Typical of the Hamburg dialects and other Lower Elbe dialects is the pronunciation ( and spelling ) eu ( pronounced oi ) for the diphthong ( written öö, öh or ö ), e. g.

eu: This digraph represents the diphthong which goes back to the Middle High German monophthong represented by iu.

The " eu " construct is not a diphthong, thus the pronunciation is.

In the West Germanic variety that gave rise to Old English, a-mutation did not affect the second element of the diphthong */ eu / ( for which the earliest Old English texts have eu ): treulesnis " faithlessness ", steup-" step -" ( Epinal Glossary 726, 1070 ); but in other branches of West Germanic */ eu / became */ eo / unless followed by */ i / or */ w /, e. g. Old Saxon breost " breast " vs. treuwa " fidelity ".

A branching nucleus generally means the syllable has a long vowel or a diphthong ; this type of syllable is abbreviated CVV.

These words, which are also pronounced with a diphthong as / teɪk /, / meɪd /… in BrE and AmE, are generally pronounced with the monophthong / eː /, as / teːk /, / meːd /… (/ e /-close-mid front unrounded vowel, / ɪ /-near-close near-front unrounded vowel )

: Further explanation: The diphthong becomes the monophthong in some environments including before nasals ( e. g., downtown ), liquids ( e. g., fowl, hour ) and obstruents ( e. g., house, out, cloudy ).

The northern accent has a very pronounced letter R that becomes a diphthong of non-vowel letters L and R in the southern towns.

* Likewise, Old Dutch ( from Proto-Germanic ) becomes a centralising diphthong, spelled < oe > or < ou >.

This means that the " short a " vowel as in cat and rat becomes a mid-high front diphthong when it precedes a nasal consonant: thus man is and planet is.

**-ach used when the preceding vowel is long or a diphthong ( ia, ie, iu, ô ), e. g. lásky → láskach, dielo → dielach

Although the word " on " is sometimes translated as " syllable ", one on is counted for a short syllable, two for an elongated vowel, diphthong, or doubled consonant, and one for an " n " at the end of a syllable.

* A long syllable ( one that contains a long vowel or a diphthong, or ends in a consonant ) with a main stress is metrically strong.

This form is colloquially termed the " long o " as in boat in English, but it is actually most often a diphthong ( realized dialectically anywhere from to ).

* In many American dialects with the cot – caught merger, occurs only before and ( and in the diphthong if this is not interpreted as a single phoneme ).

Almost regularly, a plain iota is replaced by the epsilon-iota diphthong ( commonly if imprecisely known as itacism ), e. g. ΔΑΥΕΙΔ instead οf ΔΑΥΙΔ, ΠΕΙΛΑΤΟΣ instead of ΠΙΛΑΤΟΣ, ΦΑΡΕΙΣΑΙΟΙ instead of ΦΑΡΙΣΑΙΟΙ, etc.

ward ), and the diphthong au is the regular outcome of al before a following consonant ( cf.

gamba > jambe ), and the diphthong au would be unexplained ; the regular outcome of Latin Gallia is Jaille in French which is found in several western placenames.

* The diphthong is pronounced approximately, but wide variation exists, especially between social classes in Belfast

* In Belfast, is a monophthong in open syllables ( e. g. day ) but a rising diphthong in closed syllables ( e. g. daze ).

The diphthong is retained before inflectional endings, so that board and pause can contrast with bored and paws

Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel.

Where two adjacent vowel sounds occur in different syllables — for example, in the English word re-elect — the result is described as hiatus, not as a diphthong.

The non-syllabic diacritic ( an inverted breve below, ⟨⟩) can be placed under the less prominent component to show that it is part of a diphthong rather than a separate vowel.

However, when the diphthong is analysed as a single phoneme, both elements are often transcribed with vowel letters (, ).

A third, rare type of diphthong that is neither opening nor closing is height-harmonic diphthongs, with both elements at the same vowel height.

A centering diphthong is one that begins with a more peripheral vowel and ends with a more central one, such as,, and in Received Pronunciation or and in Irish.

The diaeresis ( ä, ë, ö ) is normally used to show that a short vowel is to be separately pronounced, that it is not silent or part of a diphthong.

It can act as a carrier for a vowel with no preceding consonant, that is, a word-initial vowel or the second part of a diphthong ; when it carries a sukun, it indicates gemination ( lengthening ) of the following consonant ; and if alifu + sukun occurs at the end of a word, it indicates that the word ends in / eh /.

The Old Norse letter á is retained, but has become a diphthong, pronounced in Icelandic and in Faroese.

But the diphthong is retained before inflectional endings, so that board and pause can contrast with bored and paws.

A change that separated Old East Norse ( Runic Swedish / Danish ) from Old West Norse was the change of the diphthong æi ( Old West Norse ei ) to the monophthong e, as in stæin to sten.

The name " epsilon " (, " simple e ") was coined in the Middle Ages to distinguish the letter from the digraph αι, a former diphthong that had come to be pronounced the same as epsilon.

# Some pairs of letters represented either two separate vowels in two syllables, or a diphthong in a single syllable.

For instance, starts with two syllables and, but starts with a diphthong.

In dactylic hexameter of Classical Latin and Classical Greek, for example, each of the six feet making up the line was either a dactyl ( long-short-short ) or spondee ( long-long ), where a long syllable was literally one that took longer to pronounce than a short syllable: specifically, a syllable consisting of a long vowel or diphthong or followed by two consonants.

Common digraphs include ⟨ oo ⟩, which represents either, or ; ⟨ oi ⟩ which typically represents the diphthong, like the pronunciation of ⟨ oi ⟩ in " boil "; and ⟨ ao ⟩, ⟨ oe ⟩, and ⟨ ou ⟩ which represent a variety of pronunciations depending on context and etymology.

** → this diphthong typically starts in the area of the London,.

A diphthong ( or ; Greek:, diphthongos, literally " two sounds " or " two tones "), also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable.

) The less prominent component in the diphthong may also be transcribed as an approximant, thus in eye and in yard.

In Finnish, for instance, the opening diphthongs and are true falling diphthongs, since they begin louder and with higher pitch and fall in prominence during the diphthong.