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'Semivowels' (also 'glides', more rarely: 'semiconsonants') are non-syllabic vowels that form diphthongs with syllabic vowels. They may be contrasted with approximants, which are similar to but closer than vowels or semivowels and behave as consonants. Semivowels are normally written by adding the IPA non-syllabicity mark to a vowel symbol, but often for simplicity the vowel symbol alone is written.
To illustrate, the English word ''wow'' may be transcribed as (or abbreviated to ). Even though both the and the are similar to the vowel , the transcription indicates that the initial segment is considered to be a consonant by the transcriber, while the final segment is considered to form a diphthong with the preceding vowel. The approximant is more constricted and therefore more consonant-like than the semivowel .
Because they are so similar phonetically, the concepts of ''semivowel'' and ''approximant'' are often used interchangeably. In this conflated usage, semivowels are defined as those approximants that correspond phonetically to specific close vowels. The semivowel is considered by some to be the same as a vowel but the semivowel is very different. Take "w" for instance, which is a semivowel but not a vowel. These are , corresponding to ; for ; for ; and for . (See approximant for details.) However, languages such as Nepali, Romanian and Samoan have additional semivowels such as and that correspond to mid vowels, and which other than being non-syllabic are not at all like consonants.

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Examples

See also

Examples

;Close semivowels

★ English ''eye''

★ English ''cow''

★ Dutch ''ui'' "onion"
;Close vs. mid semivowels

★ Samoan ''’ai'' "probably"

★ Samoan ''’ae'' "but"

★ Samoan ''’auro'' "gold"

★ Samoan ''ao'' "a cloud"

See also

★ List of phonetics topics

★ Non-syllabic vowel

★ Diphthong