Diphthong: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 18:18, 28 June 2014

A diphthong is a vowel whose quality changes significantly in one direction during its pronunciation.

"When the medial phase shows an audible change of quality, with the change consistently progressing toward a single target, as it were, then the sound is classified as a diphthong." (Laver 1994:146)

Examples

[ai] in English wine, [au] in English house.

Comments

Often phonologists do not agreee whether a tautosyllabic sequence of two sounds is a diphthong or a sequence of vowel plus glide, or glide plus vowel.

Subtypes

Origin

From Greek di-phthongos 'two-sound'. The word is first attested in English in the 15th century.

Related terms

monophthong (a vowel whose quality does not change)
triphthong (a vowel whose quality changes twice during its pronunciation)
diphthongization

References

Laver, John. 1994. Principles of phonetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Link

Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics

Other languages

Czech dvouhláska
German Diphthong (de)

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 ===Other languages===
-German [[Diphthong (de)]] Czech [[dvouhláska]]
+Czech [[dvouhláska]] <br>
+German [[Diphthong (de)]] <br>
 {{dc}}
 [[Category:Phonetics and phonology]]