a word borrowed from Welsh, but it is an English word, as much as "guitar" (borrowed from Spanish) and "piano" (borrowed from Italian) are English words.
No the double u refers to the fact is could be written either as a double u or a double v in the past, in the end the writing with two v's won out but the name that won depends on the languages, it has nothing to do with the sound though
@@TopOfAllWorlds it's not even close to swedish, swedish doesn't use c except in ch or in loanwords, it never uses w as a vowel, and it doesn't use th either, literally no part of the word looks at all like swedish if you even have basic knowledge of how the language works, you literally just need to read the wikipedia page and you'll know how ridiculous thinking "crwth" is even remotely similar to being swedish in any way is
This is what swedish actually looks like:
Hur mår du? Hur är det (med dig)? Läget? Och med dig?
How do you get from that to crwth?
@@reda84. English didn't have the sound "v", so the letters "u" and "v" were used interchangeably to mean the sound "u". "Double u" could be written as "uu" or "vv". The writing "vv" won out, but it's still supposed to be "double u", not "double v".
Languages that say "double v", like French and Spanish, didn't have the letter "w" to begin with. When they borrowed "w" from English, they called the letter the way it's written, "vv".
And then we have German, where "v" sounds like the English "f" natively and "w" represents the voiced version of "f", namely the English "v", but the Germans don't call it "double v".
Only one teacher ever taught me this, and I think it was by accident, but I remembered the vowel rulings as a kid as:
I O U A E - Y?
(I owe you a 'E' - Why?)
John: *asks a simple question*
K Klein: WHAT'S THE MEANING OF LIFE!?
There's a reason that we Americans came up with the "a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y." Even other iterations of this same thing include w as it can act like a vowel too!
Didnt know it wasnt like that in other english speaking countries
Sometimes W plays the role of a vowel too. Only when it's used for a "oo" sound, like in the borrowed Welsh word, "qwm," or when it's saddling up with the end of another vowel to create a diphthong, like "cow" or "bow" (where it ends in an "oo" sound). This is an extremely technical situation, however.
w is just u
change my mind
this entire video is so salty i love it
As a Rhys here:
Yeah, y is a vowel.
I learned “… and sometimes y and w”
Rarely used, but w makes the oo sound (as in boo) in the word cwm pronounced koom. The word is borrowed from Welsh but is in the English dictionary and is acceptable in Scrabble.
Although I wonder if this take is more popular with phonetics, due to the w being frequently used as part of a diphthong like mow, saw, drew… we don’t say the wuh sound at the end of these words. But orthographically I am guessing w is a modifier of the preceding vowel?
Now for the y, you have the word my. Because it is the long i sound “eye”.
In rhythm, y is the short i sound, as demonstrated in this video.
“Sometimes y” is easier to sell, “and w” is a tough bite to chew.
Come to think of it, maybe my mom told me that just to confuse me at a young age. Nobody needs to know this archaic rule. Lol
This concept is called semivowel. I learnt english as a second language and semivowel was the first few things introduced in my english class. It definately helps non-native speaker to learn pronounciation in a more systematic/logical way.
I learned sometimes w for a song about getting high, i thought it was a joke about being stoned. Huh, learn something new every day.
*And sometimes r*
I am sorry, but my brain need me to do this:
This is my kingdom cwm, this is my kingdom cwm
haha new way to spell cum
In any game where it is strategically relevant to treat vowels and consonants differently, Y is always best imagined as a vowel. Even if it sometimes acts like a consonant (or consonant modifier), just like the u in quick, the i in ferocious, or the e in halve.
did not expect to see you here
shoutouts to the ABC
feroucös
I’m really glad I watched this video!!
English isn’t my first language, and I was never taught that Y can sometimes act as a vowel :(
Yay! Another linguistics channel! More please!
