Regarding where to draw the boundary, are R, W, and Y really vowels? The biggest difference I’ve noticed between vowels and consonants is that vowels don’t involve touching parts of your mouth together. This makes it a lot easier to transition between letters. The second thing is that vowels are always voiced. H is otherwise a vowel, but it seems like it might be worth calling a consonant on that basis.
R at least is always considered a consonant, but the sound W makes is considered a vowel if it’s a hard U or an OO, and the sound Y makes is considered a vowel if it’s a hard E or the second half of a hard I (which seems to be a soft O followed by a hard E). Also, Y is often stated as being sometimes a vowel, even though it seems to always be a hard E.
W and Y are generally placed like a consonant would be, but this doesn’t seem like it means much, since vowels can be placed anywhere. Consonants can’t be placed three in a row. (Unless the first two have the same place, the first is not a stop, and the second is, like “mp” or “nt”, which makes it particularly easy to pronounce. This leads to things like the Japanese word senpai being consistently mispronounced by Japanese speakers as “sempai”, even though the only consonant Japanese syllables can end with is an N.) It looks like W and Y have this rule, but it’s not so much that Y is never between two consonants as it is that if a hard E is between two consonants, it’s not represented with a Y. And this still doesn’t excuse R, which is frequently the only vowel between two consonants. For example, “bird”, “herd”, and “turd” are all written with different “vowels” next to the R, but they are all pronounced with just the R sound.
This always bugged me a lot. Am I the only one that sees this?
(Whoops, this came out excessively snarky for no good reason; let me make the same points in a more civil manner. I shouldn’t comment when tired or stressed out.)
Consonants can’t be placed three in a row. (Unless the first two have the same place, the first is not a stop, and the second is, like “mp” or “nt”
Upthrust. Backstop. Blackstrap (4 in a row!) Axminster (twice, -ksm- and -nst-). Schatzkammer. Opschrijven . All of these violate this proposed rule. Not to mention things like xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓, in a language that stretches the very idea of a syllable.
This leads to things like the Japanese word senpai being consistently mispronounced by Japanese speakers as “sempai”
That should be “consistently pronounced.” However the native speakers consistently pronounce something is right.
After reading some of these comments, there are more exceptions than that, and I wrote it confusingly. So how about this: you cannot have more than one consonant at the same side of a syllable without extenuating circumstances. Having two of them have the same place of articulation (like the s and t in backstop), is a common one. s and z seem to only be possible to place after consonants that are voiced and unvoiced respectively. Neither can be placed after a ʒ (the second half of a j sound).
That should be “consistently pronounced.” However the native speakers consistently pronounce something is right.
The pronounce it in a way that violates the theory of what can and cannot be pronounced in Japanese. As far as I can understand, the Japanese alphabet has one character for each syllable. Each syllable has one consonant, then one or more vowels, then possibly an n. There is no syllable “sem”.
I don’t know if they always pronounce it “sempai”. I know it is at least sometimes written “senpai”. I just meant that it’s very common to pronounce that way, even though it shouldn’t be possible at all. If they have gratuitous English that has a syllable ending in a consonant, they stick a vowel after it. For example, “red” becomes “redo” (and the d is particularly t-like, and the r is something that has no English equivalent).
1) The clusters in “upthrust” and “backstop” actually have three consonantal sounds, even if some of those sounds are written as digraphs. This debate is going to be very difficult if we’re stuck to English or any language whose spelling makes little sense, if at all. Ghoti and all that.
2) Those clusters aren’t in a single syllable. Up-thrust. Back-stop. Black-strap. Schatz-kam-mer. Op-schrij-ven. Apart from the exotic example you cite (and that time a Muppet tried to pronounce the entire alphabet as a single word), I haven’t seen more than three consonants in a single syllable.
The clusters in “upthrust” and “backstop” actually have three consonantal sounds
Yes. I wasn’t intending them as examples of more than three, but of counterexamples to the rules that DanielLC proposed.
Those clusters aren’t in a single syllable.
The original comment didn’t talk about syllables.
I haven’t seen more than three consonants in a single syllable.
“Firsts.” On the other hand, a phoneticist might analyse the “ts” part as a single sound; except that on the phonetic level it appears to be two phonemes. So is (the sound represented in English spelling by) “ts” one consonant or two? Is the answer different for “tsetse” and for “firsts”? For “Katz” and for “cats”?
