phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...

, a triphthong ( , ) (from

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

, ) is a

monosyllabic In linguistics, a monosyllable is a word or utterance of only one syllable. It is most commonly studied in the fields of phonology and morphology. The word has originated from the Greek language Greek (, ; , ) is an Indo-European languages, Ind ...

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

combination involving a quick but smooth movement of the articulator from one vowel quality to another that passes over a third. While "pure" vowels, or

monophthong A monophthong ( ) is a pure vowel sound, or one whose articulation at beginning and end is relatively fixed, with the tongue moving neither up nor down and neither forward nor backward towards a new position of articulation. A monophthong can be ...

s, are said to have one target articulator position,

diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, 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 ...

s have two and triphthongs three. Triphthongs are not to be confused with disyllabic sequences of a diphthong followed by a monophthong, as in German 'fire', where the final vowel is longer than those found in triphthongs.

Examples

Triphthongs that feature close elements typically analyzed as and in phonology are not listed. For instance, the Polish word 'tallow' is typically analyzed as - a sequence of a consonant followed by a vowel and another consonant. This is because the palatal approximant is resyllabified in some inflected forms, such as (instr. pl.), and also because occurs word-finally after a consonant just like does (compare 'industry' with '

Przemyśl Przemyśl () is a city in southeastern Poland with 56,466 inhabitants, as of December 2023. Data for territorial unit 1862000. In 1999, it became part of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship, Subcarpathian Voivodeship. It was previously the capital of Prz ...

'), which means that both of them behave more like consonants than vowels. On the other hand, are not treated as phonetic consonants when they arise from vocalization of , or as they do not share almost all of their features with those three.

First segment is the nucleus

Bernese German

Bernese German Bernese German (Standard German: ''Berndeutsch'', ) is the dialect of High Alemannic German spoken in the Swiss plateau (Mittelland) part of the canton of Bern and in some neighbouring regions. A form of Bernese German is spoken by the Swiss A ...

has the following triphthongs: * as in 'boy' * as in 'feeling' * as in 'school' They have arisen due to the vocalization of in the syllable coda; compare the last two with Standard German and , the last one with a schwa not present in the Bernese word.

Danish

Danish has the following triphthongs: * as in 'ferry' * as in 'to whirl' * as in , a given name * as in 'sparrow'

English

In British

Received Pronunciation Received Pronunciation (RP) is the Accent (sociolinguistics), accent of British English regarded as the Standard language, standard one, carrying the highest Prestige (sociolinguistics), social prestige, since as late as the beginning of the 2 ...

, and most other non-rhotic (r-dropping) varieties of English, monosyllabic triphthongs with ''r'' are optionally distinguished from sequences with disyllabic realizations: * as in: ''flour'' (compare with disyllabic "flower" ) * as in: ''hire'' (compare with disyllabic "higher" ) * as in: ''

coir Coir (), also called coconut fibre, is a natural fibre extracted from the outer husk of coconut, and used in products such as floor mats, doormats, brushes, and mattresses. Coir is the fibrous material found between the hard, internal shell ...

'' (compare with disyllabic "coyer" ), ''

loir The Loir is a long river in western France. It is a left tributary of the Sarthe. Its source is in the Eure-et-Loir department, north of Illiers-Combray. It joins the river Sarthe in Briollay, north of the city of Angers. It is indirectly ...

'' (compare with disyllabic "lawyer" ) As and become and respectively before , most instances of and are words with the suffix "-er", such as ''player'' and ''slower''. Other instances are loanwords, such as ''boa''. are sometimes transcribed as , or similarly.

Second segment is the nucleus

Spanish: * as in 'ox' * as in 'Uruguay' * as in 'you nformal pluralchange' * as in 'that you nformal pluralmay change' The last two are mostly restricted to European Spanish. In

Latin American Spanish The different dialects of the Spanish language spoken in the Americas are distinct from each other, as well as from those varieties spoken in the Iberian Peninsula and the Spanish Mediterranean islands—collectively known as Peninsular Spanish� ...

(which has no distinct form), the corresponding words are and , with a rising-opening diphthong followed by a nasal stop and initial, rather than final stress. In phonology, are analyzed as a monosyllabic sequence of three vowels: . In Help:IPA/Spanish, those triphthongs are transcribed : , , ,

References

Bibliography

* * {{wiktionary, triphthong Vowels Phonetics