Comments on: The Alphabet

By: aeiousometimesy&w

aeiousometimesy&w — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:03:22 +0000

THANK YOU!
*shakes head*

By: Tulion

Tulion — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:03:33 +0000

Shallow and pedantic! My words exactly!

By: B

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 05:04:18 +0000

do you even know what the alphabet is?

By: keelyRAE

keelyRAE — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:21:37 +0000

Y is only sometimes a vowel, what are you talking about?

By: ryan

ryan — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:22:08 +0000

where is z

By: ray

ray — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:10:37 +0000

Koff Koff

“tremendously important letters Æ, Ø and Å.”

WTF

By: Alive in th 80's

Alive in th 80's — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 03:22:21 +0000

Not one person mentioned this was also a popular song in 1984 (or 83′ – cant remember exactly). Look it up kids, Ebn Ozn.

I liked your grapgh!

By: Klimatax

Klimatax — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 11:37:02 +0000

greens, I´m with you.

I thought/think this was/is a great one. Everybody knows what it means, but explaining a joke removes the whole funny bit. SO STOP DOING IT!!

By: Shiny

Shiny — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 06:42:36 +0000

Yep. Obviously a vowel.

Sooo… I suppose it makes sense, grammatically, that “you” is a word consisteing of… all vowels?

By: Somebody Else

Somebody Else — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:14:47 +0000

You’re forgetting L and R.

Hey, you drag in Welsh, I drag in Polish and Serbocroatian. Or, should I say – Srpski-Hrvatski?

Just put all approximants in the middle. After all, they’re approximants because they approximate vowels, right? That’s why they can carry syllables, and that’s why they have the highest liquidity of all the consonant classes.

[/Linguistics geek]

By: Somebody Else

Somebody Else — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:10:27 +0000

I had to think about this, because not only is Y obviously a vowel, which English is just as obviously abusing, but the chart also forgot the tremendously important letters Æ, Ø and Å.

By: Phlip

Phlip — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:18:44 +0000

The vowel in “own” is a diphthong: /oUn/ (SAMPA, ’cause I think IPA is making my comments not show up…). The [o] from the “o”, and the [U] from the “w” (“w” is pronounced as [U] when used as a vowel, in languages that have it).

“W” is as much a vowel in “own” as, say, “Y” is in “buy”… you wouldn’t say “No, the vowel in ‘buy’ is ‘u’”, would you?

Even in English now, “w” represents [w], which is a semivowel form of [U], which is what “w” represents when used as a vowel… just as “y” represents [j], a semivowel form of [I], which is what “y” represents when used as a vowel.

In short: Thanks for playing, come back when you know what you’re talking about.

By: greens

greens — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:46:54 +0000

Isn’t the point of all these sites an easy amusement? If you’re so bored with it why do you come to a site that uses big pictures with goofy captions on each picture? Go read something educational or at least something with more than a one line caption if you’re expecting something more than just a quick laugh…

By: greens

greens — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:41:58 +0000

psst… next time use copy and paste, then you won’t look silly trying to correct people when you can’t even use the correct words yourself.

By: greens

greens — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:38:58 +0000

….and that would be when y is considered a vowel….

By: asda

asda — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:58:07 +0000

W is SOMETIMES a vowel. The “w” in “own” makes a u sound. u=vowel

By: Chal

Chal — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:13:55 +0000

In British English, it’s spelled “monopolise”. You’re failing at every flavour of English.

By: butterflysigh

butterflysigh — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:00:03 +0000

fail.

By: butterflysigh

butterflysigh — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:59:10 +0000

ah, but we just make it a double-u. vacuum.

By: butterflysigh

butterflysigh — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:57:29 +0000

you broke my spell check.

By: butterflysigh

butterflysigh — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:55:15 +0000

seconded.

By: January

January — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:17:17 +0000

Your usage of a lower case ‘a’ is incorrect. America is a proper noun, and thus should be capitalized in all instances.

By: January

January — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:15:15 +0000

How about knowing basic grammatical rules of the language you are attempting to monopolize?

Allow me to fix your comment.

Higher population means nothing. American English is just a bastardized version of English and, being English, I can monopolize the language, as it is mine to monopolize. So suck a stick.

Note how we capitalize the first letter of each sentence. Also take heed of the period between ‘nothing’ and ‘American’, which artfully separates a run-on sentence into two proper sentences. Please remember to put parenthetical phrases, such as ‘being English’, between commas, as they are not essential to the meaning of your sentence.

