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Inlinguistics,vowel length is the perceived length of avowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement isduration. In some languages vowel length is an importantphonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, for example inArabic,Czech,Dravidian languages (such asTamil), someFinno-Ugric languages (such asFinnish andEstonian),Japanese,Kyrgyz,Samoan, andXhosa. Some languages in the past likely had the distinction even though their descendants do not, with an example beingLatin and its descendentRomance languages.

Whether vowel length alone changes word-meanings inEnglish depends on the particular dialect; it is able to do so in a fewnon-rhotic dialects, such asAustralian English,Lunenburg English,New Zealand English,South African English, and possibly someSouthern British English, and in a few rhotic dialects, such asScottish English andNorthern Irish English. It also plays a lesser phonetic role inCantonese, unlike in othervarieties of Chinese, which do not have phonemic vowel length distinctions.

Many languages do not distinguish vowel length phonemically, meaning that vowel length does not change meaning. However, the amount of time a vowel is uttered can change based on factors such as the phonetic characteristics of the sounds around it, for instance whether the vowel is followed by a voiced or a voiceless consonant.

Languages that do distinguish vowel length phonemically usually only distinguish betweenshort vowels andlong vowels. Very few languages distinguish three phonemic vowel lengths; some that do so areEstonian,Luiseño, andMixe. However, languages with two vowel lengths may permit words in which two adjacent vowels are of the same quality: Japaneseほうおう,hōō, "phoenix", orAncient Greekἀάατος[a.áː.a.tos],^[1] "inviolable". Some languages that do not ordinarily have phonemic vowel length but permit vowelhiatus may similarly exhibit sequences of identical vowel phonemes that yieldphonetically long vowels, such asGeorgianგააადვილებ,gaaadvileb[ɡa.a.ad.vil.eb], "you will facilitate it".

Stress is often reinforced by allophonic vowel length, especially when it is lexical. For example,French long vowels are always in stressed syllables.Finnish, a language with two phonemic lengths, indicates the stress by adding allophonic length, which 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:i-so.

Among the languages with distinctive vowel length, there are some in which it may occur only in stressed syllables, such as inAlemannic German,Scottish Gaelic andEgyptian Arabic. In languages such asCzech,Finnish, some Irish dialects andClassical Latin, vowel length is distinctive also in unstressed syllables.

In some languages, vowel length is sometimes better analyzed as a sequence of two identical vowels. InFinnic languages, such as Finnish, the simplest example follows fromconsonant gradation:haka → haan. In some cases, it is caused by a followingchroneme, which is etymologically a consonant:jää "ice" ←Proto-Uralic *jäŋe. In non-initial syllables, it is ambiguous if long vowels are vowel clusters; poems written in theKalevala meter often syllabicate between the vowels, and an (etymologically original) intervocalic-h- is seen in that and some modern dialects (taivaan vs.taivahan "of the sky"). Morphological treatment ofdiphthongs is essentially similar to long vowels. Some old Finnish long vowels have developed into diphthongs, but successive layers of borrowing have introduced the same long vowels again so the diphthong and the long vowel now again contrast (nuotti "musical note" vs.nootti "diplomatic note").

In Japanese, most long vowels are the results of the phonetic change ofdiphthongs;au andou becameō,iu becameyū,eu becameyō, and nowei is becomingē. The change also occurred after the loss of intervocalic phoneme/h/. For example, modernKyōto (Kyoto) has undergone a shift:/kjauto/→/kjoːto/. Another example isshōnen (boy):/seuneɴ/→/sjoːneɴ/[ɕoːneɴ].

As noted above, only a relatively few of the world's languages make aphonemic distinction between long and short vowels. Some families have many such languages, examples being theDravidian languages and theFinno-Ugric languages. Other languages have fewer relatives with vowel length, includingArabic,Japanese,Scottish Gaelic. There are also older languages such asAncient Greek,Biblical Hebrew, andLatin which have phonemic vowel length but no descendants that preserve it.

In Latin and Hungarian, some long vowels are analyzed as separate phonemes from short vowels:

Vowel length contrasts with more than two phonemic levels are rare, and several hypothesized cases of three-level vowel length can be analysed without postulating this typologically unusual configuration.^[2]Estonian has three distinctive lengths, but the third issuprasegmental, as it has developed from the allophonic variation caused by now-deleted grammatical markers. For example, half-long 'aa' insaada comes from the agglutination *saa+tta+k */sɑːtˑɑk/ "send (saatta-) +(imperative)", and the overlong 'aa' insaada comes from *saa+dak "get+(infinitive)". As for languages that have three lengths, independent of vowel quality or syllable structure, these includeDinka,Mixe,Yavapai andWichita. An example from Mixe is[poʃ] "guava",[poˑʃ] "spider",[poːʃ] "knot". In Dinka the longest vowels are threemoras long, and so are best analyzed as overlong e.g./oːː/.

