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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!fortune!grw
From: grw@fortune.UUCP (Glenn Wichman)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Words without vowels?
Message-ID: <3871@fortune.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 26-Jul-84 13:06:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: fortune.3871
Posted: Thu Jul 26 13:06:35 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Jul-84 20:47:34 EDT
References: <3009@rabbit.UUCP>
Organization: Fortune Systems, Redwood City, CA
Lines: 20

bip.


	Before we go any further with this discussion, could someone
    please define "vowelless"?  If we just mean no vowels in the word
    as it is spelled, it's kind of a meaningless conversation --
    at least in English, spelling is related only tangentally to
    phoentics.  If we mean phonetically no vowels, there are certainly
    a lot of words don't have them (you don't NEED a vowel to make a
    word), but I can't think of any English ones (or German, or Japanese).
    Unless you don't count "r" phonetically as a vowel.  I mean like
    the vowel sound in words like "fern", "bird", "worm", and "urn".
    Phonetically, that's a vowel though.

	On another subject, I have a housemate who claims that 'w'
    is never a vowel in non-welsh words, whereas I claim that the
    'w' in "down" is a vowel.  Any linguistics experts willing to
    settle this one?

						-Glenn