Syllable-initially they’re pretty obviously consonants (yam vs am). There are also lots of languages that have phonological rules that involve replacing semi-vowels with other consonants or vice versa, which is a pretty strong argument for them being part of the class of consonants in those languages. For the other stuff, what polymathwannabe said. This stuff is well-studied in linguistics and particularly in phonetics.
You’re confusing orthography and phonology. “may” is spelt in IPA as /mei/, so yes, it’s a diphthong there that English represents using a vowel + Y for historical reasons. Also, there isn’t a y sound in “mate” if you pronounce it at normal speed.
I don’t understand what you mean by “by that reasoning”. But there’s no reason for the r in “beard” to have to be a vowel since it’s followed by a consonant, since that’s never stopped most other consonants before.
I know the difference. They always teach vowels and consonants as letters instead of as phonemes, and most people seem to use them that way, so I just have to talk about the phonemes corresponding to those letters. I also don’t know IPA very well, and I can’t assume anyone else does, so I tend to just say things like “y sound”.
Also, there isn’t a y sound in “mate” if you pronounce it at normal speed.
http://dictionary.reference.com/ has my as /meɪ/ and mate as /meɪt/. Vowels are a lot more vaguely defined than consonants, so I don’t know how consistently dictionaries use the same letter, but it has to have something close to an ɪ in it, or it would just be “met”.
But there’s no reason for the r in “beard” to have to be a vowel since it’s followed by a consonant, since that’s never stopped most other consonants before.
You can have multiple consonants in a row like that, but there’s always caveats. You can’t follow an n with a b, for example. This is because consonants are difficult to pronounce consecutively, unless there’s some reason that those two work particularly well. r is like a vowel, and can be placed next to any consonant.
I also don’t know IPA very well, and I can’t assume anyone else does, so I tend to just say things like “y sound”.
That’s the problem right there though, you’re assuming that ‘y sound’ corresponds to the letter Y in English. The letter Y can represent either the phoneme /j/ (pronounced as the syllable-initial y), or the smallcaps i. The general rule is that syllable-initially Y represents /j/, elsewhere it represents the smallcaps i. Same goes for W, it’s /w/ syllable-initially, /u/ (or smallcaps omega, or barred-u depending on your dialect) elsewhere. R is similar but there’s a lot more variability in how it’s pronounced by individual people, for some people “bird” has a distinct consonant in there, for others it’s just an r-flavored vowel, for people like me it’s not there at all because I speak a non-rhotic dialect but I lengthen the preceding vowel somewhat as compensation.
Linguists tend to be a bit more specific than me. There may be a slight difference between /i/ and /j/, but they’re really close. It doesn’t seem to be enough to justify one being a vowel and the other being a consonant.
I tried listening to the recordings of /i/ vs /j/ on Wikipedia. /i/ just had /i/, but the recording for /j/ is /ja/, so it’s hard to concentrate on the /j/. It sure sounds a lot like /ia/. Similarly, /w/ had /wa/, which sounds a heck of a lot like /ua/.
I feel like /y/ just means that you start out transitioning from /i/ to another vowel. You tend to emphasize the following vowel more. But since you could be transitioning to any vowel, it doesn’t make sense that /y/ represents the transition itself. The only constant is it starts out as /i/.
A particularly interesting case is /jiː/ (Old English pronoun that is now spelled “ye”). It’s clearly not just /i/, and /ii/ would sound identical. But it does seem to be somewhat of a palindrome. The /i/ at the end is extended longer, but the sounds are the same forwards and backwards. There’s a slight change in the sound or emphasis between them, so it might be /ieiː/ or something where it moves to a subtly different vowel and back.
I am not interested in being an introductory phonology/phonetics textbook, but if you want to know why linguists think that semivowels should be considered a separate category to vowels, there is plenty of writing out there on the subject.I’m bowing out from further participation.
It says that it’s the middle part of a vowel. That’s not clear at all, considering that you can have more than one vowel in the middle and you don’t need consonants at the ends.