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

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In many varieties of English, vowels contrast with each other both in length and in quality, and descriptions differ in the relative importance given to these two features. Some descriptions ofReceived Pronunciation and more widely some descriptions ofEnglish phonology group all non-diphthongal vowels into the categories "long" and "short", convenient terms for grouping the many vowels of English.^[3][4][5]Daniel Jones proposed that phonetically similar pairs of long and short vowels could be grouped into single phonemes, distinguished by the presence or absence of phonological length (chroneme).^[6] The usual long-short pairings for RP are /iː + ɪ/, /ɑː + æ/, /ɜ: + ə/, /ɔː + ɒ/, /u + ʊ/, but Jones omits /ɑː + æ/. This approach is not found in present-day descriptions of English. Vowels show allophonic variation in length and also in other features according to the context in which they occur. The termstense (corresponding tolong) andlax (corresponding toshort) are alternative terms that do not directly refer to length.^[7]

InAustralian English, there is contrastive vowel length in closed syllables between long and short/e/ and/ɐ/. The following areminimal pairs of length:

In most varieties of English, for instanceReceived Pronunciation andGeneral American, there isallophonic variation in vowel length depending on the value of the consonant that follows it: vowels are shorter before voiceless consonants and are longer when they come before voiced consonants.^[8] Thus, the vowel inbad/bæd/ is longer than the vowel inbat/bæt/. Also compareneat/niːt/ withneed/niːd/. The vowel sound in "beat" is generally pronounced for about 190 milliseconds, but the same vowel in "bead" lasts 350 milliseconds in normal speech, the voiced final consonant influencing vowel length.

Cockney English features short and long varieties of the closing diphthong[ɔʊ]. The short[ɔʊ] corresponds to RP/ɔː/ in morphologically closed syllables (seethought split), whereas the long[ɔʊː] corresponds to the non-prevocalic sequence/ɔːl/ (seel-vocalization). The following are minimal pairs of length:

The difference is lost in running speech, so thatfault falls together withfort andfought as[ˈfɔʊʔ] or[ˈfoːʔ]. The contrast between the two diphthongs is phonetic rather than phonemic, as the/l/ can be restored in formal speech:[ˈfoːɫt] etc., which suggests that the underlying form of[ˈfɔʊːʔ] is/ˈfoːlt/ (John Wells says that the vowel is equally correctly transcribed with ⟨ɔʊ⟩ or ⟨oʊ⟩, not to be confused withGOAT/ʌʊ/,[ɐɤ]). Furthermore, a vocalized word-final/l/ is often restored before a word-initial vowel, so thatfall out[fɔʊlˈæəʔ] (cf.thaw out[fɔəɹˈæəʔ], with anintrusive/r/) is somewhat more likely to contain the lateral[l] thanfall[fɔʊː]. The distinction between[ɔʊ] and[ɔʊː] exists only word-internally before consonants other than intervocalic/l/. In the morpheme-final position only[ɔʊː] occurs (with theTHOUGHT vowel being realized as[ɔə~ɔː~ɔʊə]), so thatall[ɔʊː] is always distinct fromor[ɔə]. Before the intervocalic/l/[ɔʊː] is the banned diphthong, though here either of theTHOUGHT vowels can occur, depending on morphology (comparefalling[ˈfɔʊlɪn] withaweless[ˈɔəlɪs]).^[9]

In Cockney, the main difference between/ɪ/ and/ɪə/,/e/ and/eə/ as well as/ɒ/ and/ɔə/ is length, not quality, so thathis[ɪz],merry[ˈmɛɹɪi] andPolly[ˈpɒlɪi~ˈpɔlɪi] differ fromhere's[ɪəz~ɪːz],Mary[ˈmɛəɹɪi~ˈmɛːɹɪi] andpoorly[ˈpɔəlɪi~ˈpɔːlɪi] (seecure-force merger) mainly in length. In broad Cockney, the contrast between/æ/ and/æʊ/ is also mainly one of length; comparehat[æʔ] without[æəʔ~æːʔ] (cf. the near-RP form[æʊʔ], with a wide closing diphthong).^[9]

In the teaching of English, vowels are commonly said to have a "short" and a "long" version. The terms "short" and "long" are not accurate from a linguistic point of view—at least in the case of Modern English—as the vowels are not actually short and long versions of the same sound; the terminology is a historical holdover due to their arising from proper vowel length inMiddle English. The phonetic values of these vowels are shown in the table below.

