There ya go...Originally Posted by ynaffit
The sounds /y/ (or IPA /j/) and /w/ as in "yes" and "west" are glides or approximants. They are consonant versions of the vowels /i/ and /u/. In English spelling, <y> is sometimes used to spell /i/. <w> is used to spell /u/ in "cwm" and possibly some other Welsh borrowings.
Whoa, they taught you that?Originally Posted by IamJen
There ya go...
I know I must not be the only American here who learned the chant re: "A E I O U, sometimes Y and W". Our teachers could never give us a w word though. My dad, English geek extraordinaire though, knew of cwm, a word which comes in handy in Scrabble occasionally.