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In linguistics, vowel length is the duration of a vowel sound. While of relatively little importance in English, vowel length can be an important phonemic factor in many other languages including but not limited to Czech, Fijian, Finnish, Hawaiian, Japanese, Latin, Maori, Old English, and Thai.
Most languages either do not distinguish vowel length, or distinguish between only short vowels and long vowels. However, Estonian and Wichita distinguish three vowel lengths.
Long vowels in English
Vowel length, when applied to English, has several different related meanings.
Traditionally, the vowels [ei] [i] [ai] [ou] [ju] (bait beet bite boat beaut(y)) are said to be "long", and the vowels [] [E] [I] [A] [U] (bat bet bit bot put) are said to be "short". This terminology reflects the historical pronunciation and development of those vowels. However, in modern varieties of English, especially American English, the lengths are no longer contrasted; rather, the distinction is on vowel tenseness, with the "long" vowels being tenser than the "short" vowels.
In the modern English language, vowel length is manifested in another way: vowels are long before voiced consonants in the coda of a syllable. For example, the vowel ([]) in [bt] ("bat") is short, because /t/ is unvoiced, while the same vowel in [b:d] ("bad") is long, because /d/ is voiced. Vowel stress in English also makes vowels longer, as English is a stress-timed language. (Incidentally, the consonants in these syllables also have different relative lenghths; the [t] of bat is longer than the [d] of bad.)
Notation A large number of inventive solutions for noting vowel length have been devised. Note that many scripts, including some for languages where vowel length is phonemic, do not record vowel length at all.
Notations in the Latin alphabet Several mechanisms for denoting vowel length are used in the Latin alphabet: - Macron, used in Latin, Maori, Latvian and many transcription schemes (eg. Hepburn for Japanese). A vowel with a macron indicates a long vowel (kōtsū "traffic"), with macronless vowels being short (kotsu "bone").
- Circumflex, used unsystematically in Turkish for both vowel length and palatalization. As with acute accents, a vowel with an accent is long, with other vowels being short. The circumflex is occasionally used as a surrogate for the macrons, particularly in the Kunrei-shiki romanization of Japanese.
- Ring, used in Czech, where the character is known as a krouzek and is used for the long U sound, as in kůň "horse".
- Vowel doubling, used in Dutch, Estonian and Finnish. Two consecutive vowels (tuuli, "wind") indicate a long vowel, while a single vowel is short (tuli, "fire").
- Estonian also has a rare "overlong" vowel length, but does not distinguish this from the normal long vowel in writing.
- The long I in Dutch is written as "ie", not "ii".
- Colon, commonly used in IPA phonetic transcription but no native writing systems. Vowel length can also be signified by a half-colon (a colon with only the top dot), meaning half-long, and a double colon, meaning twice as long as a regular vowel.
Notations in other writing systems In non-Latin writing systems, a variety of mechanisms have also evolved. - In descendants of the Aramaic alphabet, notably Arabic and Hebrew, long vowels are written with their own letters, while short vowels are typically omitted entirely. Most of these scripts also have optional diacritics that can be used to mark short vowels when needed.
- The Thai alphabet, an abugida, has different vowel signs for short and long vowels.
- In the Devanagari script used for Sanskrit and many related languages, long vowels can be indicated by affixing a vowel sign to the letter.
- In the Japanese hiragana syllabary, long vowels are indicated by adding vowel characters after a consonant-vowel characters.
- A long O or U is indicated by adding the hiragana character う (u), as in こうつう kōtsū "traffic" instead of こつ kotsu "bone".
- Note that the hiragana character お (o) is used instead in the comparatively rare cases where the long O is not part of a loanword from Chinese, such as おおきい ōkii "large". This difference in orthography has its roots in the historical development of the Japanese language.
- A long E or I is indicated by adding い (i), as in せんせい sensei "teacher" (pronounced [sense:]).
- Long A is rare in native Japanese words, but can be rendered in hiragana by adding the character あ (a), as in おかあさん okaasan "mother."
- In the Japanese katakana syllabary, long vowels are almost always indicated by adding the special bar character ー, as in コーツー kōtsū "traffic" instead of コツ kotsu "bone".
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