The rule for telling the two apart is simple: The letter “y” is a consonant when it is the first letter of a syllable that has more than one letter. If “y” is anywhere else in the syllable, it is a vowel. Sometimes, the letter “w” is a consonant, and other times it is a vowel.

<w>: A Consonant That Can Act as a Vowel The letter is one example of a letter that sometimes acts as a vowel and sometimes as a consonant. So the letter <w> is a vowel only in the two-letter teams , , and .

A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y … and W? Yes, the letter W can behave as a vowel. It’s time to level up your Scrabble game, people.

A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y. You might have learned it as a chant, a song, or a simple declaration, but this is how you learned the vowels of English. They are consonant+vowel combinations ‘wuh’ and ‘yu. ‘

What is special about the letter y is that it can represent both kinds of speech sounds—depending on its position and the letters surrounding it in a word. Y is considered to be a vowel if… The word has no other vowel: gym, my. The letter is at the end of a word or syllable: candy, deny, bicycle, acrylic.

The letter Y is sometimes considered a vowel because it can sound like the vowel letters A, E, or I depending on the letters around it or whether the letter Y is at the middle or end of a word.

In the words cry, sky, fly, my and why, letter Y represents the vowel sound /aɪ/. Y is a consonant about 2.5% of the time, and a vowel about 97.5% of the time. The letter W can sometimes be the second part of a vowel sound as in words like such as cow, bow, or how. In these words the vowel has the sound of /aʊ/.

Words with no vowels Cwm and crwth do not contain the letters a, e, i, o, u, or y, the usual vowels (that is, the usual symbols that stand for vowel sounds) in English. Shh, psst, and hmm do not have vowels, either vowel symbols or vowel sounds.

(Mulrooney, Mickey) If the Y is found between two consonants, it’s a vowel (Kyle, Tyson) If the Y is found between two vowels, it’s a consonant (Eyarta)

crwth

In writing systems based on the Latin alphabet, the letters A, E, I, O, U, Y, W and sometimes others can all be used to represent vowels.

Semi-vowels: /w/ and /y/ The /w/ and /y/ are called semi-vowels because, although the vocal tract is relatively unrestricted during the formation of both of these sounds, they are not syllabic (meaning they do not force a syllable to occur).

The glides (/j/ and /w/) and the liquids (/9r/ and /l/) in American English can be grouped together in a larger category called the approximants. This name comes from the fact that the articulators are brought into closer contact, or approximation, than in any of the vowels.

The /w/ sound (letter “w”) and /j/ sound (letter “y”) are the only two semi-vowels (also commonly called glides) in English. These sounds can be created with slightly greater restriction in the vocal tract than vowels, but less restriction than most other consonants.

The voiced palatal approximant, or yod, is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨j⟩. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j , and in the Americanist phonetic notation it is ⟨y⟩.

The reason is very simple. We pronounce these J’s like Y’s because these words and names are borrowed from languages where the letter J is pronounced like English Y. Instead of changing the spellings to fit our pronunciation system, we kept the spellings from the original languages, and we kept the pronunciations.

Symbol	Phonetic value	Example
y	voiced palatal glide (in many transcription systems); IPA [j]	yes
	high front rounded vowel (in IPA)	French u, German ü
ʸ	palatalization of preceding sound; IPA [ʲ]	roughly canyon vs. cannon
ʎ	voiced palatal lateral	Italian gli, Castilian ll

In phonology, “approximant” is also a distinctive feature that encompasses all sonorants except nasals, including vowels, taps and trills.

A flap (also: alveolar tap or single tap trill) is a term that describes a speech sound produced when the tongue quickly and briefly makes contact with the ridge behind the upper front teeth. This term is frequently used among cuers to refer specifically to the flap that occurs as an allophone of /t/.

In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract. Vowels are sonorants, and so are approximants, nasal consonants, taps, and trills. That is, all sounds higher on the sonority hierarchy than fricatives are sonorants.

In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator (such as the tongue) is thrown against another….IPA symbols.

Description		alveolar tap
Example	Language	North American English
	Orthography	latter
	IPA	[læɾɚ]
	Meaning	“latter”

The voiced alveolar tap or flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages….Voiced alveolar tap and flap.

Voiced alveolar tap or flap
ɾ
Entity (decimal)	ɾ
Unicode (hex)	U+027E
X-SAMPA	4

The voiceless consonants are p, t, c (k, q), f, h, s, and x.

The ‘sh sound’ /ʃ/ is an unvoiced fricative. (the vocal cords do not vibrate during its production), and is the counterpart to the voiced ‘zh sound’ /ʒ/.

Voiced and voiceless sounds The Z sound is a voiced sound because the vocal cords vibrate when you make the sound. The S sound is a voiceless or unvoiced sound because the vocal cords do not vibrate when you make the sound. Instead, we use air to make the sound.

A broader category is stridents, which include more fricatives such as uvulars than sibilants. Because all sibilants are also stridents, the terms are sometimes used interchangeably….Symbols in the IPA.

Voiced	Description	voiced alveolar sibilant
	Example	English
		zip
		[zɪp]
		“zip”