In some types of phonetic transcription (e.g.pronunciation respelling), "long" vowel letters may be marked with a macron; for example, ⟨ā⟩ may be used to represent the IPA sound/eɪ/. This is sometimes used in dictionaries, most notably inMerriam-Webster^[10] (seePronunciation respelling for English for more).

Similarly, the short vowel letters are rarely represented in teaching reading of English in the classroom by the symbols ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, o͝o, and ŭ. The long vowels are more often represented by a horizontal line above the vowel: ā, ē, ī, ō, o͞o, and ū.^{[11][self-published source?]}

Vowel length may often be traced toassimilation. In Australian English, the second element[ə] of a diphthong[eə] has assimilated to the preceding vowel, giving the pronunciation ofbared as[beːd], creating a contrast with the short vowel inbed[bed].

Another common source is the vocalization of a consonant such as thevoiced velar fricative[ɣ] orvoiced palatal fricative or even an approximant, as the English 'r'. A historically-important example is thelaryngeal theory, which states that long vowels in theIndo-European languages were formed from short vowels, followed by any one of the several "laryngeal" sounds ofProto-Indo-European (conventionally written h₁, h₂ and h₃). When a laryngeal sound followed a vowel, it was later lost in most Indo-European languages, and the preceding vowel became long. However, Proto-Indo-European had long vowels of other origins as well, usually as the result of older sound changes, such asSzemerényi's law andStang's law.

Vowel length may also have arisen as anallophonic quality of a single vowel phoneme, which may have then become split in two phonemes. For example, the Australian English phoneme/æː/ was created by the incomplete application of a rule extending/æ/ before certain voiced consonants, a phenomenon known as thebad–lad split. An alternative pathway to the phonemicization of allophonic vowel length is the shift of a vowel of a formerly-different quality to become the short counterpart of a vowel pair. That too is exemplified by Australian English, whose contrast between/a/ (as induck) and/aː/ (as indark) was brought about by alowering of the earlier/ʌ/.

Estonian, aFinnic language, has a rare^{[citation needed]} phenomenon in which allophonic length variation has become phonemic after the deletion of the suffixes causing the allophony. Estonian had already inherited two vowel lengths fromProto-Finnic, but a third one was then introduced. For example, the Finnic imperative marker *-k caused the preceding vowels to be articulated shorter. After the deletion of the marker, the allophonic length became phonemic, as shown in the example above.

In theInternational Phonetic Alphabet the signː (not a colon, but two triangles facing each other in anhourglass shape; UnicodeU+02D0) is used for both vowel and consonant length. This may be doubled for an extra-long sound, or the top half (ˑ) may be used to indicate that a sound is "half long". Abreve is used to mark anextra-short vowel or consonant.

Estonian has a three-wayphonemic contrast:

saada[saːːda] "to get" (overlong)

saada[saːda] "send!" (long)

sada[sada] "hundred" (short)

Although not phonemic, a half-long distinction can also be illustrated in certain accents of English:

bead[biːd]

beat[biˑt]

bid[bɪˑd]

bit[bɪt]

• Macron (ā), used to indicate a long vowel inMāori,Hawaiian,Samoan,Latvian and many transcription schemes, including romanizations forSanskrit andArabic, theHepburn romanization forJapanese, andYale forKorean. While not part of their standard orthography, the macron is used as a teaching aid in modernLatin andAncient Greek textbooks. Macron is also used in modern officialCyrillic orthographies of some minority languages (Mansi,^[12]Kildin Sami,Evenki).
• Breves (ă) are used to mark short vowels in severallinguistic transcription systems, as well as inVietnamese and Alvarez-Hale's orthography forO'odham.
• Acute accent (á), used to indicate a long vowel inCzech,Slovak,Old Norse,Hungarian,Irish, traditionalScottish Gaelic (for long [oː] ó, [eː] é, as opposed to [ɛː] è, [ɔː] ò) and pre-20th-century transcriptions ofSanskrit,Arabic, etc.
  • Anapex, which was a light acute accent that was angled lower and aligned with a letter's right, was used inClassical Latin. (However, for I, a taller ꟾ was sometimes used instead.)
• Circumflex (â), used for example inWelsh. The circumflex is occasionally used as a surrogate for the macrons, particularly inHawaiian and in theKunrei-shiki romanization ofJapanese, or in transcriptions ofOld High German. In transcriptions ofMiddle High German, a system where inherited lengths are marked with the circumflex and new lengths with the macron is occasionally used.
• Grave accent (à) is used inScottish Gaelic, with a e i o u. (In traditional spelling, [ɛː] is è and [ɔː] is ò as in gnè, pòcaid, Mòr (personal name), while [eː] is é and [oː] is ó, as in dé, mór.)
• Ogonek (ą), used inLithuanian to indicate long vowels.
• Trema (ä), used inAymara to indicate long vowels.

