NOUN
· A sound formed by the
combination of two vowels in a single syllable, in which the sound begins as
one vowel and moves towards another (as in coin, loud, and side).
Often contrasted
with monophthong, triphthong
Example sentences
o ‘In most contemporary
dialects, it's a diphthong with a high front off-glide, so you might take it as
mixed on the hot-or-not dimension, but ‘a front vowel sound’ it is definitely
not.’
o ‘Our role model was our
head teacher, Miss Osborne, known as the High Mistress, who flapped about the
place in her gown and lapsed into classical Greek pronunciation whenever she
used a diphthong.’
o ‘This was adopted into
English and subjected to the normal sound-changes of the late medieval and
early modern period: the final - e ceased to be pronounced and the long i
became a diphthong.’
o ‘Most Modern English
vowels are diphthongs, so obeying the ‘one sound, one letter’ rule demands
either pairing of vowel letters or replacing all our current vowel sounds with
the fewer pure sounds, as in Italian and Spanish.’
o ‘Density is thus largely
a function of word stock and reflects at this stage in Coolidge's work an
affinity for monosyllabic words, particularly those that couple long vowels or
diphthongs with consonant blends.’
o ‘Similarly, a study of
Tunisian women in Morocco showed that older women categorically use diphthongs
/aw/and/aj /, while middle-aged women alternate between diphthongs and
monophthongs.’
o ‘Like U.S. Spanish, early
Spanish exhibited a strong tendency to form diphthongs from contiguous vowels.’
o ‘The formation of
diphthongs from contiguous vowels represents a common prohibition in languages
against starting a syllable with a vowel, as opposed to a consonant.’
o ‘For these speakers, the
diphthong in fife starts out near the vowel of bud, and ends near the vowel of
bade; while the diphthong in five starts near the vowel of hod, and ends nears
the vowel of hed.’
o ‘People in that part of
Bolivia have a lot of Quechua and Aymara words in their vocabulary, and ones
with final falling-sonority diphthongs are pretty typical.’
o ‘All Australian accents
are regional, and the elongated diphthong, particularly the ‘ooo’, is the
immediate giveaway for New South Welshpersons.’
o ‘Few novice teachers
addressed vowel r words, more difficult vowel team words such as those with
diphthongs having more than one sound, or two-syllable words.’
o ‘The diphthongs au and ai
are pronounced like those in ‘cow’ and ‘sky,’ respectively.’
o ‘Pupils were asked to
read a range of sentences and words, but what we were looking at was the merger
of the diphthongs in the words near and square.’
o ‘The language has a
musical quality and employs a great number of diphthongs and other vowel
combinations.’
o ‘The diphthongs ayyy and
eeee turn up again and again, long vowels lengthened by slow consonants around
them.’
1 1.1 A digraph representing the sound of a diphthong or
single vowel (as in feat).
Example sentences
§ ‘However, all subsequent authors
except Meek have used the diphthong, so Archaeocyathus is now treated as a
justified emendation of Billings' original spelling.’
§ ‘The Pali alphabet used for written
Burmese is made up of eight vowels, three diphthongs, 32 consonants, and
several tones.’
1 1.2 A compound vowel character; a ligature (such as æ).
Usage
For
a discussion of the pronunciation of diphthong, see diphtheria
Origin
Late
Middle English: from French diphtongue, via late Latin from Greek diphthongos,
from di- ‘twice’ + phthongos ‘voice, sound’.
Pronunciation
diphthong
/ˈdɪpθɒŋ//ˈdɪfθɒŋ
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