Most languages do not distinguish vowel length, and for those that do, usually the only distinction is between 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".
Stress is often reinforced by allophonic vowel length, especially when it is Lexical . For example, French long vowels always occur on stressed syllables. Finnish , a language with two phonemic lengths, indicates the stress by adding allophonic length. This gives four distinctive lengths and five physical lengths: short and long stressed vowels, short and long unstressed vowels, and a half-long vowel, which is a short vowel found in a syllable immediately preceded by a stressed short vowel, e.g. ''i-s''.
Among the languages that have distinctive vowel length, there are some where it may only occur in stressed syllables, e.g. in the Alemannic German dialect. In languages such as Finnish or Classical Latin , vowel length is distinctive in unstressed syllables as well.
- ''jäŋe''. In noninitial syllables, it is ambiguous if long vowels are vowel clusters — poems written in the Kalevala Metre often syllabicate between the vowels, and an (etymologically original) intervocalic ''-h-'' is seen in this and some modern dialects.
Many languages have phonemic , Finnish , Hungarian , etc.
- ''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 "guava", "spider", "knot". Similar claims have been made for Yavapai and Wichita .
Four-way distinctions have been claimed, but these are actually long-short distinctions on adjacent syllables. For example, in kiKamba, there is , , , "hit", "dry", "bite", "we have chosen for everyone and are still choosing".
Vowel length, when applied to English, has several different related meanings.
Traditionally, the vowels (as in ''bt b'''ee'''t b'''i'''te b'''oa'''t b'''eau'''ty'') are said to be the "long" counterparts of the vowels (as in ''b'''a'''t b'''e'''t b'''i'''t b'''o'''t p'''u'''t'') which are said to be "short". This terminology reflects their pronunciation before the Great Vowel Shift , rather than their present-day pronunciations.
In certain dialects of the modern English language, for instance phonemes in the coda of a Syllable . For example, the vowel phoneme in ‘bat’ is realized as a short allophone in , because the phoneme is unvoiced, while the same vowel phoneme in ‘bad’ is realized as a long allophone in , because is voiced. (Incidentally, the final consonant allophones in these syllables also have different relative lengths; the of ''ba'' is longer than the of ''ba'''d'''.'')
Symbolic representation of the two Allophonic Rule s:
In Australian English , there is distinctive Phonemic vowel length which distinguishes such minimal pairs as the following (examples from Australian English):
The long vowel may often be traced to . In Australian English, the second element of a diphthong has assimilated to the preceding vowel, giving the pronunciation of ''bared'' as , creating a contrast with ''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'.
- ''-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 was created by the incomplete application of a rule extending before certain voiced consonants, a phenomenon known as the Bad-lad Split .
- 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.
- --- Breve s, (ă), are used to mark short vowels in several Linguistic transcription systems.
- 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.
- , used consistently in Estonian , Finnish , and in closed syllables in Dutch . Example: Finnish ''tuuli'' 'wind' vs. ''tuli'' 'fire'.
- --- Estonian also has a rare "overlong" vowel length, but does not distinguish this from the normal long vowel in writing.
- ''ie'' is used to mark the long 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 . In northern German, a following ''e'' letter lengthens other vowels as well, e.g. in the name Kues .
- In Czech , the additional letter 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. is ''cud'', is ''card''; is ''head'', is ''haired''. This is due to the ultimate derivation of many of Australian English's long vowels from sequences of vowel and a rhotic.
- 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'' "to get"
:::''saada'' "send!"
:::''sada'' "hundred"
::Although not phonemic, the distinction can also be illustrated in certain dialects of English:
:::''bead''
:::''beat''
:::''bit''
- Middle Dot , 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 = IPA .
- 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 from in spelling, with words like ‘span’ or ‘can’ having different pronunciations depending on meaning.
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-Asia n Abugida s, such as Devanagari or the Thai Alphabet , there are different vowel signs for short and long vowels.
- In the Japanese ); う (u), りゅう (usu. 竜), dragon. The mid-vowels and may be written with え (e) (rare) (ねえさん (姉さん), neesan, elder sister ) and お (o) (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 <> symbol, for example 무ː “ Raphanus Sativus ”.
Some Features of the Vernacular Finnish of Jyväskylä
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