Tripthong: definition and examples
If you are studying triphthongs in class and the concept is not clear to you, calm down! Well, then we are going to give you the exact definition of tripthong so that you can understand in which cases of our language this situation occurs. To make the concept clearer to you, we will accompany the indication with examples of triphthongs that will help you to see, in real cases, when they are used and how they are applied in the Spanish language. In this lesson from a teacher we will review the definition of tripthong and we will accompany it with several examples so that you can more easily follow the explanation.
The word 'tripthong' comes from the Greek and literally means "three sounds". A tripthong is a sequence of three vowels that are pronounced within the same syllable.
In Spanish, this vowel combination is formed by the union of three vowels, two closed or weak ("i", "u") and an open or strong one ("a", "e", "o"). The vowel structure of a triphthong always follows the following structure: "closed vowel + open vowel + closed vowel "so that the central position is occupied by the open or strong vowel, which functions as the nucleus syllabic.
If the vowel combination does not follow the previous scheme, it is not a tripthong, as in the word "you returned", where the accent or blow of the voice does not falls on the central vowel but on the first vowel, so that, either it is a hiatus followed by a diphthong (when the first vowel closed is tonic, as in "you lived") or we are facing a diphthong followed by a hiatus (when the second vowel is the tonic, as in "nail cleaner").
Therefore, it is important to bear in mind that not all words with three successive vowels form triphthongs, since it is it is essential that the accent falls on the central vowel, which must be an open or strong vowel.
In this video of a teacher we help you to know recognize triphthongs.
Triphthongs are vowel combinations rare in our language. The vast majority of words that contain triphthongs are inserted within the verbal category, more specifically, they belong to the Verb conjugation of the second person plural ("you" or "you" depending on whether it is from Spain or from Latin America).
These triphthongs are formed by the vowel sequences "-iai-" and "-iei-" and, on some occasions, "-uai-" as in "inquiguáis" or "-iao" as in "forgive yourselves." Here we show you a list of examples of triphthongs in the verb forms:
- You abbreviate
- Abbreviate
- You act
- You act
- You announce
- You announce
- You change
- You change
- You enunciate
- Enunciate
- You send
- Send
- You study
- You study
- You clean
- Clean
- You belittle
- You despise
- Riais
- You third
We should not confuse them with diphthongs, here we discover different examples of diphthongs so you know what they are.
As we have said before, most triphthongs are found in the verb conjugations of the second person plural. However, although there are few examples in Spanish of words that contain triphthongs, below we will detail various examples of triphthongs according to the vowel sequence with which they correspond:
Examples of triphthongs with "-uai-"
Some proper names of countries such as "Paraguay" and "Uruguay" are triphthongs as the third element of the vowel combination, despite being represented by the consonant "y" (and Greek), works and sounds like vocal.
Examples of triphthongs with "-iau-"
Meow, semiautomatic, binaural, binaural.
Examples of triphthongs with "-ioi-"
Bioinformatics, hyoid, dioecious, radioisotope, opioid.
Examples of triphthongs with "-uei-"
Ox, act, adapt, blind, dude, pay, perpetuate, vaqueiro.
Examples of triphthongs with "-uau-"
Wow, aguaucle, aguautle, huauzontle, huautli.
Well, we have already reviewed the concept of tripthong and seen several examples of each type of tripthong according to the different vowel combinations that exist. Now it's your turn. Can you find any other word that contains a tripthong? Go ahead and share it with us!
In this other video we help you know accentuate triphthongs.
