English words without vowels English words without vowels English orthography typically represents vowel sounds with the five conventional vowel letters , as well as , which may also be a consonant depending on context. However, outside of abbreviations, there are a handful of words in English that do not have vowels, either because the vowel sounds are not written with vowel letters or because the words themselves are pronounced without vowel sounds. There are very few lexical words (that is, not counting interjections) without vowel letters. The longest such lexical word is "tsktsks", pronounced . The mathematical expression "nth" , as in "delighted to
Romic alphabet the back unrounded vowels and the value of for IPA (but also for English "bird", in broad notation), Sweet's notation is essentially that of the IPA. Italic a takes its traditional shape, which would later be made distinct in the IPA. That is, italic a was , and italic ɐ, . Long vowels are written double. Nasal vowels with an italic nasal consonant letter, such as or (for French) . These are defined by Sweet as: The lax vowels are defined by Sweet as: The 1877 version of the Romic alphabet differed rather substantially from the 1892 version. It was