Letter (alphabet) of sounds to make words. A letter is classed as either a consonant or a vowel, depending on how its sound is produced (vowels are "a", "e", "i", "o", "u", and sometimes "y" and "w"). The basic Roman alphabet is used by about one hundred languages, with slight variations. Some versions contain as few as twenty-one characters, some as many as thirty. Letters have specific names associated with them, which may differ with language, dialect, and history. "Z", for example, is usually called "zed" in all English-speaking countries except the US, where it is named "zee". As elements of alphabets,
History of the International Phonetic Alphabet closely connected that the whole might be treated as a single sound", were noted as able to be represented with a tie bar, as in . Palatalized consonants could be marked by a dot above the letter, as in , "suggesting the connexion with the sounds i and j". The 1921 "Écriture phonétique internationale" introduced new symbols, some of which were never to be seen in any other booklet: The book also mentioned symbols "already commonly used in special works", some of which "have not yet been definitively adopted": It also introduced several new suprasegmental specifications: It recommended the use