Vowels and Consonants

This blog provides information to help authors write better short stories. Fans of fiction can use this information to help them increase their understanding of this art form.

“The alphabet is made of vowels and consonants. The vowels are A E I O U and sometimes Y. All the rest of the letters are called consonants.”

This is my best recollection of a lesson given to my first grade class in 1952. The teacher was Sister Mary Denise. I was six years old. Our teaching nun used repetitive drills and flash cards to teach us reading and language skills.

I remember watching our teacher at the front of the class as she showed us different words on five by seven cards and telling us to “sound it out.” She dominated the room in her black-and-white habit that included a coif (tight fitting cap) and veil. Picture the nuns in “The Sound of Music” for a visual.

Naming the vowels and consonants was simple enough, but I was always at a loss why the letter Y was only sometimes a vowel. Also, it was many years later that I learned the specific use of the two types of letters.

I personally feel Y is a vowel most of the time.  It carries an I sound into words that don’t have another vowel. Examples are my, why, try and shy.  An exception is the word gypsy that doesn’t have an I sound and uses two Ys, both vowels. The letter Y is all over the place as a vowel. We need to identify it in the list of vowels as usually Y, not sometimes Y.

In its use as a consonant, letter Y starts or ends a word as in the few examples of yes, young and yoke.  The twenty-six letters of our alphabet put vowels and consonants together to create the sounds of our English words. They work differently to create the sounds of our words.

A consonant sound is produced by a partial or complete obstruction of the air stream from our lungs into our mouths. A vowel sound comes from the open configuration of the vocal tract.

Every word in English must have at least one vowel to produce the sounds of our words. Consonants guide us to use our lips to create explosive sounds such as P and B. Our teeth and tongue make the consonant sounds of S and F.  The many combinations of consonants and vowels make the sounds of our English language, according to Sister Mary Denise.

Here is an interesting fact about the number of letters our language uses that Sister Denise never mentioned. Our alphabet consisted of twenty-four letters for more than 700 years after the Roman Empire created it. In approximately 100 AD, the letters Y and Z were added from the Athenian Greek alphabet. That allowed bringing more Greek words into the Roman language.

I want to single out the importance of two more letters—S and X, both consonants.  More English words begin with the letter S than any other word. Conversely, the letter X begins the fewest number of English words.

This blog includes components of our language that I could expand to many pages. As authors, it’s important we explore our words and always keep learning about our craft of communication through creative fiction. 

Thank you for reading this blog. Another one will appear here in about a week. Until then, visit my web page at www.joevlatino.com