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Comment by School-Cotton | Hacker News Reader

> English is a rather unusual language that the meaning is mostly carried only by consonants, while vowels are almost meaningless.

Sorry but this sounds like nonsense. Vowel distinctions absolutely matter in English. Think of how many words would be indistinguishable otherwise: bout, bought, bet, bat, bit, beet, boot, boat, bite, but, and bait are all distinguished from each other only by a vowel.

(And, yes, these all sound quite different to me, an American, though non-native speakers often have trouble making or recognizing some of the distinctions. Some native speakers further distinguish “bot” from “bought”, but I don’t.)

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It may sound like nonsense, but in comparison to many other languages, English is super flexible with how vowels are pronounced and toned (entoned?). If you've ever tried to learn a tonal language, or one with more specific vowels like Khmer (which has 33 consonants and 22 vowels) you'd realize how relaxed English can be.

Generally this is in English's favor, I pronounce button differently than my NZ friends, but they still understand me.

American English has something like 15 distinct vowels. That’s not that much less than your citation of Khmer, and way more than many languages. Any claim that American English has a uniquely poor vowel inventory is just wrong.

Perhaps I didn't specify that perfectly. I wasn't saying English is poor in vowels, I'm saying that it is flexible in how you use them. Khmer has 22 specific vowel letters, each letter that indicates exactly how the sound is made, even the differences that of how the previous letter will effect the sound.

English has 5, and no real consensus on how they are used, let alone the tone of voice that you need to use to indicate a specific word.

In tonal languages a rising vowel note is different than a falling, rising and then falling, falling then rising, flat or tumbling tone. The closest English has is the rising tone one makes when asking a question, but that doesn't change the meaning of the words entirely, just the context.

“Letters” are irrelevant. We are talking about the spoken language, not the writing system. American English has 15 or 16 vowels, and (not counting tone) the distinctions between them are just as meaningful as in Khmer or any other language. “Bit” and “beet”, or “but” and “boot” are different words, after all. Where are you seeing “flexibility” in the use of vowels?

Again, we are not talking about “letters” or the writing system here. Yes, there are many distinct vowels that are written the same, and conversely many different ways of writing the same vowel, but that’s irrelevant to the discussion of spoken language.

And, yes, I know what a tonal language is, and you’re right that English isn’t one. It’s hardly unique or special in that. Most languages aren’t tonal.

There are tons of examples, take "no" for example, you can pronounce it 'nooh', 'nah', 'nuh', 'neh', and yet it will be transcribed as "no". That one could be dismissed as negating is a pretty primitive concept.

My previous example of how to pronounce 'button' varies depending upon where you're from...but is still recognized by the most English speakers. Some folks pronounce it but-ton, others but'n.

Water can be pronounce in a variety of ways. Actually the list is endless...I'm surprised you're arguing the opposite. Compared to Spanish, or any number of languages where the vowels are very specific (disregarding the Castilian ascent), English is very forgiving. Bringing up Khmer's letters was to show that the vowel sounds have been formalized in that language, where English allows for much more variance.

Listen to any non-native English speaker, they can be all over the place and still understood.

> Some folks pronounce it but-ton, others but'n.

This is a distinction in consonants! Different realizations of the /t/ phoneme. The whole claim that started this thread was that English expresses information almost exclusively in consonants, not vowels. Your example directly contradicts that very claim.

Anyway, English is _far_ from the only language where different dialects have a different set of vowels. Quebec French for example has completely different ones from French French.

I get that, but it matters very little in a typical sentence. I bet you could understand almost everything with all vowels replaced with schwas.

> I bet you could understand almost everything with all vowels replaced with schwas.

No. Have you tried understanding someone who can only pronounce consonants but also whose dialect is foreign? It's unintelligible. Vowels absolutely serve a purpose. You're just used to hearing your own words spoken back to you in the same way you've always expected them.

Different accents use different vowels, but they remain comprehensible. It's specifically those accents that also change consonants that are taken as hard to understand, such as Scouse.

You can replace unstressed vowels with schwas and usually end up with something understandable. Stressed vowels cannot be schwaed. This is also specific to american English and doesn't work for other dialects, or even all american accents.

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