You don’t put a w or a y in the middle of a syllable, but it’s frequent to put the corresponding sound there. You just don’t spell it with a w or y. r is frequently put in the middle of a vowel with consonants at both ends. There is often no other vowel there. There’s always another vowel written there, but the only sound made is an r sound. For example, bird, herd, and turd just have the r sound. Beard has a y sound before the r sound, but since it has a consonant after the r, the r clearly can’t be a consonant.
No the whole article doesn’t use the word “middle” even once if you do a quick search.
You don’t put a w or a y in the middle of a syllable, but it’s frequent to put the corresponding sound there.
You are still thinking in terms of letter instead of phonemes.
Your definition is not the one in that article. If you look at the vowel chart they all follow a similar schema.
But there also a definition on wikipedia:
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as an English ah! [ɑː] or oh! [oʊ], pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! [ʃː], there is a constriction or closure at some point along the vocal tract.
For example, bird, herd, and turd just have the r sound.
In those examples “ir”, “er” and “ur” are together the vowel “əː”. There no real “r” sound in those words.
In contrast words like “rare” or “sorry” actually have the “r” phoneme.
“əː” is a vowel and “r” is a consonant. To be more precise “r” is the voiced alveolar fricative while “ə” is the mid-central vowel also known as the schwa and the “:” suggests that it’s long.
“ə” appears even two times in violet without there being any letter “r” in the word.
Google apparently speaks British/Australian/South African or Massachusetts English. In the majority of American and Canadian English “bird” is pronounced with an r-flavoured schwa.
The presence of a consonant after the r in “beard” does not make the r any less consonantal. Words like “mast” and “mats” have two consonants at the end of a syllable and both are still fully consonantal.
Merriam-Webster gives \ˈbird\, Cambridge gives /bɪərd/, and Wiktionary gives /bɪɹd/. Unfortunately Oxford requires a subscription, but all of the others seem to agree.
Okay, I was going with Google define with gives /bɪəd/. It seems like the pronunciation various significantly between different English dialects.
If you listen to the Merriam-Webster audio file then there an /r/ sound. But if you listen to the audio file on Google define there’s only the schwa.
Unfortunately Oxford requires a subscription, but all of the others seem to agree.
Given that all three give different definition of how the word is supposed to be pronounced, “agree”is a bit strong. Even if we only look at the “r” Wiktionary suggests an alveolar approximant for US English suggests that optional in UK English. On the other hand while the British dictionary Merriam-Webster suggest an alveolar trill and Cambridge suggest also a alveolar trill for US English.
That means whether not there is a consonant behind the “r” in beard and what consonant that might be depends on the dialect that you speak.
You can have multiple consonants in a row on the same part of a syllable, but it’s restricted.
Most of them seem to have the same place of articulation. For example, n and t are alveolar. m and p are bilabial. Thus, ant and amp are allowed, but anp and amt are not.
s and z don’t seem to have to follow alveolar consonants, but s, which is voiced, must follow a voiced consonant, and z, which is unvoiced, must follow a voiced consonant. I also can’t help but suspect this has to do with the fact that in English, you make words plural by adding an s or z at the end. There might be a vowel placed before it, like in bridges, but it might have caused us to get better at sticking those letters directly after consonants. Can someone who speaks a language that doesn’t do that comment on this?
It’s hard to stick a bunch of consonants together, so you’re only allowed to if there’s extenuating circumstances. By contrast, vowels are easy. r is easy, so it’s a vowel.
“Amt” is a word in German. It is pronounced exactly as it looks, plus a glottal stop at the start.
Surprising. It’s not that hard to say “amt”, but it’s not any easier than just “mt”. The syllable has a vowel in it, but
I don’t know if that’s just an odd word, or if Germany has different rules. For all I know, they frequently have syllables without vowels. I would expect them to follow the same rules, since English is a Germanic language, but I guess getting rid of almost all of their words would lead to getting rid of almost all of their rules about what words are possible.
Where are you getting these rules?
They’re rules that I noticed English tends to follow, and the rules seem to make words easier to pronounce.
They’re rules that I noticed English tends to follow
It only tends to follow them. Exceptions abound; that is not a problem for the exceptions, but for the rules. An exception is not something that fails to obey the rule, it is something the rule failed to explain.
and the rules seem to make words easier to pronounce.
I think that not all, but a lot of the causality is the other way around: whatever your native language does is easier for you.
