Triphthong

In phonetics, a triphthong is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement of the articulator from one vowel quality to another that passes over a third. While "pure" vowels, or monophthongs, are said to have one target articulator position, diphthongs have two and triphthongs three.
Triphthongs are not to be confused with disyllabic sequences of a diphthong followed by a monophthong, as in German Feuer 'fire', where the final vowel is longer than those found in triphthongs.

Examples

Triphthongs that feature close elements typically analyzed as and in phonology are not listed. For instance, the Polish word łój 'tallow' is typically analyzed as - a sequence of a consonant followed by a vowel and another consonant. This is because the palatal approximant is resyllabified in some inflected forms, such as łojami , and also because occurs word-finally after a consonant just like does, which means that both of them behave more like consonants than vowels.
On the other hand, are not treated as phonetic consonants when they arise from vocalization of, or as they do not share almost all of their features with those three.

First segment is the nucleus

Bernese German

has the following triphthongs:

as in Gieu 'boy'
as in Gfüeu 'feeling'
as in Schueu 'school'

They have arisen due to the vocalization of in the syllable coda; compare the last two with Standard German Gefühl and Schule, the last one with a schwa not present in the Bernese word.

Danish

has the following triphthongs:

as in færge 'ferry'
as in hvirvle 'to whirl'
as in Børge, a given name
as in spurv 'sparrow'
English

In British Received Pronunciation, and most other non-rhotic varieties of English, monosyllabic triphthongs with r are optionally distinguished from sequences with disyllabic realizations:

as in: flour
as in: hire
as in: coir, loir

are sometimes transcribed as, or similarly.
As and become and respectively before, most instances of and are words with the suffix "-er", such as player and slower. Less commonly, triphthongs appear as an inseparable part of a word, as in iron, society, or sour. Other instances are from loanwords or words derived from foreign sources, such as aorist, boa, and choir.
A unique aspect of English triphthongs, as compared to other sequences of three vowels, is their shared tendency to undergo reduction via a process known as smoothing.

Second segment is the nucleus

as in buey 'ox'
as in Uruguay 'Uruguay'
as in cambiáis 'you change'
as in cambiéis 'that you may change'

The last two are mostly restricted to European Spanish. In Latin American Spanish, the corresponding words are cambian and cambien, with a rising-opening diphthong followed by a nasal stop and initial, rather than final stress. In phonology, are analyzed as a monosyllabic sequence of three vowels:. In Help:IPA/Spanish, those triphthongs are transcribed :,,,