(no subject)
I read this article in The Roanoke Times yesterday about how the letter 'w' should be considered a semi-vowel. The author of the article said that when he was learning about vowels in grade school, his teacher said to recite them as follows: "a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y and w". He said he asked his teacher what words used 'w' as a vowel, to which she replied crossly that she didn't know. He didn't ask or think about it again for years, until he was listening to his daughter recite her vowels. He noticed the omission of 'w' as a semi-vowel, and began to question it again. His wife has a master's degree in english, and even she denounced his theory of 'w'. He scoured through the dictionary for hours trying to find a word that used 'w' as a vowel, and eventually he found one:
cwm (koom)
n : a steep-walled semicircular basin in a mountain; may contain a lake [syn: cirque, corrie]
I tried to find the paper this morning so I could credit the author for his amazing find, but I think my parents threw it out. If you wish to see the original version of this article, go to http://www.roanoke.com/archives/ and type in "w semi-vowel". The article will come up, but you have to register for the site and pay $1.95 for the full text.
cwm (koom)
n : a steep-walled semicircular basin in a mountain; may contain a lake [syn: cirque, corrie]
I tried to find the paper this morning so I could credit the author for his amazing find, but I think my parents threw it out. If you wish to see the original version of this article, go to http://www.roanoke.com/archives/ and type in "w semi-vowel". The article will come up, but you have to register for the site and pay $1.95 for the full text.