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by tough
378 days ago
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same, i is a vowel, y is a consonant TIL: When y forms a diphthong—two vowel sounds joined in one syllable to form one speech sound, such as the "oy" in toy, "ay" in day, and "ey" in monkey—it is also regarded as a vowel. Typically, y represents a consonant when it starts off a word or syllable, as in yard, lawyer, or beyond. |
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While for older English words there is a complex set of rules mentioned by another poster for determining whether Y is a vowel, as mentioned by yet another poster, English also includes more recent borrowings from languages with other spelling rules for Y.
At its origin, Y was a vowel, not a consonant. It was added to the Latin alphabet for writing the front rounded vowel that is written "ü" in German, "u" in French or "y" in Scandinavian languages.
It is very unfortunate that in English, and in some other languages that have followed English, Y has been reassigned to write consonant "i". This has created a lot of problems due to the mismatches between the spelling rules of different languages. The rule that is most consistent with the older usage would have been to use J for consonant "i", like in German and other languages inspired by it. However in many Romance languages the pronunciation of consonant "i" has changed in time, leading to other 3 phonetic values for the letter J, like in English (i.e. Old French), like in French/Portuguese and like in Spanish.
So the result is that both for Y and for J there are great differences in pronunciation between the European languages, and the many words using such letters that have been borrowed between languages create a lot of complexity in spelling rules.