In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in many other languages, for instance in Czech, Hindi, Sanskrit, Fijian, Finnish, Japanese, Hawaiian, Classical Latin, German, Latvian, Old English, Samoan, Thai, and Vietnamese. It plays a phonetic role in the majority of English dialects, and is said to be phonemic in a few dialects, such as Australian English and New Zealand English. It also plays a lesser phonetic role in Cantonese, which is exceptional among the spoken variants of Chinese. Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. ... In phonetics, length or quantity is a feature of sounds that are distinctively longer than other sounds. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... In spoken language, a chroneme is a basic, theoretical unit of sound that can distinguish words by duration only of a vowel or consonant. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... In human language, a phoneme is a set of phones (speech sounds or sign elements) that are cognitively equivalent. ... Hindi (हिन्दी or हिंदी in Devanagari; pronunciation: ), an Indo-European language spoken mainly in northern and central India, is the official language of the Union government of India [1][2]. It is part of a dialect continuum of the Indic family, bounded on the northwest and west by Punjabi, Sindhi, Urdu, and... The Sanskrit language ( , ) is a classical language of India, a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. ... The Hawaiian language is an Austronesian language that takes its name from that of the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ... Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon) is an early form of the English language that was spoken in parts of what is now England and southern Scotland between the mid-fifth century and the mid-twelfth century. ... Australian English (AuE) is the form of the English language used in Australia. ... New Zealand English is the English spoken in New Zealand. ... Cantonese (Traditional Chinese: 粵語; Simplified Chinese: 粤语]], Cantonese: Yuet6yue5; Mandarin pinyin: Yuèyǔ, lit. ... Spoken Chinese The Chinese spoken language(s) comprise(s) many regional variants. ...

English does indeed rely on vowel length. Listening to German speakers speak English makes this very apparent. They say "pot" and "pod" with the same vowel length (also "kit / kid", "lab / lap"). A native English speaker uses a long vowel with words ending in a soft consonant. (For example, pick/pig, cease / seize etc.)

Most languages do not distinguish vowel length, and for those that do, usually the only distinction is between short vowels and long vowels. There are very few languages that distinguish three vowel lengths, for instance Mixe. Some languages, such as Finnish, Estonian and Japanese also have words where long vowels are immediately followed by more vowels, e.g. Japanese hōō "phoenix" or Estonian jäääär "ice edge".

It is good

Phonemic vowel length

Many languages have phonemic long and short vowels: Japanese, Finnish, Hungarian, etc. In linguistics, vowel length is the duration of a vowel sound. ...

Estonian has three distinctive lengths, but the third is suprasegmental, as it has developed from the allophonic variation caused by now-deleted grammatical markers. For example, half-long 'aa' in saada comes from the agglutination *saata+ka "send+(imperative)", and the overlong 'aa' in saada comes from *saa+ta "get+(infinitive)". One of the very few languages to have three lengths, independent of vowel quality or syllable structure, is Mixe. An example from Mixe is [poʃ] "guava", [poˑʃ] "spider", [poːʃ] "knot". Similar claims have been made for Yavapai and Wichita. Yavapai is a Native American language quite similar to Havasupai and Walapai. ... Wichita is a moribund language spoken in Oklahoma. ...

Four-way distinctions have been claimed, but these are actually long-short distinctions on adjacent syllables. For example, in kiKamba, there is [ko.ko.na], [kóó.ma̋], [ko.óma̋], [nétónubáné.éetɛ̂] "hit", "dry", "bite", "we have chosen for everyone and are still choosing".

Long vowels in English

Vowel length, when applied to English, has several different related meanings.

Traditional non-phonetic "long" and "short" vowels

Traditionally, the vowels /ei iː ai oʊ juː/ (as in bait beet bite boat beauty) are said to be the "long" counterparts of the vowels /æ ɛ ɪ ɒ ʊ/ (as in bat bet bit bot put) which are said to be "short". This terminology reflects their pronunciation before the Great Vowel Shift, rather than their present-day pronunciations. The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language, generally accomplished in the 15th century, although evidence suggests it began as early as the 14th century. ...

