Vowel in Creek, the letter "V" stands for . There is not necessarily a direct one-to-one correspondence between the vowel sounds of a language and the vowel letters. Many languages that use a form of the Latin alphabet have more vowel sounds than can be represented by the standard set of five vowel letters. In English spelling, the five letters "A" "E" "I" "O" and "U" can represent a variety of vowel sounds, while the letter "Y" frequently represents vowels (as in e.g., "gym", "happy", or the diphthongs in "cry", "thyme"); "W" is used in representing some diphthongs (as in "cow")
Vowel breaking Vowel breaking In historical linguistics, vowel breaking, vowel fracture, or diphthongization is the change of a monophthong into a diphthong or triphthong. Vowel breaking may be unconditioned or conditioned. It may be triggered by the presence of another sound or by stress, or it may be triggered in no particular way. Sometimes vowel breaking is defined as a subtype of diphthongization; then, it refers to harmonic (assimilatory) process that involves diphthongization triggered by a following vowel or consonant. The original pure vowel typically breaks into two segments, and the first segment matches the original vowel and the second segment is