vowel
part of speech
noun (a vowel, vowels)
meaning for a pupil
1) A vowel is a speech sound made with the mouth open and the air flowing freely, like the sound in "cat" or "see". tree →
2) A vowel is also one of the letters a, e, i, o, u (and sometimes y) that stand for these sounds. tree →
sense in the lessons
Interpretation: Early Hebrew was written with consonants only, and the vowel points were added much later, as the text notes. The "mothers of reading" are letters that can stand in for vowels, and Sefer Yetzirah gives the "mother" letters a different meaning. In the primary lessons: In spelling and phonics lessons pupils sort letters into vowels and consonants, count vowels in a word, and learn rules such as "use an before a vowel sound". In word puzzles a vowel is often the missing letter. Phrases: vowel sound, short vowel, long vowel, silent vowel.
examples
- Note that the oldest MSS. copies of the "Sepher Yetzirah " have no vowel points : the latest editions have them. (Sefer Yetzirah, Westcott 1893) tree →
- Ginsburg asserts that the system of vowel polluting was invented by a Rabbi Mocha in Palestine about a.d. 570, who designed it to assist his pupils. (Sefer Yetzirah, Westcott 1893) tree →
- In usual Hebrew grammatical terminology, the term ‘mothers’ is reserved for the אִמּוֹת קְרִיאָה immot qeriʼah, ‘mothers of reading’ (whence Latin matres lectionis), the letters אהו״י Alef-Heh-Waw-Yod which can serve to represent either consonants or vowels. (Sefer Yetzirah, Sefaria community translation) tree →
- The word "dog" has one vowel. tree →
- A, e, i, o and u are the vowels. tree →
- "Rain" has a long vowel sound. tree →
- Every English word needs at least one vowel sound. tree →
- In "sky" the letter y works as a vowel. tree →
- Put "an" before words that start with a vowel sound, like "an apple". tree →
- How many vowels are in the word "elephant"? tree →
- The teacher said the short vowel in "pin" changes to a long vowel in "pine". tree →
note
Countable: one vowel, two vowels. Starts with a consonant, so "a vowel". Trap: "an" depends on the vowel SOUND, not the letter: "an hour" (h is silent) but "a unicorn" (sounds like "you"). Y can be a vowel ("gym") or a consonant ("yes"). In counting problems, count letters a, e, i, o, u unless told y counts.
In the corpora
- A syllable is a beat in a word with one vowel sound; long words are read chunk by chunk, sand-wich.
- A vowel before the y: just add -s (day, days; toy, toys).
- Consonant + y changes to -ies (baby, babies); vowel + y just adds -s (day, days).
- Some old common words change their vowel or ending: mouse/mice, man/men, foot/feet, tooth/teeth, goose/geese, child/children.
- The double letter is a guard that keeps the vowel short.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «vowel» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.