Allophonic vowel length

In certain dialects of the modern English language, for instance General American, there is allophonic vowel length: vowel phonemes are realized as long vowel allophones before voiced consonant phonemes in the coda of a syllable. For example, the vowel phoneme /æ/ in /ˈbæt/ ‘bat’ is realized as a short allophone [æ] in [ˈbæt], because the /t/ phoneme is unvoiced, while the same vowel /æ/ phoneme in /ˈbæd/ ‘bad’ is realized as a long allophone in [ˈbæːd], because /d/ is voiced. (Incidentally, the final consonant allophones in these syllables also have different relative lengths; the [t] of bat is longer than the [d] of bad.) Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ... In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ... A syllable (Ancient Greek: ) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. ...

Symbolic representation of the two allophonic rules: An allophonic rule is a phonological rule that says which allophone realizes a phoneme in a given phonemic environment. ...

Phonemic vowel length

In Australian English, there is distinctive phonemic vowel length. The following are minimal pairs of length for many speakers: Australian English is a non-rhotic variety of English spoken by most native-born Australians. ... In human language, a phoneme is a set of phones (speech sounds or sign elements) that are cognitively equivalent. ...

Etymologies

The long vowel may often be traced to assimilation. For a clear-cut example, consider spoken Finnish suurii < suuria: the chroneme is the only marker for the partitive case. In Australian English, the second element [ə] of a diphthong [eə] has assimilated to the preceding vowel, giving the pronunciation of bared as [beːd], creating a contrast with bed [bed]. Another etymology is the vocalization of a fricative such as the voiced velar fricative or voiced palatal fricative, e.g. Finnish illative case, or even an approximant, as the English 'r'. Assimilation is a regular and frequent sound change process by which a phoneme changes to match an adjacent phoneme in a word. ... This article deals with features of the spoken Finnish language, specifically how it is spoken in Greater Helsinki capital region and the cities in the Central Finnish dialectal area, such as Jyväskylä, Lahti, Hyvinkää, and Hämeenlinna. ... The basic meaning of the Partitive case is partialness, without result or without specifying identity. In the Finnish language, its used to express unknown identities and irresultative actions. ... In animals, vocalization is a means of communication generated in many cases by their primitive versions of vocal chords. ... The voiced velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The voiced palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... Illative case in the Finno-Ugric languages Illative (from Latin inferre to bring in) is, in the Finnish language, Estonian language and the Hungarian language, the third of the locative cases with the basic meaning of into (the inside of). An example from Hungarian would be a házba (into...

Estonian, of Balto-Finnic languages, exhibits a rare phenomenon, where allophonic length variation becomes phonemic following the deletion of the suffixes causing the allophony. Estonian already distinguishes two vowel lengths, but a third one has been introduced by this phenomenon. For example, the Balto-Finnic imperative marker *-k caused the preceding vowels to be articulated shorter, and following the deletion of the marker, the allophonic length became phonemic, as shown in the example below. Similarly, the Australian English phoneme /æː/ was created by the incomplete application of a rule extending /æ/ before certain voiced consonants, a phenomenon known as the bad-lad split. Baltic-Finnic languages are a subgroup of Finno-Ugric languages, spoken around the Baltic Sea by about 6 million people. ... // Trap-bath split The trap-bath split is a vowel split that occurs mainly in southern varieties of English English (including Received Pronunciation), in the Boston accent, and in the Southern Hemisphere accents (Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English), by which the Early Modern English phoneme was lengthened...

Notations in the Latin alphabet

Diacritics

• Macron, (ā), used to indicate a long vowel in Maori, Latvian and many transcription schemes, including romanizations for Sanskrit, the Hepburn romanization for Japanese, and Yale for Korean. While not a feature in Latin proper, the macron is also used as a teaching aid in modern Latin textbooks.
  • Breves, (ă), are used to mark short vowels in several linguistic transcription systems, as well as in Vietnamese.

• Acute accent, (á), used to indicate a long vowel in Czech, Old Norse, Hungarian and Slovak.

• Circumflex, (â), 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.

• Ogonek, (ą), used in Lithuanian to indicate long vowels.

