核心畫面
A sound that gets out of your mouth with nothing in the way: your breath just flows, and the only thing that changes is the shape of the open space inside your mouth. Say 'ah', 'ee', 'oo' — your lips and tongue move, but they never touch and never block the air. That open, freely-flowing sound is the vowel; the letters a, e, i, o, u are just the marks we write it with.
可以想成一個「沒有被擋住的聲音」。發 ah、ee、oo 的時候，氣一路從喉嚨流出來，嘴唇沒有閉起來、舌頭也沒有頂到上…更多收起
可以想成一個「沒有被擋住的聲音」。發 ah、ee、oo 的時候，氣一路從喉嚨流出來，嘴唇沒有閉起來、舌頭也沒有頂到上顎，改變的只是嘴巴裡那個空腔的形狀——所以聲音是連續的、可以一直拉長的。相對地，p、t、k 這些子音一定要有某個地方先把氣擋住再放開。母音是那條通行無阻的氣流；a、e、i、o、u 這幾個字母，則是我們把這種聲音寫下來時用的記號。原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
vowelnoun/ˈvaʊ.əl/
- 1
human-scienceslinguisticsphoneticsA sound produced by the vocal cords with relatively little restriction of the oral cavity, forming the prominent sound of a syllable.
- Hawaiian has either five or twenty-five vowels, depending on how they are counted.
- 2
communicationsjournalismliteratureA letter or diacritic representing the sound of a vowel; in English, the vowels are a, e, i, o, u, y (sometimes), and w (rarely).
- The word facetiously is spelled with all six vowels in alphabetical order.
- The word cwm, borrowed from Welsh, is an example of the letter w serving as a vowel in English.
vowelverb/ˈvaʊ.əl/
- 1
human-scienceslinguisticssciencesTo add vowel points to a consonantal script (e.g. niqqud in Hebrew or harakat in Arabic).
- However it should be vowelled – perhaps ‘Almaqah’ – his name seems to be composed of ‘Il’, the general name of the paramount Semitic deity […], plus another element that is possibly from the Sabaic verb wqh, ‘to command’ […].
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。