Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
Wikipedia wrote:
In the Latin alphabet, the vowel letters are A, E, I, O, U, W (usually only in diphthongs), and Y
Basically, there are no English words that do not use vowels, let alone enough to make up a sentence. And since its doubtful that anyone here speaks Arabic, lets just drop it and say that there is no paragraph that can be formed using words without vowels.
I used to work on sentences without A, E, I, O or U in them. I found that alternate spellings of Norse mythological figures = win. E.G. Jwrmwngyndr, Nydhggr, Nyflhyym, etc. (Jormungandr, Nidhoggr, Niflheim).
Twyndyllyng is an old English word meaning "fraternal twin".
Using mmbossman's definition of a vowel, I propose the words
jth
kth
lth
mth
nth
Those are the ones most commonly used for mathematical terms (IE nth being pronounced "enth")
Basically, there are no English words that do not use vowels, let alone enough to make up a sentence.
A common thing taught in 8th grade grammar is syllabification of english words. For example data becomes "da-ta" I remember a rule saying that each syllable had to be broken up into a group of consonants and a vowel; i.e. each syllable have to contain a vowel.
I found an exception to that rule. Try syllabification of the word "rhythm." The second syllable has no vowel.
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
Interesting, I never thought about syllables like that before. I'm sure there are more, since English is such a mutt of a language, but an entire word without a vowel (that is not an acronym or something like that).
On another note, in the novel The Davinci Code (spare me the lectures on authenticity, please), one of the characters states that English is the perfect language because it is such a conglomeration of other languages, due to it's lack of ties to any church or religion. Interesting.
In the Latin alphabet, the vowel letters are A, E, I, O, U, W (usually only in diphthongs), and Y
I am not sure of what exactly they mean. It's the language that ultimately decides whether a letter is considered a vowel letter, since it also defines the relationship between letters and sounds. They may mean that these letters are most often defined as vowels in languages that use the Latin alphabet. However, what I learned at school was that A, E, I, O and U were the letters considered vowels in the English language.
Chamale wrote:
Using mmbossman's definition of a vowel, I propose the words
jth
kth
lth
mth
nth
Lol, those were good ones! I'll add them to the list.
DK64_MASTER wrote:
I found an exception to that rule. Try syllabification of the word "rhythm." The second syllable has no vowel.
I would just say rhythm as one syllable, not rhyth-m or rhy-thm.
In Czech, a sentence containing no vowels can be constructed. One such sentence is "Strč prst skrz krk" which means, stick your finger through the throat. I've heard that they have words with 7 or more consonants in a row.
Heheh, "TWYNDYLLYNGS" is the longest vowel-less word in the Oxford Dictionary...
I think "myrrh" has something special about it...maybe one of the very few that has no actual vowel sound or official vowels? Assuming stuff like "tsk", "hmmm" don't count.
Yeah, in IPA, myrrh is /mɜː/. I prefer to pronounce it with a fair amount of rhoticization, though.
Rhythm is an interesting one, though obviously the y is a semivowel. It's definitely two syllables, /ɹɪ'ðm̩/ by my guess.
Though you probably knew, 'data' is pronounced 'day-ta' in English (along with its singular word, datum.) :)
How many times can you say "the" in a single sentence and have it still make sense
An infinite amount of times? Just make a normal sentence and add a million nouns in it...(eg, "The dog, the cat, the ostrich, the tiger........etc.....had the party on the island")
How many times can you say "the" in a single sentence and have it still make sense
It depends on the definition of "make sense". For example, if AKA were answering this question, he'd just string all his posts from here and SDA together into one big run-on bullet train, with the cars connected by the word "although,".
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
That would make just a million of "the" words, and still at most half of the words in the sentence. You can improve the ratio beyond 50% by using nouns that begin with "the", such as the The Lonely Gunmen group, or something containing less non-the words.
Using "y" in a form that gets pronounced "i" (ee) could be considered cheating in the no-vowels challenge.
Why? The challenge was to create a paragraph that doesn't contain vowels, not one that doesn't contain vowel sounds.
mmbossman wrote:
On another note, in the novel The Davinci Code (spare me the lectures on authenticity, please), one of the characters states that English is the perfect language because it is such a conglomeration of other languages, due to it's lack of ties to any church or religion. Interesting.
Wouldn't English actually be the worst language by that reasoning since it has ties to all churches/religions of the languages it incorporates?