Regarding where to draw the boundary, are R, W, and Y really vowels? The biggest difference I’ve noticed between vowels and consonants is that vowels don’t involve touching parts of your mouth together. This makes it a lot easier to transition between letters. The second thing is that vowels are always voiced. H is otherwise a vowel, but it seems like it might be worth calling a consonant on that basis.
R at least is always considered a consonant, but the sound W makes is considered a vowel if it’s a hard U or an OO, and the sound Y makes is considered a vowel if it’s a hard E or the second half of a hard I (which seems to be a soft O followed by a hard E). Also, Y is often stated as being sometimes a vowel, even though it seems to always be a hard E.
W and Y are generally placed like a consonant would be, but this doesn’t seem like it means much, since vowels can be placed anywhere. Consonants can’t be placed three in a row. (Unless the first two have the same place, the first is not a stop, and the second is, like “mp” or “nt”, which makes it particularly easy to pronounce. This leads to things like the Japanese word senpai being consistently mispronounced by Japanese speakers as “sempai”, even though the only consonant Japanese syllables can end with is an N.) It looks like W and Y have this rule, but it’s not so much that Y is never between two consonants as it is that if a hard E is between two consonants, it’s not represented with a Y. And this still doesn’t excuse R, which is frequently the only vowel between two consonants. For example, “bird”, “herd”, and “turd” are all written with different “vowels” next to the R, but they are all pronounced with just the R sound.
This always bugged me a lot. Am I the only one that sees this?
Additional context:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximant_consonant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semivowel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-colored_vowel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-vocalization
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabic_consonant
(Whoops, this came out excessively snarky for no good reason; let me make the same points in a more civil manner. I shouldn’t comment when tired or stressed out.)
Upthrust. Backstop. Blackstrap (4 in a row!) Axminster (twice, -ksm- and -nst-). Schatzkammer. Opschrijven . All of these violate this proposed rule. Not to mention things like xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓, in a language that stretches the very idea of a syllable.
That should be “consistently pronounced.” However the native speakers consistently pronounce something is right.
The concept of a consonant has fuzzy edges—see polymathwannabe’s comment. Why is this a problem?
If the data persistently fail to conform to rules abstracted from the data, it is the rules that are wrong).
After reading some of these comments, there are more exceptions than that, and I wrote it confusingly. So how about this: you cannot have more than one consonant at the same side of a syllable without extenuating circumstances. Having two of them have the same place of articulation (like the s and t in backstop), is a common one. s and z seem to only be possible to place after consonants that are voiced and unvoiced respectively. Neither can be placed after a ʒ (the second half of a j sound).
The pronounce it in a way that violates the theory of what can and cannot be pronounced in Japanese. As far as I can understand, the Japanese alphabet has one character for each syllable. Each syllable has one consonant, then one or more vowels, then possibly an n. There is no syllable “sem”.
I don’t know if they always pronounce it “sempai”. I know it is at least sometimes written “senpai”. I just meant that it’s very common to pronounce that way, even though it shouldn’t be possible at all. If they have gratuitous English that has a syllable ending in a consonant, they stick a vowel after it. For example, “red” becomes “redo” (and the d is particularly t-like, and the r is something that has no English equivalent).
Then the theory is wrong. Whatever is pronounced in Japanese can be.
In Japanese, “n” regularly sounds as “m” before “p”. It’s a rule!
1) The clusters in “upthrust” and “backstop” actually have three consonantal sounds, even if some of those sounds are written as digraphs. This debate is going to be very difficult if we’re stuck to English or any language whose spelling makes little sense, if at all. Ghoti and all that.
2) Those clusters aren’t in a single syllable. Up-thrust. Back-stop. Black-strap. Schatz-kam-mer. Op-schrij-ven. Apart from the exotic example you cite (and that time a Muppet tried to pronounce the entire alphabet as a single word), I haven’t seen more than three consonants in a single syllable.
Yes. I wasn’t intending them as examples of more than three, but of counterexamples to the rules that DanielLC proposed.
The original comment didn’t talk about syllables.
“Firsts.” On the other hand, a phoneticist might analyse the “ts” part as a single sound; except that on the phonetic level it appears to be two phonemes. So is (the sound represented in English spelling by) “ts” one consonant or two? Is the answer different for “tsetse” and for “firsts”? For “Katz” and for “cats”?
