vowel sound
Open vocal emission
A vowel sound is a speech sound produced with an open vocal tract, without significant obstruction of airflow—the sounds represented by a, e, i, o, u and their variants.
Consonant sounds, by contrast, involve some closure or restriction.
English spelling is notoriously inconsistent with its vowel sounds: the letter "a" alone represents different sounds in cat, cake, father, and about.
- phonemeMinimal distinctive sound unit
- syllableUnit of pronunciation
- pitchFrequency of sound
- toneQuality of sound
- mouthOral opening
open mouth · tongue · breath · speech · speech therapy · pronunciation · diphthong · resonance · articulation · throat · voice box · vocal cords · singing · accent · long · short · open · rounded
- phoneticsphonemes, phoneme, vocal folds, consonants, vibration
- languagelanguage, word, words, grammar, spelling
- syllablessyllable, syllabification, syllabication, syllable stress, stressed syllable