Дауысты дыбысқа ұқсас, буын шекарасы қызметі атқаратын дыбыс

Transitional phoneme produced like a vowel but used like a syllable boundary

In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are the consonants y and w in yes and west, respectively. Written /j// //w/ in IPA, y and w are near to the vowels ee and oo in seen and moon, written /i:// //u:/ in IPA. The term glide may alternatively refer to any type of transitional sound, not necessarily a semivowel.

According to the standard definitions, semivowels (such as ) contrast with fricatives (such as ) in that fricatives produce turbulence, but semivowels do not. In discussing Spanish, Martínez Celdrán suggests setting up a third category of "spirant approximant", contrasting both with semivowel approximants and with fricatives. Though the spirant approximant is more constricted (having a lower F2 amplitude), longer, and unspecified for rounding (viuda 'widow' vs. ayuda 'help'), the distributional overlap is limited. The spirant approximant can only appear in the syllable onset (including word initially, where the semivowel never appears). The two overlap in distribution after and : enyesar ('to plaster') aniego ('flood') and although there is dialectal and idiolectal variation, speakers may also exhibit other near minimal pairs like abyecto ('abject') vs. abierto ('opened'). One potential minimal pair (depending on dialect) is ya visto ('already seen') vs. y ha visto ('and he has seen'). Again, it is not present in all dialects. Other dialects differ in either merging the two or enhancing the contrast by moving the former to another place of articulation , like in Rioplatense Spanish.