Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 December 25

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December 25

New questions

1. Why does English not have many words beginning with Y followed by consonant?
2. There are words in English where Y is pronouned as vowel at the beginning of word (like ytterbium) and words where Y is pronounced as vowel before another vowel (like cyan). But are there any words in English where Y is pronounced as vowel at the beginning of word before vowel? Fo example, yellow could also be pronounced as [ɪ̯eloʊ̯].
3. Is there any language which has diphthongs differing only in backness, like [oø̯], [iɯ̯] and [æɑ̯]?
4. Is there any language where Ÿ is common letter and can appear in beginning of word?

--40bus (talk) 15:09, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

2: not sure what you mean; yellow is pronounced as [ɪ̯eloʊ̯] --2A02:5080:1301:7E00:907:AA79:55C1:4523 (talk) 16:30, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

1. Because that's not the way English spelling works: Initial /ɪ/ is written with 'i', or in some words with 'e'. Ytterbium is an international word taken from a Swedish placename, so is not required to fit in with English spelling. ColinFine (talk) 16:48, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

In Middle English, which had no standardized spelling, writing a word with a vowel ⟨y⟩ followed by consonant was common enough: ycleyed, ydolatrie, yfelnyss, ykel, ylike, ymaginacioun, yndyngnacion, ypocras, yrchoun, ythe, yvoyre, ywynnen, yyng. In the last one, the consonant ⟨y⟩ is followed by the vowel ⟨y⟩. The lexicographers introducing a more standardized spelling have steered away from this, but the archaic spelling ythe for an archaic term was copied by some authors into Modern English, presumably for effect. As to vowel ⟨y⟩ followed by a vowel there is Middle English yuel , but this example (apart from not being English) is cheating, because the ⟨u⟩ here is actually a consonant.  --Lambiam 18:19, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

3: Languages that might qualify are Faroese (with /ʉu/), Korean (with /ɰi/), Thai and Khmer. --Theurgist (talk) 20:17, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

German also qualifies with [ɔœ̯] being the most common realisation of what Wikipedia transcribes as [ɔʏ]. Libhye (talk) 21:49, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

(3) Old English has both long [æːɑ̯] (spelled ēa) and short [æɑ̯] (spelled ea). Its other diphthongs are [i(ː)y̯], which differs only in rounding, and [e(ː)o̯], which differs in rounding and backness, but none of its diphthongs differs in height. (4) The only entries in Wiktionary that begin with ⟨ÿ⟩ (not counting the entries for the letters Ÿ and ÿ themselves) are ÿüz and ÿüzüñ, both of which are Turkmen and both of which are obsolete spellings of words now spelled with ⟨ý⟩. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:33, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Incidentally, according to the table at Turkmen alphabet#Evolution, the capital letter equivalent of ⟨ÿ⟩ was not ⟨Ÿ⟩ but ⟨¥⟩ (the yen symbol), as illustrated by ¥emen (obsolete spelling of Ýemen). —Mahāgaja · talk 18:56, 28 December 2022 (UTC)