A037195, vowels, consonants, semivowels, and approximants

[Jonathan Post]

[I sent this 2.5 hours ago, but haven't yet seen it in my inbox, so I'm
sending it again].

4:52 pm (2½ hours ago)

Recalling the days when I studied Mathematical Linguistics at Caltech, one
normally classifies phonemes and letters into classes which include vowels,
consonants, semivowels, and approximants.  No definitions of these seem to
be explicit in OEIS, but some are implicit.

For example:

 A037195 <http://www.research.att.com/%7Enjas/sequences/A037195>
 Number of consonants in n.
A037196<http://www.research.att.com/%7Enjas/sequences/A037196>
 Number of vowels in n.
and in French, German, and the like.  However, since these are not defined,
it might puzzle some that:

A037195(n) + A037196(n) is not equal to
 A005589 <http://www.research.att.com/%7Enjas/sequences/A005589>
 Number of letters in the English name of n, excluding spaces and hyphens.
It becomes clear from context that "consonants" in OEIS in English include H
(as in the names of 3, 8, 12, 13, 18, ...) and W (as in the name of 2, 20,
...).  Y, however, seems not to be counted as either vowel nor consonant (as
is 20), consistent with it being a semivowel.  Y can act as a consonant as
in the words "yes" or "yocto-" but it's status in OEIS has been null.

"The number of semivowels in the English name of n" would be a rotten
sequence, due to the frequencies of zeroes.  Specifically, if a(n) were that
seq, we'd have:
a(0) through a(19) = 0;
a(20) through a(99) = 1;
a(100) through a(119) = 0;
a(120) through a(199) = 1;
and so forth.

It might be worth having a definition of vowel and consonant in the relevant
seqs, whether or not a comment on semivowels is desired to clarify as above.

-- Jonathan Vos Post
B.S., Mathematics, Caltech, 1973
B.S., English Literature, Caltech, 1973
other degrees since then irrelevant to this comment.
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