DIPHTHONG

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Today I learn a new thing about diphthong and silent letter . This is very important for me to speak English .

For spellings consisting of two vowel letters, which especially in English are often not pronounced as two different vowel sounds, see digraph (orthography).A diphthong (/ˈdɪfθɒŋ/ DIF-thong or /ˈdɪpθɒŋ/ DIP-thong; from Greek: δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally "double sound" or "double tone"), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech apparatus) moves during the pronunciation of the vowel. In many dialects of English, the phrase no highway cowboys /ˌnoʊ ˈhaɪweɪ ˈkaʊbɔɪz/ has five distinct diphthongs, one in every syllable.

Diphthongs contrast with monophthongs, where the tongue or other speech organs do not move and the syllable contains only a single vowel sound. For instance, in English, the word ah is spoken as a monophthong (/ɑː/), while the word ow is spoken as a diphthong in most dialects (/aʊ/). Where two adjacent vowel sounds occur in different syllables—for example, in the English word re-elect—the result is described as hiatus, not as a diphthong.

Diphthongs often form when separate vowels are run together in rapid speech during a conversation. However, there are also unitary diphthongs, as in the English examples above, which are heard by listeners as single-vowel sounds (phonemes).

Diphthongs use two vowel sounds in one syllable to make a speech sound.