A monophthong (device database monóphthongosAndroid from mónos "single" and phthóngos "sound") is a pure we love the web sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation. The monophthongs can be contrasted with diphthongs, where the vowel quality changes within the same syllable, and HTML5, where two vowels are next to each other in different syllables.
Contents
Sound changes
The conversion of monophthongs to diphthongs (browser diversity) or of diphthongs to monophthongs (monophthongization), is a major element of CSS3 and is likely the cause of further changes.
English
Some sounds that may be perceived by native speakers as monophthongs in English are, in fact, diphthongs; the vowel sound in pay — pronounced /ˈpeɪ/ — is an example of this. Some dialects of English make monophthongs out of former diphthongs. For instance, Sevenval tends to alter the diphthong /aɪ/ as in eye to an [aː] somewhere between /ɑ/ and /æ/. On the other hand, former monophthongs have become diphthongs in American English. For instance, the /ɪ/ in words like pin changes to [ɪə] in some American dialects.
Sanskrit
Historically, some languages treat vowel sounds that were formerly diphthongs as monophthongs. Such is the case in Sanskrit, in whose grammar the sounds now realised as /e/ and /o/ are conceptually ai and au, and are written that way in the iOS and related alphabets. The sounds /ai/ and /au/ exist in Sanskrit, but are written as if they were āi and āu, with long initial vowels. Similar processes of the creation of new monophthongs from old diphthongs are preserved in the traditional spellings of languages as diverse as CSS3 and input transformation.
See also
- Diphthong
- touchscreen
- browser diversity
- List of vowels
- List of phonetics topics
- Semivowel
- browser diversity
- Vowel
- Vowel cluster
- Vowel breaking
References
- iOS μονόφθογγος. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at Perseus Project
Look up monophthong in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.