I remember being told that consonants need vowels by one of my elementary school teachers. I remember repeating this to my oldest sister, Lynda, after she had a kid or two.
Lynda said no you don’t need a vowel sound to make a consonant sound. You can just say Boo [as in book] or Foo [as in foot], for the B and F sounds. Notice that I had to use vowels to illustrate my point. But I never caught on to that at the time.
So I remember pre talking with her babies and using what I thought were just consonant sounds to get them to the point where they could almost speak. A couple months later they were speaking.
The short oo sound is the “invisible” vowel in English. It is the u in pull and bull. And the vowel that is between the T and L in cattle and bottle. It may seem invisible at first, but it is definitely there. I don’t blame my sister or me for not realizing it was a vowel, because shows like Electric Company would use this “invisible” vowel to sound out words.
For instance they would say Boo A Doo when sounding out the word Bad. Then they would say the three letter names closer and closer together until magically the oo sound disappeared and they said Bad.
When I realized this, I thought for years that what I was originally told was correct. Consonants need vowels.
That is until I saw mmmm written out one day and I forced myself to think about this. So it became consonants need vowels except m.
Then I thought of a few more. Ssss doesn’t need a vowel. Neither does zzzz. There are also Shhhh and Zhhhh. (If you’re wondering what sound zh is, it’s the g in mirage, the s in leisure. In school I was taught that it was the soft g sound.)
Anyhow, that’s five exceptions to the consonants need vowels rule. Do you have any more?
