I’m in the process of laying out The Journal of Wordplay now, just deciding what goes where and how to format it. I’ll probably share some sneak previews of it soon, when things are a bit more settled. In the meantime, I thought I’d share a simple question I’ve been mulling over a bit:
Is the letter Y a vowel or a consonant in the word EYE?
This is the kind of thought you have after you read a lot of lipograms. In Georges Perec’s Jewels, Secrets, Sex, the letter E is supposed to be the only vowel included in the text. But “ey” words like “they,” “greyness,” “keys”—and, yes, “eyes”—are allowed. Christian Bök’s Eunoia uses only one vowel at a time, and leaves the letter “y” out of the “a,” “e,” “i,” “o,” and “u” sections entirely. Even words where “y” is clearly a consonant—like “yo-yo,” “yard,” “yet,” and “yurt”—don’t qualify for Bök’s purposes.
Some linguists would say that letters aren’t actually vowels or consonants—sounds are. Others would say that the “ey” in “eye” is a diphthong, a two-letter construction representing a single vowel sound that wouldn’t be represented otherwise. Most official sources like Merriam-Webster say that it’s a vowel in this case, though some consider it a consonant when it’s acting like this but also starting off a new syllable. Vowel in jaywalking and keyboard, consonant in kayak and Maya. Vowel in eye and also eyeglasses, since we don’t pronounce the latter as “I-ye-glasses.”
Still, the sound of “y” makes these judgments a little ambiguous. A “y”-consonant sound usually comes in naturally when you speak a long a, long e, or long i. “Maybe” rhymes with “baby,” even though “maybe’s” a has a y after it and “baby’s” doesn’t. So is the y in ay a redundant letter, like the c in back, or a silent letter, like the g in sign? Maybe, baby.
A list of words that consist only of vowels ? EYE, YEA, --etc. But what would be the
longest word or name (the usland mentioned in THE ODYSSEY, whose name I do
not remeber right now.
Louis Phillips