Is the letter Y a vowel or consonant? The Secrets of the Letter Y Sounds | English Pronunciation

Hello, students. My name is Alexandra. 

In this lesson, I am going to teach you  if the letter ‘y’ is a consonant or vowel. 

I know many of you already  know the five main vowels: 

a e i o and u

So how can ‘y’ be a vowel?

Well that's what I’m going to talk about today.

Also, I will give some homework and a short quiz at the end of the video.

So keep watching.

First, let's just do a review of what  a consonant is, and what a vowel is. 

The English alphabet has 26 letters. 21 are consonants and 5 are vowels. 

The letter ‘y’ is definitely  considered a consonant. 

Let's look at these words: 

year

Yes, it has that clear ‘y’ /y/ consonant sound.

yellow

yesterday

you

young

your

It has that unique /y/ consonant sound.

But it doesn't always have that consonant sound.

Let's move on.

‘y’ can make many vowel sounds.

Let's look at the board.

‘y’ can make the long e sound.

Like ‘candy’ or ‘monkey’.

‘y’ can make the short i sound.

Like ‘gym’ or ‘bicycle’ or ‘system’.

‘y’ can make the long i sound. Like ‘my’ or ‘sky’.

‘y’ is considered to be a vowel if:

Number one.

The word has no other vowel like ‘gym’.

All English words need at least one vowel.

So ‘gym’ has ‘y’ as the vowel.

Or ‘my’ or ‘sky’.

Number two.

The letter is at the end of a  word or syllable like ‘candy’. 

It's at the end. Or ‘bicycle’. 

‘bicycle’ has three syllables ‘bi-cy-cle’.

The ‘y’ is at the end of the second syllable.

‘bicycle’

Or three, the letter is in the middle of a syllable like ‘system’.

‘system’ has two syllables.

‘sys-tem’

It needs a vowel.

So ‘system’ The ‘y’ is the vowel.

All right. Let's move on.

Is ‘y’ a vowel?

Well ‘y’ is more commonly pronounced as a  vowel, but officially, it is a consonant. 

But it is very common for English  teachers, when teaching the vowels,  

to teach ‘a e i o u and sometimes y’.

Please check out the homework and quiz in the description below the video.

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See you in the next video. Bye-bye.