polyphthong

plural polyphthongs

1. human sciencesA phoneme that begins with the sound of one vowel or semivowel and transitions through one or more other (semi)vowel sounds.

   A syllable is short when ending in a short monophthong or in a short polyphthong; a syllable is long when ending in a consonant or in a long monophthong or a long polyphthong.

   1997, Ilse Lehiste, Jaan Ross, Estonian Prosody: Papers from a Symposium

   2 more examples

   The teacher who uses Pinyin without knowing about such things as the place of the tone symbol in the case of polyphthong finals is merely incompetent but the teacher who supports the student in developing false notions about the language norm by adopting a systematically casual attitude to its technical aspects, can cause much greater harm.

   1973, Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, page 65

   With small preliminary he told Russ and me something like the following - I have normalised his speech in the interests of general sanity, though his polyphthongs ('hayyut' for 'hat', 'bawun' for 'born', etc.) were of the rarest quality.

   2012, Kingsley Amis, Memoirs, →ISBN, page 292

2. human sciencesA diaphoneme realized as a multitarget vowel in some but not necessarily all dialects.