Are vowels and consonants primarily letters or sounds?

Answer 1

To me they're both letters and sounds. Letters are the written symbol of a sound. We hear the sound and associate it with the corresponding letter and we see the letter and associate it with the corresponding sound. This is taught to us, and then there are languages with other letters and sounds. A E I O U are the vowels as letters and the consonants are the rest of the alphabet. As you read the letters, you hear the sounds in your head joined up to make words, although I reckon sound came first.

Answer 2

Amon Ra's etymology is faulty. consonant is from Latin, and as a prefix con- means "with". Sonant means "sounding", so "consonant" means "sounding with". Vowels are not just transitions between consonants either.

Amon Ra: of course sounds are older than Latin. I never said they weren't. The word consonant, however, is not. Anyway, come on: your etymology ("by using a consonant you know the sound") doesn't even make sense.

Answer 3

con (as in ken, canny & Kno) = know

sonant (as in sonic & sonar) = sound

so by using a "consonant" you "know the sound".

Vowels decide the transition between them, so are also sounds.

So yeah, I think they are primarily "sounds".

Besides the same "sounds" are often represented by different "letters" in other languages, which leaves sound as being the "constant" characteristic.

Actually Garik; sounds are much older than "latin", my definitions are based upon observation of many languages throughout time. Look at the words "con" appears in, "with" is lame. And not that it matters, but I really am Amon Ra. I find bantering with you guys to be very amusing.

Answer 4

that's the difference between orthography and phonology -

letters are the graphic representations of the sounds of a language........

vowels and cononants are letters because we say

a,e, i, o, u are vowels - vowels can have lots of different sounds which implies that they are not the ame thing as the sounds they represent......

vowel sounds are made by having the mouth completely open with no parts - such as tongue, teeth and lips connecting -

by contrast - consonantal sounds are made by parts of the mouth touching or whatever....

consonants also can have more than one sound .... (voiced and unvoiced - hard and soft)

Answer 5

They are primarily sounds.

Answer 6

They are primarily letters.

Sono soprattutto lettere.