Fun fact: in English, and in other languages, the letter 'w' can and does act like a vowel. It makes the consonant "wuh" sound, but also the "oo" vowel sound. An example is the word "crwth" (crooth), a Welsh instrument, but it also behaves like a vowel in words like "wore" and "wonderful" where it behaves as both a consonant and a vowel.
I assume crwth is a loan word from welsh so it may not count
I think written "w" is still being pronounced as /ʋ/ in both "wore" and "wonderful," which is itself still a consonant... a kind of wishy-washy consonant known as an approximant, but it's still more consonant than vowel. There are definitely words where it's written but not actually pronounced - see "awe" which can be transcribed as simply /ɔ/, or even "awry" where the word is pronounced more like /ə.ɹaɪ/. Written "w" can behave like a vowel at the end of words following a written vowel - like in "allow" /ə.laʊ/ or "bellow" /bɛ.loʊ/ or "ewe" - here it can be taken to be acting as the second vowel in a diphthong.
The one big use of written "w" as a vowel that comes to mind, though, is in the word "ewe," which is also a really weird word because the first "e" is representing a consonant and the second "e" isn't really representing anything: /ju/
@@doomyboi In "wore" and "wonderful" it doesn't have the typical "wuh" sound (I can't type phonetics). It behaves as both a consonant and a vowel by having the half-vowel "oo" sound that leads into the following vowel. It's called a glide. Still very much both a vowel and a consonant.
This makes sense only because of the letters name implies it. Double U. The fact it makes a oo sound lends better evidence since o and u can sound quite similar at times.
@@generalgrievous2202 It's a loan word but as there is no English equivalent it is now part of the English lexicon. It's in the dictionary.
Nth also has a vowel in it, it is pronounced with a eh sound in the front
I can’t believe people actually thought rhythm didn’t have a vowel 😭
The arguments I have in my head
I think the overall lesson should be that pedantry is useless and definitions are pointless if they're not particularly useful. It's fun as an intellectual exercise, but reality is always more complex than a simple prescribed set of rules.
There's a coherent argument to be made that the "L" in words like "battle" is acting as a vowel, depending on dialect. Interesting that "nth" only gets off scott free here because the "N" makes both a vowel and a consonant sound.
This is such a specific conversation lmao
Me who speaks both English and French: - *rit en français*
(laughs in French)
- *I would never do that mistake*
- *and yes Y is a vowel*
Funnily enough, while 'rhythm' is always spelled with the (in this case) vowel [y], it can be pronounced without any vowel sound. If instead of pronouncing it as the usual /ˈɹɪ.ðəm/ (ri-tham), you could contract it into ɹ̩.ðəm/ (R-tham), /ˈɹɪ.ðm̩/ (Ri-thm),or even just the mono-syllabic /ɹ̩ðm̩/ (rthm) if you consider the r and m as syllabic consonants that you can let ring out as long as you want just like vowels. Try it out by going rrrrrthm, or rythmmmm.
Other examples include "rural", "purple" and "ribbit" (the sound a frog makes)
Have fun!
mate /r̩ðm̩/ isn't monosyllabic, you used two syllabic diacritics
either way the vowel is still there, just reduced to a schwa
Ryþyms
when the US teaches English right, and Britain teaches English wrong
_something’s wrong, I can feel it_
Funny how there are some mistakes native speakers make that can be easily spotted by an English lerner.
You are correct. We are taught in the US that when Y makes a vowel sound, it is indeed a vowel...
at least for English the consonant idea makes sense (even though i'd still wager that it more often signifies a vowel almost solely thanks to the still productive adjective formation in -y and all those adverbs)
but i remember being taught it was a consonant here in bloody German! i mean, we don't even spell "yacht" with it, so _why_ (pun not intended but gratefully received) is a letter that almost exclusively stands for a rounded (sometimes unrounded) high front vowel called a consonant here‽ it's complete bonkers!
