A vowel concurrence It is a succession of two or more vowels (also called vocoids) within the same word. This conjunction of sounds in words occurs recurrently in the Spanish language. Its study is very important for understanding the language.
Several branches of linguistics are responsible for the study of vowel concurrency; among these we have phonetics, morphology and phonology. These disciplines facilitate a thorough understanding of the components of words, providing the speaker with the necessary skills to fully master their language..
Vowel concurrency is also called by experts in the language as vowel phenomenon or vowel sequence. If they know how to take advantage of them, the phonological events that occur in these conjunctions of vowels within words allow us to understand more comfortably how stress works in the Spanish language.
Over the years, in Spanish linguistics a greater emphasis has been placed on the morphophonological study (compound word, resulting from the conjunction of “morphology” and “phonology”) of words, and vowel concurrency has not escaped from this.
The dialect variants that occur in certain groups of speakers where this linguistic phenomenon occurs in a particular way have even been identified..
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It can be said that an individual fully uses his language only if he knows how his phonetics behaves, if he dedicates time to the conscious study of how the linguistic system that allows him to communicate works.
The knowledge of the vowel concurrences and their behavior allows to handle the area of accentuation in a broader way, a topic that is frustrating for many.
Studying the phonetics, phonology and morphology of Spanish in order to master the concurrences well broadens the linguistic horizons, and the literary productivity and the oratory of those who apply to do so are greatly benefited.
Conscious understanding of the language inevitably increases communicativeness. If you take seriously the fact that everything revolves around how we communicate with our peers, then the real importance of the subject is more clearly appreciated..
We must be clear that, to understand well this vocal phenomenon in words, we have to pay attention to what we hear.
For example, the word "water" is considered a vowel concurrence, but the word "cheese" is not. Remember that the vowel "u" that happens to the consonant "q" is silent. We can see the same in other cases such as "guerrilla", "want" and "wink", among others..
Let us bear in mind that most uses of the consonant "h" in the Spanish language are silent, except when it is placed after the "c" to form the "ch". Due to the fact of being mute, it does not interfere in the union of the vowels.
Although there is a great variety of languages that present this linguistic phenomenon, there is a greater presence of vowel concurrences in Romance languages (those derived from Latin), and within these, the one that presents the most consecutive groupings of syllables in words is Spanish.
In the Spanish language this linguistic phenomenon occurs. When the consonant "y" is located at the end of a word it fulfills the function of the vowel "i", allowing the appearance of the concurrence, as is the case of the words: "I am", "ay", "law", among other.
In order to fully understand these linguistic phenomena, it is necessary to know a characteristic of vowels: vowels within Spanish are phonetically divided into two types, according to the opening of the mouth and the intensity at the time of pronouncing them..
They are "a", "e" and "o". In this case, the tongue is located in the lower part of the mouth, causing the oral cavity to widen when pronouncing them. These vowels require a greater effort when emitting them.
They are "i" and "u". In this case the tongue is located in the upper part of the mouth causing the oral cavity to close. This pair of vowels does not require so much effort to pronounce, they are articulated without much difficulty.
Having clarified this, the types of concurrency, their variants and the respective examples will be presented below. In the Spanish language there are three types of vowel concurrences: the diphthong, the hiatus and the tripthong, and these in turn have their variants.
It is when two vowels appear in a row in a word; in turn, these form a syllable. There are three types of diphthongs:
It occurs when a closed vowel (VC) plus an open vowel (VA) join.
Occurs when an open vowel (VA) plus a closed vowel (VC) join.
This concurrency occurs when two closed vowels (VC) join.
- The syllables "gue", "gui", "que" and "qui" do not form diphthongs. In these cases the vowel "u" is silent. For example: war, stew, cheese, wanted.
- If the syllables "gue" and "gui" have an umlaut, then they do form a diphthong. For example: seniority, linguistics.
This vowel concurrency occurs when two vowels appear consecutively in a word, but are not part of the same syllable. There are two types of hiatus:
Occurs when two open vowels (VA) join
It occurs when an open vowel and a closed vowel (VA + VC) are joined, or vice versa (VC + VA), and the greater intonation of the voice falls on the closed vowel. In either case, the tilde must be placed on the closed vowel to denote the breaking of the diphthong..
- Open vowel plus closed vowel
Of the three vowel concurrences, this is the widest. It consists of the union of three vowels, specifically a VC + VÁ + VC. For it to be fulfilled, the stressed syllable must necessarily fall on the open vowel; otherwise, a hiatus will occur.
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