Of course, I have most likely committed some error in usage of the language myself, as I am correcting another. C’est la vie.

By: dude

dude — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 02:12:16 +0000

***masturbates***

By: psychodarko

psychodarko — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:16:45 +0000

higher population means nothing american English is just a bastardized version of English and being English i can monopolize the language as its mine to monopolize. so suck a stick

By: Syzygy

Syzygy — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:59:56 +0000

that’s Welsh, not English

and my moniker is an English word with no vowels…

It’s when all the planets in the solar system line up

By: Shancey

Shancey — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:18:24 +0000

Caption?

By: Ev

Ev — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:27:17 +0000

I don’t think that’s the explanation for W, because really there are not very many consonants that are pronounced by completely closing the mouth. And if you are talking about one part of the mouth touching another, H is in that same category. I think W can be a vowel in other languages, but in English, Y is the only crossover letter AFAIK.

By: doremi

doremi — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:09:03 +0000

uh-oh. gauntlet thrown. vowel warz!!1!!!!1

By: !kca

!kca — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:22:35 +0000

this^

By: !kca

!kca — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:21:57 +0000

If you’re a native English speaker & you DO get this & lol, you are easily amused.
*yawn*

By: !kca

!kca — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:19:41 +0000

just like this graph
where’s the lol?

By: jhuger

jhuger — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:43:49 +0000

Maybe we should count the number of people in England who speak the language, then count the number of people in the U.S. who speak the language and see which is higher.

Now if you’ll excuse me I need to call tech support in India.

By: Cap'n Amaranth

Cap'n Amaranth — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:15:28 +0000

You had to think about it?

By: pbr

pbr — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:58:05 +0000

What about “pwnd”?

By: Jocasta

Jocasta — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:25:07 +0000

That was my thought…

By: raptorkid

raptorkid — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:21:22 +0000

and entirely boring

By: Nulono

Nulono — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:19:31 +0000

crwth, cwm

By: Chal

Chal — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:07:05 +0000

It’s also the case in Canadian English. And when you use “your” instead of “you’re”, your argument of a monopoly on English is pretty weak…

By: psychodarko

psychodarko — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:26:56 +0000

if your a native English speaker then its not called kindergarden that’s only if you speak american. <– also please note the lower case ‘a’ in america

By: Marcos

Marcos — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:56:29 +0000

Hi, you forgot that both “y” and “w” are semivowels.

By: jjmblue7

jjmblue7 — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 06:54:30 +0000

I think W can be part of a vowel sound, but not a vowel itself, like R with its r-controlled vowels. Y, on the other hand can be a vowel itself, such as making the long E sound in Happycat.

By: Diane

Diane — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 04:57:37 +0000

HA!!!! best comments ever ^_^

By: fizzle

fizzle — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 04:10:46 +0000

How are R and L vowels? Are they really? Explain. *curiosity is piqued*

By: fizzle

fizzle — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 04:05:58 +0000

Seconded.

By: Cellie

Cellie — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 03:54:35 +0000

win

By: observer

observer — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 03:45:35 +0000

Too long. Not reading.

By: observer

observer — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 03:43:59 +0000

What about “cwm”?

cwm (plural cwms)

1. A valley, especially one created through glacial action.

By: Andrea

Andrea — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 03:30:04 +0000

What defines a vowel, anyway? Are we talking acoustically or orthographically? Y takes the place of a vowel in most spelled words, but when we say them, “y” doesn’t always have its own sound–sometimes it does, like the Spanish j, as in “yellow” (I’d call this the cardinal “y” sound in English) but the sound is not present in “baby”… or Ypsilanti (which I looked up and I indeed pronounced correctly on my first try). So I guess what “y” being only sometimes a vowel means that sometimes it takes place of a vowel orthographically because it will sound different in a different word or place, compared to “b”, for example, which will, in English, always sound like “b”.
And R, L and W get their own special category as “semivowels” or “glides”.
(and as a tidbit, I recorded myself saying “yeah” “ye” “you” and “yaw” and in the spectrograms it produced, my “y”s definitely looked like vowels.)
And for anyone who REALLY cares, which you probably do if you’ve read my whole comment, the sound at the beginning of “yellow” is, in the International Phonetic Alphabet, classified as a palatal approximant and represented by the symbol “j”. The symbol “y” corresponds to a rounded front high vowel (we don’t have it in English, but it would be like the vowel in “see” (eee) but with your lips rounded).

By: Chels

Chels — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 02:04:03 +0000

uhhhhh FAIL?