Linguistic categories are complicated.
My comment was confusingly written. If it’s a single syllable, then you can only have one consonant without extenuating circumstances.
Syllable-initially they’re pretty obviously consonants (yam vs am). There are also lots of languages that have phonological rules that involve replacing semi-vowels with other consonants or vice versa, which is a pretty strong argument for them being part of the class of consonants in those languages. For the other stuff, what polymathwannabe said. This stuff is well-studied in linguistics and particularly in phonetics.
How do you tell if it’s a consonant or just part of a diphthong? For example, is the y in may a consonant? If so, how about the y sound in mate?
Also, by that reasoning, even the r in beard, which has another vowel in it, would have to be a vowel since it’s immediately followed by a consonant.
You’re confusing orthography and phonology. “may” is spelt in IPA as /mei/, so yes, it’s a diphthong there that English represents using a vowel + Y for historical reasons. Also, there isn’t a y sound in “mate” if you pronounce it at normal speed.
I don’t understand what you mean by “by that reasoning”. But there’s no reason for the r in “beard” to have to be a vowel since it’s followed by a consonant, since that’s never stopped most other consonants before.
I know the difference. They always teach vowels and consonants as letters instead of as phonemes, and most people seem to use them that way, so I just have to talk about the phonemes corresponding to those letters. I also don’t know IPA very well, and I can’t assume anyone else does, so I tend to just say things like “y sound”.
http://dictionary.reference.com/ has my as /meɪ/ and mate as /meɪt/. Vowels are a lot more vaguely defined than consonants, so I don’t know how consistently dictionaries use the same letter, but it has to have something close to an ɪ in it, or it would just be “met”.
You can have multiple consonants in a row like that, but there’s always caveats. You can’t follow an n with a b, for example. This is because consonants are difficult to pronounce consecutively, unless there’s some reason that those two work particularly well. r is like a vowel, and can be placed next to any consonant.
That’s the problem right there though, you’re assuming that ‘y sound’ corresponds to the letter Y in English. The letter Y can represent either the phoneme /j/ (pronounced as the syllable-initial y), or the smallcaps i. The general rule is that syllable-initially Y represents /j/, elsewhere it represents the smallcaps i. Same goes for W, it’s /w/ syllable-initially, /u/ (or smallcaps omega, or barred-u depending on your dialect) elsewhere. R is similar but there’s a lot more variability in how it’s pronounced by individual people, for some people “bird” has a distinct consonant in there, for others it’s just an r-flavored vowel, for people like me it’s not there at all because I speak a non-rhotic dialect but I lengthen the preceding vowel somewhat as compensation.
Linguists tend to be a bit more specific than me. There may be a slight difference between /i/ and /j/, but they’re really close. It doesn’t seem to be enough to justify one being a vowel and the other being a consonant.
I tried listening to the recordings of /i/ vs /j/ on Wikipedia. /i/ just had /i/, but the recording for /j/ is /ja/, so it’s hard to concentrate on the /j/. It sure sounds a lot like /ia/. Similarly, /w/ had /wa/, which sounds a heck of a lot like /ua/.
I feel like /y/ just means that you start out transitioning from /i/ to another vowel. You tend to emphasize the following vowel more. But since you could be transitioning to any vowel, it doesn’t make sense that /y/ represents the transition itself. The only constant is it starts out as /i/.
A particularly interesting case is /jiː/ (Old English pronoun that is now spelled “ye”). It’s clearly not just /i/, and /ii/ would sound identical. But it does seem to be somewhat of a palindrome. The /i/ at the end is extended longer, but the sounds are the same forwards and backwards. There’s a slight change in the sound or emphasis between them, so it might be /ieiː/ or something where it moves to a subtly different vowel and back.
I am not interested in being an introductory phonology/phonetics textbook, but if you want to know why linguists think that semivowels should be considered a separate category to vowels, there is plenty of writing out there on the subject.I’m bowing out from further participation.
Take a look at the IPA definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet It quite clearly distinguishes the class of sounds that are consonants and those that are vowels.
Given that English orthography is messed up and the sound that letters make isn’t always the same sound.
