diphthong
Also known as gliding vowel
thumb|American English pronunciation of "no highway cowboys" , showing five diphthongs:
AI overview
A diphthong is a single vowel sound in speech that actually contains two different vowel sounds blended together, like the "ow" sound in "no" or the "oy" sound in "boy." Diphthongs matter because they're a key feature of how languages like English are actually pronounced, and understanding them helps explain why words sound the way they do.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Article
55 sectionsContents
- Transcription
- Types
- Falling and rising
- Closing, opening, and centering
- Narrow and wide
- Length
- Phonology
- Sound changes
- Difference from semivowels and vowel sequences
- Examples
- Indo-European languages
- English
- Dutch
- Afrikaans
- German
- Standard German
- Bernese German
- Yiddish
- Norwegian
- Faroese
- Icelandic
- French
- Quebec French
- Catalan
- Portuguese
- Spanish
- Italian
- Romanian
- Irish
- Scottish Gaelic
- Cornish
- Welsh
- Czech
- Serbo-Croatian
- Uralic languages
- Estonian
- Finnish
- Northern Sami
- Semitic languages
- Maltese
- Sino-Tibetan languages
- Mandarin Chinese
- Cantonese
- Tai–Kadai languages
- Thai
- Mon-Khmer languages
- Vietnamese
- Khmer
- Bantu languages
- Zulu
- Austronesian languages
- Indonesian
- See also
- References
- Bibliography
thumb|American English pronunciation of "no highway cowboys" , showing five diphthongs:
A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech apparatus) moves during the pronunciation of the vowel. In most varieties of English, the phrase "no highway cowboys" ( ) has five distinct diphthongs, one in every syllable.