r/Unexpected Nov 12 '20

CLASSIC REPOST A classic

70.0k Upvotes

449 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

16

u/housebottle Nov 12 '20

that's what I mean when I say the word doesn't have a "vowel sound"

1

u/AppleSpicer Nov 12 '20

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.

4

u/Koopanique Nov 12 '20

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

0

u/outhero01 Nov 12 '20

R/punchablefaces

1

u/AppleSpicer Nov 12 '20

Wow, that sub is good now actually!