It says that it’s the middle part of a vowel. That’s not clear at all, considering that you can have more than one vowel in the middle and you don’t need consonants at the ends.
You don’t put a w or a y in the middle of a syllable, but it’s frequent to put the corresponding sound there. You just don’t spell it with a w or y. r is frequently put in the middle of a vowel with consonants at both ends. There is often no other vowel there. There’s always another vowel written there, but the only sound made is an r sound. For example, bird, herd, and turd just have the r sound. Beard has a y sound before the r sound, but since it has a consonant after the r, the r clearly can’t be a consonant.
No the whole article doesn’t use the word “middle” even once if you do a quick search.
You are still thinking in terms of letter instead of phonemes.
Your definition is not the one in that article. If you look at the vowel chart they all follow a similar schema.
But there also a definition on wikipedia:
In those examples “ir”, “er” and “ur” are together the vowel “əː”. There no real “r” sound in those words. In contrast words like “rare” or “sorry” actually have the “r” phoneme.
“əː” is a vowel and “r” is a consonant. To be more precise “r” is the voiced alveolar fricative while “ə” is the mid-central vowel also known as the schwa and the “:” suggests that it’s long.
“ə” appears even two times in violet without there being any letter “r” in the word.
Not in American English.
It’s true in the kind of English that Google speaks. Maybe Californian English?
Google apparently speaks British/Australian/South African or Massachusetts English. In the majority of American and Canadian English “bird” is pronounced with an r-flavoured schwa.
The presence of a consonant after the r in “beard” does not make the r any less consonantal. Words like “mast” and “mats” have two consonants at the end of a syllable and both are still fully consonantal.
The IPA of beard is: “bɪəd” b and d are consonants but the “r” belongs to “ə” which is a vowel.
Merriam-Webster gives \ˈbird\, Cambridge gives /bɪərd/, and Wiktionary gives /bɪɹd/. Unfortunately Oxford requires a subscription, but all of the others seem to agree.
Okay, I was going with Google define with gives /bɪəd/. It seems like the pronunciation various significantly between different English dialects.
If you listen to the Merriam-Webster audio file then there an /r/ sound. But if you listen to the audio file on Google define there’s only the schwa.
Given that all three give different definition of how the word is supposed to be pronounced, “agree”is a bit strong. Even if we only look at the “r” Wiktionary suggests an alveolar approximant for US English suggests that optional in UK English. On the other hand while the British dictionary Merriam-Webster suggest an alveolar trill and Cambridge suggest also a alveolar trill for US English.
That means whether not there is a consonant behind the “r” in beard and what consonant that might be depends on the dialect that you speak.
You can have multiple consonants in a row on the same part of a syllable, but it’s restricted.
Most of them seem to have the same place of articulation. For example, n and t are alveolar. m and p are bilabial. Thus, ant and amp are allowed, but anp and amt are not.
s and z don’t seem to have to follow alveolar consonants, but s, which is voiced, must follow a voiced consonant, and z, which is unvoiced, must follow a voiced consonant. I also can’t help but suspect this has to do with the fact that in English, you make words plural by adding an s or z at the end. There might be a vowel placed before it, like in bridges, but it might have caused us to get better at sticking those letters directly after consonants. Can someone who speaks a language that doesn’t do that comment on this?
It’s hard to stick a bunch of consonants together, so you’re only allowed to if there’s extenuating circumstances. By contrast, vowels are easy. r is easy, so it’s a vowel.
“Amt” is a word in German. It is pronounced exactly as it looks, plus a glottal stop at the start.
Where are you getting these rules?
Surprising. It’s not that hard to say “amt”, but it’s not any easier than just “mt”. The syllable has a vowel in it, but
I don’t know if that’s just an odd word, or if Germany has different rules. For all I know, they frequently have syllables without vowels. I would expect them to follow the same rules, since English is a Germanic language, but I guess getting rid of almost all of their words would lead to getting rid of almost all of their rules about what words are possible.
They’re rules that I noticed English tends to follow, and the rules seem to make words easier to pronounce.
It only tends to follow them. Exceptions abound; that is not a problem for the exceptions, but for the rules. An exception is not something that fails to obey the rule, it is something the rule failed to explain.
I think that not all, but a lot of the causality is the other way around: whatever your native language does is easier for you.