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
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
- 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.