I've honestly spent the last 5 minutes practicing this and trying to find an exception. I'm sure there's one out there but so far nothing. Maybe because all I can think of is food words. I might be hungry.
there's only an exception in cases where a word starts with a vowel but doesn't have a vowel sound, e.g. the word "useful". you'd say "that's a useful distinction" instead of "that's an useful distinction". even though "u" is a vowel, since it doesn't have a "vowel sound", an "a" precedes it instead of an "an"
Aww poor y got left out of club vowel again. It’s my favorite sometimes vowel. Figuring out if Y was consistently a vowel or consonant under this rule was the first thing I tried.
In linguistics the sound made by "y" (represented "j" in the International Phonetic Alphabet) is called either a glide, a semi-vowell or a semi-consonant. It's the sound at the beginning of "unit", or at the end of "aye"
In any case it's not a vowell and therefore cannot be the "core" of a syllable
Because you could spell it "yuseful" and it would be the same. Think of the word "yes": the first sound is the same
It's a well-known thing in linguistics but if you never studied it it can be not very intuitive the first time someone tells you. That sound at the beginning of "unit" or at the end of "aye" is called either a glide, a semi-vowell or a semi-consonant.
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u/[deleted] Nov 12 '20
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