Concerning the letter y or i griega or ye
Is the letter y in the Spanish language considered a vowel. I heard or read somewhere,a long time ago, that on ocassions the y is used as a vowel.
My sincere thanks to one and all.
14 Answers
Thank you Lazarus 1907,samdie,calvo viejo.
lazarus1907 said:
Gus said:
1.A word has as many syllables as there are vowels.
Plain wrong! A syllable can have one, two or three vowels. The word "buey" has one syllable, and it would have had one syllable if it had been written as "buei".
Gus said:
1.A There are five vowels in Spanish languagea,e,i, o, u.The letter Y sometimes is used used as a vowel.
When the Y is at the end of a word, and it follows another vowel, its sound is identical to the "i".
>
In the study of linguistics, there are almost an infinite number of vowels, and the "y" in English can be either a consonant or a vowel. Your choir director was aware of the similarities, but probably because he studied phonetics when he was in college. For instance: in the word "yellow," the 'y' acts as a consonant (to be specific, it's phonetic classification is a "palatal voiced approximate," and its symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is a [j]), but then in words such as "many" (IPA: [i]) or "psychology" ([aj], [i]), it can act as one or more vowels (can be a diphthong).
In Spanish, the y when it makes the "ee" sound (IPA: [i]), it is a vowel. When it comes at the end of a word, it is the second half of a diphthong, which can be symbolized in more than one way (using a small vowel, or the [j]). So, depending on the linguist you're talking to, it can be both in Spanish as well.
The wikipedia article on phonetics is really good http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipa.
Parecious
And, of course: half-serious, hehe.
Eddy said:
Just as an aside, I believe the word facetious in English is the only word in our language to contain all our vowels and not only that, it contains them in the correct order, aeiou. Does anyone know of any more.
abstemious
arsenious
Just as an aside, I believe the word facetious in English is the only word in our language to contain all our vowels and not only that, it contains them in the correct order, aeiou. Does anyone know of any more.
thank you Steve
steve said:
It was and probably is taught in the US that the vowels are a,e,i,o,u and sometimes y, which I have always thought was wrong. Y in English and Spanish has always seemed to me to be a vowel that sometimes functions as a consonant(sort of). Y at the beginning of a syllable is nothing more than an long e sound in english or an i sound in Spanish. just like an initial w is nothing but a long u sound. a few rehearsals with a choir director who knows anything teaches you that.
>
It was and probably is taught in the US that the vowels are a,e,i,o,u and sometimes y, which I have always thought was wrong. Y in English and Spanish has always seemed to me to be a vowel that sometimes functions as a consonant(sort of). Y at the beginning of a syllable is nothing more than an long e sound in english or an i sound in Spanish. just like an initial w is nothing but a long u sound. a few rehearsals with a choir director who knows anything teaches you that.
Gus said:
1.A word has as many syllables as there are vowels.
Plain wrong! A syllable can have one, two or three vowels. The word "buey" has one syllable, and it would have had one syllable if it had been written as "buei".
Gus said:
1.A There are five vowels in Spanish language a,e,i, o, u.The letter Y sometimes is used used as a vowel.
When the Y is at the end of a word, and it follows another vowel, its sound is identical to the "i".
So, concerning the y as a vowel ,is this correct?
1.A word has as many syllables as there are vowels. There are five vowels in Spanish language
a,e,i, o, u.The letter Y sometimes is used used as a vowel.
Thanks to each one of you for your time and knowledge.
CalvoViejo said:
Many years ago I mentioned to one of my friends that words do not usually end with "y" in Spanish.
There aren't many: hoy, doy, voy, muy, ley, rey, buey, convoy, ay, paraguay, monterrey, carey, and other words from foreign origin, like pijibay, ñandubay, pacay, urunday, ideay, verdegay, malangay, ubajay, jajay, lay, palay, velay, quillay, sinamay, quilmay, nanay, suquinay, paipay, vacaray, taray, noray, huacatay, patay, tatay, yatay, quibey, urundey, hockey, sangley, mamey, siboney, póney, yarey, ocrey, merey, pejerrey, virrey, visorrey, sotorrey, jersey, yérsey, vacabuey, matabuey, tentabuey, jagüey, maguey, juey, yóquey, vichy, timboy, morrocoy, tipoy, troy, pitoitoy, rentoy, henry, tory, picuy, huy, pijuy, muimuy, tepuy, aguaribay, cay, chancay, amancay, escay, gualanday, guirigay, barangay, chachay, achachay, carapachay, diay, ajajay, balay, achalay, alalay, chuflay, gulay, botamay, anay, ananay, añañay, Adonay, ampay, espay, curupay, caray, bacaray, garay, cambray, candray, fray, gray, arrarray, contray, ensay, atatay, estay, contraestay, guay, aguay, colliguay, ayayay, bey, abey, dey, curujey, caney, araguaney, aguapey, copey, guararey, frey, grey, Guernesey, batey, catey, caracatey, detienebuey, güey, curamagüey, coy, coicoy, bocoy, choconoy, acroy, choroy, cuy, cacuy, cuicuy, cocuy, cucuy, chuchuy, espumuy, coletuy.
I started to answer this, but by the time I saved my response, Samdie and Lazarus had already answered. I defer to them.
The letter y in Greek was a vowel, actually.
In Spanish, it is pronounced as /i/ at the end of a word, e.g. rey (/rei/), but as a consonant otherwise, e.g. reyes (/re'es/)
I think that one can arrive at a satisfactory answer by asking "are there any words in Spanish that consist solely of a consonant and 'y''" The answer for English would be "Yes, but bloody few!" (I'm switching to British English for the moment) and, even so, we normally only accord it the status of "semi-vowel". To the best of my knowledge there are no such words in Spanish. Further, many of the words that are derived from Greek and which retain the "y" in English (to remind us or their Greek origin) are, in Spanish, spelled with the "Latin-i" e.g. psicología, sinónimo.
