Syllabics and Semi-Vowels

Syllabic consonants and semi-vowels are phonemes that are either neither vowels or consonants or both.  They share the attributes of consonants in appearing at syllable boundaries.  They also resemble vowels in being articulated as one continuous frictionless tone.

A syllabic consonant is a single letter that functions as a syllable as in prism and spasm.  Although a single letter, M and other syllabics [RLN] often include an unmarked schwa . m = 'm

Syllabic consonants and semivowels function as consonants when they are preceded or followed by a vowel or followed by the letter H.  rho, rhyme, when, who.  Consonants and consonant clusters are always positioned before or after vowels, i.e., at syllable boundaries. 

Consonants  A speech sound produced by partial obstruction of the air stream with one or more of the mobile articulaters in the mouth: lips, tongue, . . .  The pronunciation of single consonants

Consonants are said to be voiced if they vibrate the vocal cords. 
Touch your throat and say ZZZ  and SSSS.   You will feel a distinct difference in vibration.  Z is voiced, S is unvoiced.  Unvoiced consonants take more effort or muscle tension to produce [cf tense] and are sometimes called fortis. 

chart of voiced and unvoiced consonants - 2nd chart

The complexion of a syllabic or semivowel changes when the letter follows a consonant.   rhyme, very, prism, ...

Syllables are generally CV or VC combinations.  Syllabic consonants are always of the VC variety.  What appears to be a C[consonant] is actually a VC[vowel + consonant] .   [see syllabaries]

Syllabics and semi-vowels are used extensively in the Saxon-Spanglish [SS],  Cut Spelling,  Iqliz and other new writing systems for English. 

Semi vowels are marked with a small c or v in the chart below.  When the letter is followed by a vowel, it is a consonant [see Vv as in vat].  When the consonant letter is followed by a consonant, it becomes into a vowel.  In Vc, the V is a vowel [vp for up]. 

RULE: If a consonant letter is not preceded or followed by a vowel it becomes a vowel or contains a vowel:  semi vowel letters [w, y, and v] become vowels when not followed by a vowel.  Syllabic letters [r l m n] act as syllables in this position.

In the traditional orthography, the Old English words hwu, hwen and hwael have been changed to who, when, and whale for aesthetic reasons -there was no change in pronunciation.  hwu and two make sense phonetically when the w is a vowel [a short u].  Otherwise, these words become highly irregulular or unpronounceable. There is a close etymological connection between two, twin, and twice.   RULES 

When a semivowel is the first letter in a syllable or word, it is a consonant.  When it is the last letter, it is probably a vowel. Consonants must be positioned before or after a vowel.  In the word nun, both N's are consonant.  In the word, prism, the M does not follow vowel so it is a syllabic, M = 'm.

Yv is a consonant, cY is a vowel [ canyon, yacht  |  very, merry ].  If the letter Y is not followed by a vowel, it is a vowel. . 

In Wv, the W is a consonant.  If not followed by a vowel, the W becomes a vowel, e.g.  [brown]. [br-awe-uun]  low [lawe-uu]
cow [k-awe-uu]  pronounced today as [kae-uu]. 

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Semi-Vowels are an integral part of the Saxon alphabet and the Spanglish phonemic transcription system.  The letter names are their syllabic pronunciation rather tha aar el em en.  The W as a vowel is found in diphthongs such as au/ou and as the Welsh short u when the sound is not stressed.  vejjtabwl or vejjtabL.  According to the chart, the syllabic consonants and the semi-vowels are always unstressed.  [color code - white]

If the ascii keys were used more rationally, there would be little need for an augmented alphabaet
The following table shows how the letters on a 26 letter keyboard were used to represent 42 sounds

While the Saxon alphabet does not require an extended Latin-1 aphabet, it could benefit from the  availability of more phono- grams.  The  most needed characters are a [schwa] ø ?  ae [short a] æ oa [long awe] å ?  ai [eye sound]  î ?  ei [long A]  â ?  ou [long o] ô ?

R L M N are true syllabics.  If they are not follwed by a vowel, they are vowels. This is a complication but it is perfectly logical, systematic, and predictable.

Fully removing these contrived conventions also removes a connection with the traditional orthography. 

C O M M E N T S

I like the grave accents for short vowels which would leave aeiou available for their Latin sound values.  The short u in book could be represented with an omega instead of [w].  Alternatively, the other u sounds could be represented by  û and ü.  There is no obvious substitute character for the schwi-y, perhaps ý.

Consonants are less of a problem, but a perfect unifonic system would want a way to represent single sound digraphs: th [eth] ð   ng ñ   zh ?  sh š   ch tò

All of the question marks above indicate that Latin-1 is not an immediate solution. Latin-1 is not IPA - it is an extended character set but not necessarily a complete conventional code, e.g., no schwa, no macrons, no theta, no epsilon, no long S  [ ò ]

The most used ampersand entities: cut and paste into your web page

[grave] æ à  è  ì  ò  ù   À È  Ì  Ò Ù   [acute]  á é í ó ú  Ó   [circumflex] â ê î ô û  .[dieresis]  ä ë ï ö ü   [ring]  Å å . [ash]  Æ æ .[umlaut]  ä  .[ tilde ] ã    [eth]  Ð ð   [slash o]  ø    [c-cedilla]   ç   [little zed]     [n-tilde]   Ñ ñ   [sh equivalent]  Šš ò   [ch]  tò [extended set]  · ×æ à  è  ì  ò ù   ø ð ç ñ š    á é í ó ú  â ê î ô û  ä ë ï ö ü  å

These characters can be accessed from your keyboard if you install a foreign language keyboard such as icelandic  You can then click between it and the standard keyboard.  Once installed, you can change keyboards in seconds.