Letters Edit

Phonology Edit

Main article: English phonology The letters A, E, I, O, and U are considered vowel letters, since (except when silent) they represent vowels; the remaining letters are considered consonant letters, since when not silent they generally represent consonants. However, Y commonly represents vowels as well as a consonant (e.g., "myth"), as very rarely does W (e.g., "cwm"). Conversely, U and I sometimes represent a consonant (e.g., "quiz" and "onion" respectively). W and Y are sometimes referred as semivowels by linguists.

History Edit

Diacritics Edit

Main article: English terms with diacritical marks Diacritic marks mainly appear in loanwords such as naïve and façade. As such words become naturalised in English, there is a tendency to drop the diacritics, as has happened with old borrowings such as hôtel, from French. Informal English writing tends to omit diacritics because of their absence from the keyboard, while professional copywriters and typesetters tend to include them.[8] Words that are still perceived as foreign tend to retain them; for example, the only spelling of soupçon found in English dictionaries (the OED and others) uses the diacritic. Diacritics are also more likely to be retained where there would otherwise be confusion with another word (for example, résumé (or resumé) rather than resume), and, rarely, even added (as in maté, from Spanish yerba mate, but following the pattern of café, from French). Occasionally, especially in older writing, diacritics are used to indicate the syllables of a word: cursed (verb) is pronounced with one syllable, while cursèd (adjective) is pronounced with two. È is used widely in poetry, e.g. in Shakespeare's sonnets. J.R.R. Tolkien uses ë, as in O wingëd crown. Similarly, while in chicken coop the letters -oo- represent a single vowel sound (a digraph), in obsolete spellings such as zoölogist and coöperation, they represent two. This use of the diaeresis is rarely seen, but persists into the 2000s in some publications, such as MIT Technology Review and The New Yorker. An acute, grave, or diaeresis may also be placed over an "e" at the end of a word to indicate that it is not silent, as in saké. In general, these devices are often not used even where they would serve to alleviate some degree of confusion.

Proposed reforms Edit

See also Edit

Notes Edit

References Edit

Further reading Edit