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| Long | |
|---|---|
| ◌ː | |
| IPA number | 503 |
| Encoding | |
| Entity(decimal) | ː |
| Unicode(hex) | U+02D0 |
| X-SAMPA | : |
| Half long | |
|---|---|
| ◌ˑ | |
| IPA number | 504 |
| Encoding | |
| Entity(decimal) | ˑ |
| Unicode(hex) | U+02D1 |
| X-SAMPA | :\ |
| Extra long | |
|---|---|
| ◌ːˑ | |
| ◌ːː |
| Extra short | |
|---|---|
| ◌̆ | |
| IPA number | 505 |
| Encoding | |
| Entity(decimal) | ̆ |
| Unicode(hex) | U+0306 |
Inphonetics,length orquantity is afeature of sounds that have distinctively extended duration compared with other sounds. There arelong vowels as well aslong consonants (the latter are often calledgeminates).
Many languages do not have distinctive length. Among the languages that have distinctive length, there are only a few that have both distinctive vowel length and distinctive consonant length. It is more common that there is only one or that they depend on each other.
The languages that distinguish between different lengths have usually long and short sounds. TheMixe languages are widely considered to have three distinctive levels of vowel length,[1] as doEstonian, someLow German varieties in the vicinity ofHamburg[2] and someMoselle Franconian[3] andRipuarian Franconian varieties.
Strictly speaking, a pair of a long sound and a short sound should be identical except for their length. In certain languages, however, there are pairs ofphonemes that are traditionally considered to be long-short pairs even though they differ not only in length, but also in quality, for instanceEnglish "long e" which is/iː/ (as infeet/fiːt/) vs. "short i" which is/ɪ/ (as infit/fɪt/) orGerman "long e" which is/eː/ (as inBeet/beːt/ 'garden bed') vs. "short e" which is/ɛ/ (as inBett/bɛt/ 'sleeping bed'). Also,tonal contour may reinforce the length, as inEstonian, where the over-long length isconcomitant with a tonal variation resembling tonal stress marking.
In transcription in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet, long vowels or consonants are notated with the length sign (ːUnicode U+02D0 MODIFIER LETTER TRIANGULAR COLON) after the letter.Diacritics may occur over either the base letter, the length sign, or both. For example, in somenon-rhotic varieties of English the /t/ of the wordparty may be nearlyelided, with just some breathy-voice remaining, in which case it may be transcribed[ˈpɑː̤ɪ].[4] When both length and tone aremoraic, a tone diacritic may appear twice, as in[sáː̀] (falling tone on a long vowel). A morpheme may be reduced to length plus nasalization, in which case a word might be transcribed[saː̃]. If the length is morphemic, the morphemes would be/ː̀/ and/ː̃/.
In this non-linearphonology, the feature of length is often not a feature of a specific sound segment, but rather of the whole syllable.
Clark, John; Yallop, Collin; Fletcher, Janet (2007).Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 51–52,26–27,32–33.