How many vowels are there in American English?

[birdog1960]

http://aschmann.net/AmEng/#LargeMap4Right. It depends. does the map coincide with your experience?

[BringBackFergy]

Interesting. I'm in the NW New England zone and the "a" sound for "scallops" is definitely soft here (scollops) whereas being from Buffalo, I still pronounce it with short "a" as in "scale"...scallops. I now have a quest to tell all of the NW NE zone how to pronounce scallops correctly.

[Keukasmallies]

Three: a, e, i

[DC Tom]

Three: a, e, i

 

"I" is a diphthong, a combination of "a" and "e". So technically then, only two.

[SageAgainstTheMachine]

There are two words in the English language, 'cwm' and 'crwth', in which the letter W is a vowel.

[/dev/null]

There are two words in the English language, 'cwm' and 'crwth', in which the letter W is a vowel.

 

pwnd

[BillsFanM.D.]

"I" is a diphthong, a combination of "a" and "e". So technically then, only two.

 

Correct though you may be....somewhere Bevis and Butthead are chuckling.

[mead107]

6 ?

[Keukasmallies]

Diphthong...? I thought Dick Jauron was the only diphthong in our area.

[The Big Cat]

Three: a, e, i

 

Oh, you.

[/dev/null]

Three: a, e, i

 

Don't forget sometimes y. So 3.5

 

There's that number again

[Guffalo]

6 ?

I agree, there are 6 vowels in "American English"

Stop trying to impress each other with feats of mental strength.

Edited May 7, 2013 by Guffalo

[ChevyVanMiller]

There are two words in the English language, 'cwm' and 'crwth', in which the letter W is a vowel.

 

Won a lot of Scrabble games with those two

[mead107]

So what Do I win?

[Shamrock]

Have you wondered about Australian English then?

I mean, there's "a" which can be heard as "Or" as in Or- stralia. Can be heard as "ay" as in Or-str-aylia. And finally be heard as "uh" as in Or-str-ay-li-uh.

 

 

 

Won a lot of Scrabble games with those two

 

I'm suspecting Welsh origins?

Edited May 8, 2013 by Shamrock