Single-phoneme "and"

[alice]

Is there any language in which the word for "and" is /u/? It's easy to find examples for the other four principal vowels.

For that matter, are there any other words which are /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, and /u/ in various languages?

[Soap]

Wiktionary says that Maltese is one example:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/u#Maltese

It maybe mutates depending on surrounding phonemes, but I'd still say that if it's /u/ in bare form, then it's a winner.

[Yng]

Syrian Arabic and lots of other Arabic dialects.

[zompist]

For that matter, are there any other words which are /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, and /u/ in various languages?

Probably the other simple conjunctions. I'll start you off with

/a/ - Russian but
/e/ - Aromanian and/or/but
/o/ - Spanish or
/u/ - Portuguese or

Or maybe 'one'.

a - Luwian, Dzorgai Qiang
e - Bijiang Bai
i - Harzani, Hmong, Mandarin
u - Valencian, Makasai

Sadly, no /o/. But as a bonus:

ɨ - Northern Li
ɯ - Qi
å - Thayetmo

[Zju]

Bulgarian uses five out of its six vowels as standalone words, and the sixth as interjection:

/a/ - and, but
/ɔ/ - at (archaic); oh!
/u/ - in (for animate nouns)
/ɛ/ - is (be.3.SG.PRS)
/i/ - and
/ɤ/ - huh?; well...

but there's more:

/f/ - in (or /v/, I'm sure it could be analysed as either)
/s/ - with
/ʃ/ - FUT= (very marked, only in quite colloquial and fast speech)

[Arzena]

Moroccan Arabic's word for 'and', which varies between [o] and .

[clawgrip]

For that matter, are there any other words which are /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, and /u/ in various languages?

Japanese:
胃 i stomach
鵜 u cormorant
絵 e picture, へ e to; toward
尾 o tail (not used so much), を o accusative particle

[svld]

Taiwanese
i - heal
e - shoe
a - crow
o - black
u - have

[alice]

Aaaargh!!! I'll rephrase the question as I really meant it:

Are there any *individual* words (perhaps "lexemes"?) which are *each of* /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, and /u/ in various languages? So if "cormorant " is /a/ in no language, it doesn't count.

[Magb]

å - Thayetmo

I've never heard of this language, and googling it is proving difficult (some quick and dirty research indicates it's possibly a dialect of this language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C3%B6_language, is that right?). Do you happen to know how they came to use <å>, and what vowel it represents?

Aaaargh!!! I'll rephrase the question as I really meant it:

Are there any *individual* words (perhaps "lexemes"?) which are *each of* /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, and /u/ in various languages? So if "cormorant " is /a/ in no language, it doesn't count.

I think I got you. Let me see if I remember how to logic:
V={a,e,i,o,u}
L=a language
W=a word
Alice's Universal Vowel Word Conjecture: ∃W. ∀V. ∃L. W∈L ∧ W∈V
Or in English: Does there exist a word such that for all the vowels a/e/i/o/u there exists a language where that word is that vowel?

[zompist]

å - Thayetmo

I've never heard of this language, and googling it is proving difficult (some quick and dirty research indicates it's possibly a dialect of this language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C3%B6_language, is that right?). Do you happen to know how they came to use <å>, and what vowel it represents?

Yes, that's it. Wherever I have å in my numbers list, it's likely to come from Grierson's Survey of India, and represents [ɔ].

[Ser]

Spanish:

a - to, towards
e - allomorph of y 'and' (used before a word starting with /i/: padres e hijos /"pad4es e "ixos/)
i - 'go!' (Central American dialectal imperative of ir 'to go')
y /i/ - and
o - or
u - allomorph of o 'or' (used before a word starting with /o/: siete u ocho /"sjete u "otSo/)

[clawgrip]

to/toward:
a: various Romance
e: Japanese, Korean
i: Welsh, Samoan, Hawaiian
o: ??
u: Serbo-Croatian, Bosnian

Anyone know one for o?

[hwhatting]

to/toward:
Anyone know one for o?

In a pinch, we could count French au here ("to" plus male article)...

[clawgrip]

Yes, I was thinking that...since au is "to the" it is sort of acceptable and sort of not.

[Echobeats]

Scandinavian languages have /O/ for "and". Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic spell it <og>, and Swedish spells it <och>.

Anyone know of a language with a single consonant phoneme for "and"? Say /m/ or /n/?

[Axiem]

Colloquial American English uses /n/ for conjunction. To the point where it's in the names of restaurants: "Steak 'n Shake", "In 'n Out Burger", or music genres: "rock 'n' roll".

[Jonlang]

Welsh has:

a /a/ - and
â /aː/ - with/by means of
y /ə/ - the
i /iː/ - to/for
e /eː/ - he
o /ɔ/ - he/from/of

Although some of these have alternate forms too.