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Linguistics

Notes /j/ is a glide from /:/ and /w/ is glide from /u:/ Though these sounds are vowel-like in their articulation,
they are classified as consonants because they do not function as the nucleus of any syllable.
/j/
1. The soft palate is raised, shutting off the nasal passage of air. The front of the tongue assumes
a position for a vowel between close and half-close and quickly glides to the position of the
following vowel. The vocal cords vibrate, producing voice. /j/ is thus a voiced unrounded
palatal semi vowel.
The lips are normally spread or neutral during the articulation of /j/but there may be anticipatory
lip rounding if the immediately following vowel is a rounded vowel as in you, yawn etc.
Spellings: /j/is represented by the letter y as in yes, yard, beyond, yellow. The letters u, eau, ue,
ew and iew are pronounced /ju/, as in unit, beauty, due, dew, view.
/w/
2. The soft palate is raised to shut off the nasal passage of air completely. The back of the tongue
is raised in the direction of the soft palate to the position for a vowel between close and half-
close and the lips are rounded. Then the tongue quickly glides to the position of the following
vowel. The position of the lips also changes depending upon the immediately following vowel.
The vocal cords vibrate, producing voice. /w/ is thus a voiced rounded labio-velar semi-
vowel.
Spellings: /w/is represented by
(i) the letter w as in west.
(ii) the letters wh as in why.
(iii) the letter q or g + w as in queen, language.
(iv) the words, one, once, suit also have the sound of /w/.
Distribution: /w/ occurs initially as in west (initial) and queen (middle). It does not occur finally.
(i) Most Indians do not have /w/ as a distinct phoneme in their English. Instead, they generally use
a voiced labio-dental frictionless continuant (phonetic symbol [ b] the sound represents the Devnagari
symbol(c). Most Indians use [V] even in place of the fricative /v/. There is no distinction in their
speech between minimal pairs like
wine vine
west vest
wail vale
why vie
went vent
wile/while vile
whale vale
/w/ can be acquired easily by trying to say /u:/ and then quickly moving on the vowel.
Various English sounds are (shown in a classified manner in the table given on the next page (from
Daniel Jones’s book ‘An Outline of English Phonetics’):

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