The Name of the U
Saul Epstein 
Sun, 11 Jan 1998 11:46:26 -0600

From: Rob Zook <rzook*informix,com>
Date: Saturday, January 10, 1998 3:54 PM

> At 11:08 AM 1/10/98 -0600, Saul wrote:
>
> >OK. But the only real reason that consonants have "names" is that
you
> >really can't pronounce a stop without a vowel before it or after
it.
> >Whereas with vowels you can. So while P in isolution could be
spoken
> >[puu] or [pii] or [p^] -- or [^p] -- U in isolation can be spoken
> >[u]. And therefore I don't know that we need different names for
the
> >vowels.
> 
> Well, I agree sort of. But if I say a [u], there's till going to
> be a stop in there somewhere. Just pronouncing the sound alone, it
> ends, it stops [u.].

You're confusing the common connotation of "stop" as "cessation" with
its narrower denotation as "restraint." The technical term,
"plosive," may be clearer. It doesn't refer to just any kind of
stoppage, but specifically to a complete obstruction of the pulmonic
air stream, an obstruction which is plosively released. Though
English speakers typically attach non-phonemic glottal plosives to
isolated vowels, that doesn't mean that vowels MUST universally be
accompanied by at least one consonant.

> Also, most languages have a naming scheme for _all_
> the letters, including the vowels.

True. Most of them use the pronunciation of the vowel in isolation as
its name. Including English.

> For example, in English, when I say 
> the letter [u] refering to it as a letter,  I say [yoo.]. It starts
with 
> a palatal voiced approximate, then the vowel, and ends with an
unvoiced 
> glottal stop.

That's correct except for the glottal stop. The standard
pronunciation of <u> ends with a [w].

> The same holds true with all the other vowels: [eyii.],
> [ii.], [ayii.], [oo.], [yoo.].

No, it doesn't. They are [ey], [iy], [ay], [ow], and [yuw], all the
most proper pronunciations of the "long" forms which the letters
represent. A as in "pay," E as in "penal," I as in "pie," O as in
"pony," and U as in "punitive," and "amputate," and "miniscule," and
"cute," and "refute," and -- if you're really, really British --
"tune," and "dune," and even "Kuwait."

--
from Saul Epstein
www,johnco,cc,ks,us/~sepstein
"Surak ow'phaaper thes'hi thes'tca'; thes'phaadjar thes'hi
suraketca'."
							-- K'dvarin Urswhl'at