A macron, from Gr. ... M&#257;ori (or Maori) is a language spoken by the native peoples of New Zealand and the Cook Islands. ... The Sanskrit language ( , ) is a classical language of India, a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Romaji ローマ字 For other meanings, see Hepburn (disambiguation). ... The Yale romanizations are four systems created during World War II for use by United States military personnel. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ... This article is about the breve breve in music, see double whole note. ... Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. ... The acute accent ( Â´ ) is a diacritic mark used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin and Greek scripts. ... Old Norse is the Germanic language spoken by the inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300. ... The circumflex ( ˆ ) (more commonly known as an uppen) is a diacritic mark used in written Greek, French, Esperanto, Norwegian, Romanian, Slovak, Vietnamese, Japanese romaji, Welsh, Portuguese, Italian, Afrikaans, and other languages. ... Palatalization means pronouncing a sound nearer to the hard palate, making it more like a palatal consonant; this is towards the front of the mouth for a velar or uvular consonant, but towards the back of the mouth for a front (e. ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Romaji ローマ字 Kunrei-shiki (訓令式, Cabinet-ordered system) is a romanization system, that is, a system for transcribing the Japanese language into the Roman alphabet. ... Ogonek (Polish for little tail; In Lithuanian it is nosinÄ— which literally means nasal) is a diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the Latin alphabet used in Polish (letters Ä…, Ä™), Lithuanian (Ä…, Ä™, į, ų), Navajo and Western Apache (Ä…, Ä…Ä…, Ä™, ęę, į, įį, , ), Chiricahua and Mescalero (Ä…, Ä…Ä…, Ä™, ęę, į, įį, ų, ųų) and Tutchone. ...

Additional letters

• Vowel doubling, used consistently in Estonian, Finnish, and in closed syllables in Dutch. Example: Finnish tuuli /ˈtuːli/ 'wind' vs. tuli /ˈtuli/ 'fire'.
  • Estonian also has a rare "overlong" vowel length, but does not distinguish this from the normal long vowel in writing; see the example below.

• ie is used to mark the long /iː/ sound in Dutch and in German. In German, this is due to the preservation and generalization of a historical ie spelling that originally represented the sound /iə̯/. In northern German, a following e letter lengthens other vowels as well, e.g. in the name Kues /kuːs/.

• A following h is frequently used in German and older Swedish words, e.g. German Zahn [tsaːn] 'tooth'.

• In Czech, the additional letter ů is used for the long U sound, where the character is known as a kroužek, e.g. kůň "horse". (This actually developed from the ligature "uo", which signified the diphthong /uo/, which later shifted to /u:/.)

• In Australian English, long vowels are variously denoted, but often as far as a generalisation can be made, a following r is often involved, e.g. /kad/ is cud, /kaːd/ is card; /hed/ is head, /heːd/ is haired. This is due to the ultimate derivation of many of Australian English's long vowels from sequences of vowel and a rhotic.

Bernkastel-Kues is a city at the Moselle River in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. ... In punctuation, the term ring is usually reserved for the ring above diacritic mark ˚ (looks similar to the degree sign °). The ring may be combined with some letters of the extended Latin alphabets. ... The word ligature can mean more than one thing. ... In phonetics, a diphthong (Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally with two sounds, or with two tones) is a vowel combination in a single syllable involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ...

Other signs

• Colon (punctuation), 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. This "colon" is actually two triangles facing each other in an hourglass shape instead of the usual two dots. A breve is used to mark a short vowel.

Estonian has a three-way phonemic contrast:

saada [saːda] "to get"

saada [saˑda] "send!"

sada [sada] "hundred"

Although not phonemic, the distinction can also be illustrated in certain dialects of English:

bead [biːd]

beat [biˑt]

bit [bɪt]

• Interpunct, commonly used in non-IPA phonetic transcription, such as the Americanist system developed by linguists for transcribing the indigenous languages of the Americas. Example: Americanist [tʰo·] = IPA [tʰoː].

• Some languages make no distinction in writing. This is particularly the case with ancient languages such as Latin and Old English. Modern edited texts often use macrons with long vowels, however. Australian English does not distinguish the vowels /æ/ from /æː/ in spelling, with words like ‘span’ or ‘can’ having different pronunciations depending on meaning.

A colon (:) is a punctuation mark, visually consisting of two equally sized dots centered on the same vertical line. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ... Many shapes have metaphorical names, i. ... This article is about the breve breve in music, see double whole note. ... An interpunct is a small dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script, being perhaps the first consistent visual representation of word boundaries in written language. ... Americanist phonetic notation (also Americanist Phonetic Alphabet, American Phonetic Alphabet, sometimes abbreviated APA) is a system of phonetic notation originally developed by European and Euro-American anthropologists and language scientists (former Neo-grammarians) for the phonetic and phonemic transcription of Native American and European languages. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ... Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon) is an early form of the English language that was spoken in parts of what is now England and southern Scotland between the mid-fifth century and the mid-twelfth century. ... Australian English (AuE) is the form of the English language used in Australia. ...

