can you form more than 5 words without any of the vowels in english?

Question

a e i o u should never be used in the words

Answer 1

svetlana is the only one to get this right so far. In ALL the words people are listing the Y is a vowel! Either your grade school teachers taught you incorrectly, or you simply forgot the addition "and sometimes y" (which should ALSO add "and sometimes w"!)

The confusion comes from the fact that Y is SOMETIMES used to mark a consonant sound. Actually, that happens ONLY at the beginning of a syllable, as in "yes" or "be-yond". Everywhere else in Modern English (in the middle at the end of syllables) the letter Y indicates a vowel-sound. That fact that it sounds just like the sounds marked with the letter "i" should make that obvious. Thus "bi-" and "by" sound exactly the same. Or compare all those words that end with a y that changes to i when you add certain endings --like sky > skies -- and notice that the y and i in these two words make exactly the same sound.. a VOWEL sound!

By the way, what people miss even more often is that the letter "w" may ALSO be used as a vowel. It marks a consonant at the beginning of a syllable (web, bewitch), but at the END of a syllable it stands for the same sound as is made by the vowel "u" -- compare "how" and "house", "few" and "fuse", "paw" and "pause". The reason w is often overlooked is that it never stands ALONE as a vowel in English, but is found only combined with another vowel (a combination called a "diphthong"), that is, in "aw", "ew", "ow". But in Welsh words the w-vowel sound CAN stand alone, as in "cwm" (pronounced "coom").

Once you see this, you find that there are NOT many words in English that lack a vowel. But there are a few --basically, 'interjections' or words that are attempting to imitate a sound. Here are a handful that you will commonly find:

brr
grr
tsk
sh
psst
hmm
mm-hmm
tsktsk

Now you might not find many of these in your typcial dictionary (though "sh" is usually there). Some debate whether these are all "real words", but it seems to me that's overly fussy. They are widely used and recognized. They also show that you CAN pronounce a word without a vowel, if it has a consonant sound that does not completely stop the airflow (try: l, m, n, r, f, s, z, sh, th)

You could actually add a number of others -- beginning with "bzz" (though "buzz" is more common) and "zzz") -- but it's hard to know exactly where to draw the line. (One other problem is that it's often hard to tell how many s's, final r's, etc. to include.)

For an entertaining list of many consonant-only words (mostly made up) which have actually appeared in literature check out
The Dictionary of Consonant-Only Words by Craig Conly -http://www.oneletterwords.com/consonant/index.html.
(He lists 105 words under "T" alone! )


Definition of consonant and vowel:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/consonant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonant

http://www.webster.com/dictionary/vowel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel


Compare http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxword00.html

Answer 2

The basic mistake in many of those quotes is that they treat Jehovah as if it's a Hebrew name, when it is really an English form of a Hebrew name. In fact, no biblical Hebrew name is pronounced the same in English it is pronounced in the standard Hebrew text, excepting perhaps Ruth. 'This pronunciation is grammatically impossible. The form "Jehovah" is a philological impossibility.' This is so wrong it's a joke. What does grammar have to do with the English form Jehovah? It is clearly not a philological impossibility since people have no trouble pronouncing Jehovah. I think I found on the Internet the source of your quotes. The page I found is clearly a case of special pleading. Note also most quotes are from Jewish sources, and the Jews are the ones who traditionally have tried to hide God's name. The original pronunciation of the divine name is unknown. Forget the name - the ancient pronunciation of Hebrew in general is unknown. For example, note what this Hebrew grammar says: "Hebrew grammars reflect a great deal of variety in the systems of vowel pronunciation that they recommend. Since it is impossible to reconstruct with confidence the manner in which Hebrew was pronounced in antiquity, this Grammar opts for a pronunciation system based on modern Hebrew. Learning to Read Biblical Hebrew, Robert Ray Ellis, 2006 As for the consonants, it is not true that J didn't exist in any language until just a few hundred years ago. J and Y are linguistically similar, and today many Spanish speakers use a J in place of the Y in certain words. I recently heard a Spanish speaker pronounce the English word you as Jew. Likewise, W and V are linguistically similar. Hebrew scholars are split as to whether Hebrew's Waw/Vav was originally pronounced as a W or a V. But really, it is pointless to quibble over the exact vocal intonation of a word or name in an ancient language, when no one knows exactly how that language was pronounced. Even if the pronunciation of the divine name was known for a certainty, that's no reason to change the English pronunciation Jehovah. Hebrew has one pronunciation for God's name, English has another. The same goes for other names - like Jesus. If the Bible stated that God's name must be pronounced a certain way, then let me assure you, Jehovah's Witnesses would pronounce it that way. But it doesn't. Hence, it's not scriptural to insist on a certain pronunciation. Furthermore, proponents for Yahweh in English still pronounce it incorrectly (if standard Hebrew pronunciation is the goal). People pronounce it YAH-way. Yet, the Hebrew should be pronounced yeah-WEH - that is, the first syllable has a short A and does not receive the emphasis, and the second syllable is stressed with the E being the E in wet. Also, the first H is pronounced, whereas the second H is silent.

Answer 3

Hey, guys, as far as I know (a teacher of English), there are 6 vowels in English - A, O, U, E, I, Y. Y is also a vowel.
So whatever words there are in English that have no vowels must be some sort of abbreviations. Hmm.

Answer 4

Lynx
Tryst
Flyby
Nymph
Rhythm - Longest english word that can be created without any vowel in.

Answer 5

QT - cutie
R - are
CT - city
H8 - hate
W8 - wait
4 - for
(text messaging codes)
If you are talking about words that only use the vowels y or w...
by, ply, fry, why, sky, try, Styx, cwm, pry, skry... those are just a few easy ones.

Answer 6

Why try?

They must have changed the English language........because I wasn't taught Y to be a vowel. AEIOU

Answer 7

rythm
my
dry
cry
shy
why
sly

if u observe the words, they all have 'Y' to give the sound, so we see that since it gives sound to the word, the alphabet 'Y' is used often

Answer 8

Every word in your Question is full of VOWELS.
Good attempt.

Answer 9

My
Why
Shy
Dry
Cry
Fly
Fry
By
Ply

Answer 10

my
cry
try
shy
fly
fry