0:32 thank you for including jamaicans, lol. we definitely have our own version of english
I remember when Rastamouse was on British TV a lot of people were really pissed off about it potentially teaching kids "wrong English". The show's in Jamaican English, and so many people consider it to just be "incorrect English" rather than a totally fine form of the language.
When I was in first grade we had a little interactive computer program to help us study English and there's was a whole song about how Y can be a vowel and it's ingrained in my memory
Nice!
I never knew that “and sometimes Y” wasn’t universal.
Unrelated but even though “Nth” isn’t spelled with a vowel, it’s pronounced with one of course. Meanwhile words like “purse” are spelled and pronounced with one, but the vowel it’s spelled with is silent, and the pronounced vowel is actually R. I believe most people probably realize this at some point, but forget. I think R vowel sounds are called R-colored vowels, and you can form R versions of I think any vowel sound. Try holding the “A” sound in “apple”, but then turn it into a R without dropping the A sound. You can make both at once and it sounds cool.
I feel like R should also be lumped with Y as “sometimes a vowel”. I guess there’s always a vowel paired with it, so it doesn’t serve a purpose unlike officially marking Y as “sometimes a vowel”, which would otherwise have words like “rhythm”.
If anyone finds errors in this please correct me
Then w too like in diphthongs - ow, aw, ew
@@kameliyaoppal9879 but in all of those you still pronounce the vowel and then afterwards the w, but maybe it depends on the accent
that or dipthongs are not what i remember they are
this doesn't apply in all dialects, though. in my non rhotic dialect, "purse" is pronounced with the r silent, not the u. ([pʰɜːs])
@@yanwato9050 huh, that’s interesting. Thank you for sharing.
/ɚ/ The rhotic schwa. There are cases where it is just a syllabic consonant, including "apple," but I personally consider most rhotic schwas like in "purse" to be more vowel than consonant. In general though, English doesn't distinguish between /ɚ/ and /ɹ̩/.
You used nth as an example of a word without a vowel, but your reasoning used for rhythms having a vowel contradicts this.
Also, If pronunciation is the only thing that matters, then you could make an argument for nearly any letter being a vowel.
ITS DIFFERENT EVERYWHERE! You can’t suddenly change what everyone is thought saying Y iS a VoWeL
Finnaly a educational videos makes sense to me
A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y is what I remember as a kid in American school. I didn't know that last part wasn't taught in Britain.
It is
As a first language Welsh speaker I still don't know why y isn't a vowel in English. Even w sounds vowel-like to me
It really is quite interesting when you think about it, /j/ & /i/ and /w/ & /u/ are basically the same sounds, But the former of each is a consonant while the latter a vowel, Because somehow the same sound can be either a vowel or consonant based on context.
@@rateeightx /j/ and /w/ are "approximants" (sometimes called "semivowels"), I wouldn't say that they're basically the same sounds (as the corresponding vowels).
@@Drazzz27 Not all Approximants are Semivowels though, Only a few, So-called because their pronounciation is _very_ close to that of a certain vowel. While they are indeed distinct _Phonemically_, They are almost the same _Phonetically_. Not exactly the same, Granted, The Approximants are usually shorter than their corresponding vowels, For example, But it's definitely close enough to notice. There's a reason /i/ and /j/ are often both represented by the same character, .
@@rateeightx > There's a reason /i/ and /j/ are often both represented by the same character, .
It mainly comes from Romans, who, feeling the obvious similarity between the pairs of sounds i/j and u/w, used the same symbol to denote them (I and V respectively).
> The Approximants are usually shorter than their corresponding vowels
I would say that the main difference is that the vowels are inherently static, while the (semivowel or glide) approximants are characterized by a quick dynamic movement of the tongue (accompanied by the jaw), which goes through the position of the corresponding vowel, slightly overshooting it, and back.
We have a lot of words without any vowels in the Czech language. We even have some tongue twisters without vowels the most famous of which is "Strč prst skrz krk", meaning "Push a finger through a throat."
He proved a thing we thought was wrong, well, correct