Notations in other writing systems

In non-Latin writing systems, a variety of mechanisms have also evolved.

• In abjads derived from the Aramaic alphabet, notably Arabic and Hebrew, long vowels are written with consonant letters (mostly approximant consonant 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.
• In South-Asian abugidas, such as Devanagari or the Thai alphabet, there are different vowel signs for short and long vowels.
• In the Japanese hiragana syllabary, long vowels are usually indicated by adding a vowel character after. For vowels /aː/, /iː/, and /uː/, the corrosponding independent vowel is added. Thus: あ (a), おかあさん, "okaasan", mother; い (i), にいがた "Niigata", city in northern Japan (usu. 新潟, in kanji); う (u), りゅう (usu. 竜), dragon. The mid-vowels /eː/ and /oː/ may be written with え (e) (rare) (ねえさん (姉さん), neesan, elder sister ) and お (o) [おおきい (usu 大きい), ookii, big] , or with い (i) (めいれい (命令), "meirei", command/order) and う (u) (おうさま (王様), ousama, "king") depending on etymological, morphological, and historic grounds.
  • Most long vowels in the katakana syllabary are written with a special bar symbol ー (vertical in vertical writing), called a chōon, as in メーカー mēkā "maker" instead of メカ meka "mecha". However, some long vowels are written with additional vowel characters, as with hiragana, with the distinction being orthographically significant.
• In the Korean Hangul alphabet, vowel length is not distinguished in normal writing. Some dictionaries use the <ː> symbol, for example 무ː “Daikon radish”.

The Aramaic alphabet is an abjad alphabet designed for writing the Aramaic language. ... The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ... This article is mainly about Hebrew letters. ... Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ... An abugida or alphasyllabary is a writing system composed of signs (graphemes) denoting consonants with an inherent following vowel, which are consistently modified to indicate other vowels (or, in some cases, the lack of a vowel). ... Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari (early 19th century) Devanāgarī (देवनागरी — in English pronounced ) (ISCII – IS13194:1991) [1] is an abugida alphabet used to write several Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri and Nepali from Nepal. ... The Thai alphabet (ตัวอักษรไทย) is used to write the Thai language (ภาษาไทย) and other minority languages in Thailand. ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 Hiragana ) are a Japanese syllabary, one of the four Japanese writing systems, along with katakana, kanji and rōmaji (i. ... Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Manyogana Uses Furigana Okurigana Rōmaji Kanji (Japanese: ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (平仮名), katakana (片仮名), and the arabic numerals. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Nihongo (meaning Japanese language), written vertically in kanji Yokogaki (横書き, horizontal writing, also known as yokogumi, 横組み) and tategaki (縦書き, vertical writing, also known as tategumi, 縦組み) are two forms of Japanese writing. ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 Category The chōon ) or bōsen ) mark is a Japanese symbol which is used to indicate a long vowel, especially in katakana writing. ... One common feature of logos used by MEChA chapters, an Eagle holding a lit stick of dynamite and a maquahuitl. ... Hangul also refers to a word processing application widely used in Korea. ... Binomial name Raphanus sativus L. Daikon (Japanese: , literally large root; Traditional Chinese: , literally white radish; Korean: mu, literally radish), is a mild-flavored East Asian giant white radish. ...

See also

• length (phonetics)
• gemination
• list of phonetic topics
• Scots vowel length rule

In phonetics, length or quantity is a feature of sounds that are distinctively longer than other sounds. ... Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-07-20, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... A acoustic phonetics affricate airstream mechanism allophone alveolar approximant alveolar consonant alveolar ejective fricative alveolar ejective alveolar flap alveolar nasal alveolar ridge alveolar trill alveolo-palatal consonant apical consonant approximant consonant articulatory phonetics aspiration auditory phonetics B back vowel bilabial click bilabial consonant bilabial ejective bilabial nasal bilabial trill breathy... The Scots Vowel-Length Rule, also known as Aitkens Law after Professor A.J. Aitken who formulated it, describes how vowel length in Scots and Scottish English is conditioned by environment. ...

Reference

Some Features of the Vernacular Finnish of Jyväskylä