Short vowels and their sounds. As already indicated (paras. 15–17), the short vowels are never normally written, while the long vowels and diphthongs are only hinted at ambiguously. The student will have noticed for himself from the transliteration that all the words so far used have only short vowels, and that these seem to be only three in number: a, i and u. (Approximate equivalents for these may be found thus: for a in the English words “bat”, “but” or “bet”, depending on general vowel-colouring, but often a compromise falling between all three; for i in “bit”, and for u in “book”.) However, it will be remembered that several consonants (para. 25 onwards) have a thickening effect on neighbouring vowels, and this extends the range of vowel-sounds very considerably. Thus, with such consonants a and u both tend from different sides towards something like English “o” as in “hot”: for example while kalb sounds rather like kelb, the word qalb is more qolb; contrast likewise fulk (with the sound foolk) and qufl (with the sound qofl). With the same thickening consonants, i may either become like an English “e” (e.g. silm is as it would be read in English, but ‘ilm sounds rather like uh-elm), or it may tend towards the “vague” vowel of English (thus the i in sifa sounds like the unstressed vowel in “pleasure” (plezh?), “vision” (vizh?n) or “Saint Joan” (S?nt)).