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# vowel

«vowel» in Mova's school dictionary: **a speech sound made with the mouth open and the air…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

noun (a vowel, vowels)

### meaning for a pupil

1) A vowel is a speech sound made with the mouth open and the air flowing freely, like the sound in "cat" or "see". [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/vowel/#m1)

2) A vowel is also one of the letters a, e, i, o, u (and sometimes y) that stand for these sounds. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/vowel/#m2)

### sense in the lessons

In spelling and phonics lessons pupils sort letters into vowels and consonants, count vowels in a word, and learn rules such as "use an before a vowel sound". In word puzzles a vowel is often the missing letter. Phrases: vowel sound, short vowel, long vowel, silent vowel.

### examples

- The word "dog" has one vowel. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/vowel/#x1)
- A, e, i, o and u are the vowels. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/vowel/#x2)
- "Rain" has a long vowel sound. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/vowel/#x3)
- Every English word needs at least one vowel sound. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/vowel/#x4)
- In "sky" the letter y works as a vowel. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/vowel/#x5)
- Put "an" before words that start with a vowel sound, like "an apple". [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/vowel/#x6)
- How many vowels are in the word "elephant"? [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/vowel/#x7)
- The teacher said the short vowel in "pin" changes to a long vowel in "pine". [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/vowel/#x8)

### note

Countable: one vowel, two vowels. Starts with a consonant, so "a vowel". Trap: "an" depends on the vowel SOUND, not the letter: "an hour" (h is silent) but "a unicorn" (sounds like "you"). Y can be a vowel ("gym") or a consonant ("yes"). In counting problems, count letters a, e, i, o, u unless told y counts.

### In the corpora

- [A syllable is a beat in a word with one vowel sound; long words are read chunk by chunk, sand-wich.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/2-blending-segmenting-and-the-year-1-check/19/)
- [A vowel before the y: just add -s (day, days; toy, toys).](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/6-spelling-plurals/6/)
- [Consonant + y changes to -ies (baby, babies); vowel + y just adds -s (day, days).](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/6-spelling-plurals/20/)
- [Some old common words change their vowel or ending: mouse/mice, man/men, foot/feet, tooth/teeth, goose/geese, child/children.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/6-spelling-plurals/23/)
- [The double letter is a guard that keeps the vowel short.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/7-adding-ed-and-ing-doubling-and-dropping-e/4/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «vowel» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/vowel/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.