noun
definition
A complex vowel sound that begins with the sound of one vowel and ends with the sound of another vowel, in the same syllable.
definition
A vowel digraph or ligature.
Examples of diphthongs in a Sentence
In final syllables the diphthongs ai, ei, oi, all appear as e.
It is stated, for example, that Gallego does not possess nasal diphthongs; still it may be conceded once for all that such a word as p 1 a n u s, which in Galician is written sometimes chau and sometimes c/ian, cannot be very remote from the Portuguese nasal pronunciation chao.
Diphthongs As in English, it is often the case in Welsh that two vowels combine to form a diphthongs As in English, it is often the case in Welsh that two vowels combine to form a diphthong.
Potter notes that all English diphthongs are falling - that is the first element is stressed more than the second.
In rhotic accents, the centering diphthongs do not exist as such, since the final letter r is pronounced.
The Latin alphabet is used, with special signs to represent sounds borrowed from Slavonic, &c. All the unaccented vowels except e are pronounced as in Italian; e has the same phonetic value as in Old Slavonic (=French e) and is often similarly preiotized (= ye in yet), notably at the beginning of all words except neologisms. The accented vowels é and ó are pronounced as ea and oa (petra, rock, = peatra; morte, death, = moarte); they are written in full, as diphthongs, at the end of a word and sometimes in other positions.
The only strong diphthongs of the spoken language are di, du (rather rare), ei, u-, -ia, oi, u, di, uu.
The differences between South and North include the diphthongs becoming monophthongs in the South.
In English, moreover, the vowel sounds tend to become diphthongs, so that the symbol for the simple sound tends to become the symbol for that combination which we call a diphthong.
Like Umbrian also, but unlike Latin and Oscan, it has degraded all the diphthongs into simple vowels (Volscian se parallel to Oscan svai; Volscian deue, Old Latin and Oscan deivai or deiuoi).