Do Words That Begin With A Vowel Have An Onset

Are the letters W and Y semivowels?

Actually they’re not semivowels, vowels, or consonants. The distinction between vowel and consonant applies to sounds, not letters. So the word happy contains two consonants and two vowels, one of which is represented by the letter (the pronunciation can be represented using the IPA as /ˈhapi/). In the word yappy (/ˈjapi/), however, the letter represents a consonant at the beginning of the word and a vowel at the end.Broadly speaking, we can of course say that certain letters usually (or exclusively) represent vowels, and thus call them vowels without too much confusion. This is why people call vowels in English: Strictly speaking, they’re not vowels; they just usually represent them. But not always. The letter , for instance, often doesn’t represent any sound directly at all, but simply indicates how to interpret a different letter, as in din and dine. Both words have only one syllable, but the final letter indicates what sound the represents.So where does this leave w and y? Well, in happy, straightforwardly represents a vowel. In yap, it represents a consonant, but it represents a particular kind of consonant called a glide or semivowel that has a lot in common with a vowel. The difference has to do with how syllables work. A syllable must have a nucleus; the nucleus of cat (/kat/) for instance is the vowel /a/. Sometimes a syllable can have a consonant as a nucleus, as in the second syllable babble (say it a few times to yourself fast; you almost certainly pronounce it something like /ˈbabl/ with no vowel in the second syllable). But generally, the nucleus is a vowel. All vowels can be syllabic nuclei, and only certain consonants can be. On the other hand, vowels can really only be nuclei; they don’t typically form the start (onset) or end (coda) of a syllable. But certain vowels have a consonantal version that can be used as syllable onset or coda. This consonantal version is called a glide or semivowel.So the consonant at the start of yap (IPA /j/) is like a version of the vowel at the end of happy (IPA /i/) that can serve in the onset of a syllable. The same goes for the consonant at the start of wet; it’s like a version of the vowel in booth or clue (IPA /u/) that can serve as the onset of a syllable. You don’t tend to find used to represent a simple vowel, except in a few Welsh loan words (like cwm), although it occurs as the second part of a diphthong (as in cow).

What is the reason behind the use of 'an' instead of 'a' before a word that start with a vowel letter?

Not exactly. “An” should always come before a noun that starts with a vowel SOUND. Spelling may or may not match that.So obviously, any noun starting with A, E, I, or O will definitely have “an” in front of it, because those letters don’t have any non-vowel possibilities. But what about U?Uniform, unicorn, universe, pretty much anything else starting with the “uni-” prefix will have an “a” in front of it, because the starting sound of the word is not a vowel, it’s a Y. A few vowel digraphs, especially EU (as in Europe or eulogy) behave the same way.Likewise, there are a lot of acronyms that are said by listing the names of the letters involved, like MP3 or RPG. The names of the letters M and R both start with vowel sounds (i.e. “em” and “ar”). So we would say “an MP3” or “an RPG.” For that matter, we have “an X-ray.”Finally, there are a lot of unvoiced H’s in English (some accents more than others). It’s going to be “an hour” no matter where you’re from, but some people might say “an historic moment” while others would (with a stronger H) say “a historic moment.”Remember, a/an is not a grammatical rule; it’s a phonetic one. Pronunciation trumps spelling.

Why does "how" start with an "H" when most interrogative words start with a "W?"

If you think about pronunciations, how, who, whose all start with an [h] sound.In Middle English, there was a lot of dialectal variation between /hw/ and /h/.The sounds /wh/ and /h/ eventually merged before rounded vowels, so who, how, whose, ended up with a [h], while where, why, what, which stayed [ʍ] or [hw].How in Middle English would have had a back vowel something like /hwu:/, as opposed to a diphthong with an unrounded onset.The word how just happens to be the only one spelled with only the letter , when all of those words merged /h/ and /hw/ in Middle English.Later, almost all dialects of English merged /ʍ/ or /hw/ with /w/ to just a voiced [w].

Why is singing a high note with a word starting with a consonant easier than that starting with a vowel?

I agree, but only if it’s done correctly. If you’re saying the first word of the phrase is starting with a consonant on a high note, that consonant (Ex. An “s” with a low placement such as in “Suzy”, not high like “Sissie”) should be started an eighth note length before putting the vowel directly on the beat. This “doubling” of the consonant relieves some of the sub-glottal air, gives you great diction, sets the correct low consonant placement, and gives you a nice supported kick directly on the first beat into a low vowel with the intent needed to move energetically forward.Vowel onset is different. To make the same supported attack of the phrase on a vowel means that you have to breath quickly in a low position with the throat wide open, then immediately kick out into your lower support directly on the beat, followed by a forward support through the phrase. This should give you a little glottal start but will mostly be supported by the lower support kick instead of too much pressure behind the glottis. Practice this onset so it doesn’t get to glottal or pushed. An aspirate start is also used in many cases, but I won’t cover that here.

Why can't Spanish words start with "St"?

The simple answer is that it is not permitted by the languages rules about what consonant clusters can exist. It is worth pointing out that it is not that spanish words cannot start with st. Spanish syllables cannot start with st. They also can’t start with sp, sn, sk or many other things.Spanish has a syllable structure. Its syllables consist of a nucleus, which is always a vowel, an onset, the first part of the syllable, can consist of one or two consonants. The coda, or final part of the syllable, consists of a consonant (two in specific cases). Only the nucleus is required.They syllable structure can be written (and copied from wikipedia) as follows:(C1 (C2)) (S1) V (S2) (C3 (C4))C means consonant, S means semivowel and V means vowel.Now, there are rules about what consonants C1 and C2 can be. C1 can be any consonant. C2 can only exist if C1 is a stop (/p,b,t,d,g or k/. Please note that these are IPA, not representative of the actual letters spanish uses to write those sounds) or /f/. C2 can only be /r/ or /l/.Less technically, that means that initial consonant clusters can only be formed with r or l as a second consonant, and only with certain consonants. Frio, blanco, trabajo are all allowed. But things like… “spaña” “spada” “strella” are not allowed. Instead, spanish essentially switches the initial s into a different syllable to make españa, espada, estrella. That is, es-pa-ña, not e-spa-ña.This rule is clear when you hear most spanish people speak english. They add an e before words with those irritating consonant clusters. They are unpronounceable, to people who have never learned to pronounce them. I learned english and spanish as a child, though, so I am perfectly able to do it. Some spanish people learn as adults, but the majority never seem to. It’s really hard.There is another question in all of this though. Why did spanish lose the consonant clusters with an initial s-? After all, latin had words like stella and stare. Italian has not added an e before any initial s.I admit, I don’t know the answer to this question. But I have wondered if it had something to do with sonorance hierarchy. This is a simplification, but usually in a syllable onset, quieter sounds such as t or p go before slightly louder sounds such as s or f. However, in many, many languages, s seems to be able to violate the sonorance hierarchy. It seems to me that somewhere along the line, spanish decided this was stupid. **to be taken lightly