• Vowel doubling, used consistently inEstonian,Finnish,Lombard,Navajo andSomali, and in closed syllables inDutch,Afrikaans, andWest Frisian. Example: Finnishtuuli/ˈtuːli/ 'wind' vs.tuli/ˈtuli/ 'fire'.
  • Estonian also has a rare "overlong" vowel length but does not distinguish it from the normal long vowel in writing, as they are distinguishable by context; see the example below.
• Consonant doubling after short vowels is very common inSwedish and other Germanic languages, including English. The system is somewhat inconsistent, especially in loanwords, around consonant clusters and with word-final nasal consonants. Examples:

Consistent use:byta/²byːta/ 'to change' vsbytta/²bʏtːa/ 'tub' andkoma/²koːma/ 'coma' vskomma/²kɔma/ 'to come'

Inconsistent use:fält/ˈfɛlt/ 'a field' andkam/ˈkamː/ 'a comb' (but the verb 'to comb' iskamma)

• ClassicalMilanese orthography uses consonant doubling in closed short syllables, e.g.,lenguagg 'language' andpubblegh 'public'.^[13]
• ie is used to mark the long/iː/ sound inGerman because of the preservation and the generalization of a historicie spelling, which originally represented the sound/iə̯/. InLow German, a followinge letter lengthens other vowels as well, e.g., in the nameKues/kuːs/.
• A followingh is frequently used inGerman and olderSwedish spelling, e.g., GermanZahn[tsaːn] 'tooth'.
• InCzech, the additional letterů is used for the long U sound, and the character is known as akroužek, e.g.,kůň "horse". (It actually developed from theligature "uo", which noted thediphthong/uo/ until it shifted to/uː/.)

• Colon,⟨꞉⟩, fromAmericanist phonetic notation, and used in orthographies based on it such asOʼodham,Mohawk orSeneca. The triangular colon⟨ː⟩ in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet derives from this.
• Middot or half-colon,⟨ꞏ⟩, a more common variant in the Americanist tradition, also used in language orthographies.
• Saltillo (straight apostrophe), used inMiꞌkmaq, as evidenced by the name itself. This is the convention of the Listuguj orthography (Miꞌgmaq), and a common substitution for the acute accent (Míkmaq) of the Francis-Smith orthography.

Some languages make no distinction in writing. This is particularly the case with ancient languages such asOld 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. Other modern languages that do not represent vowel length in their standard orthography includeSerbo-Croatian,Slovene andHausa.

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

• In abjads derived from theAramaic alphabet, notablyArabic andHebrew, long vowels are written with consonant letters (mostlyapproximant consonant letters) in a process calledmater lectionis e.g. in Modern Arabic the long vowel/aː/ is represented by the letterا (Alif), the vowels/uː/ and/oː/ are represented byو (wāw), and the vowels/iː/ and/eː/ are represented byي (yāʼ), 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.
• InSouth-Asianabugidas, such asDevanagari or theThai alphabet, there are different vowel signs for short and long vowels.
• Ancient Greek also had distinct vowel signs, but only for some long vowels; the vowel lettersη (eta) andω (omega) originally represented long forms of the vowels represented by the lettersε (epsilon, literally "baree") andο (omicron – literally "smallo", by contrast withomega or "largeo"). The other vowel letters of Ancient Greek,α (alpha),ι (iota) andυ (upsilon), could represent either short or long vowel phones.
• Japanese phonology:
  • In thehiragana syllabary, long vowels are usually indicated by adding a vowel character after. For vowels/aː/,/iː/, and/uː/, the corresponding 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 (usually新潟, inkanji);う (u),りゅう "ryuu" (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 thekatakana syllabary are written with a special bar symbolー (vertical invertical writing), called achōon, 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.
  • Some analyses make a distinction between a long vowel and a succession of two identical vowels, citing pairs such as砂糖屋satōya 'sugar shop'[satoːja] vs.里親,satooya, 'foster parent'[satooja]. They are usually identical in normal speech, but when enunciated a distinction may be made with a pause or aglottal stop inserted between two identical vowels.^[14]
  • In transcription:tsuki/tuki/ 'moon' vs.tsūki/tuuki/ 'airflow'.
• In the KoreanHangul alphabet, vowel length is not distinguished in normal writing. Some dictionaries use a double dot,⟨:⟩, for example무: "Daikon radish".
• In the ClassicMaya script, also based on syllabic characters, long vowels in monosyllabic roots were generally written with word-final syllabic signs ending in the vowel -i rather than an echo-vowel. Hence,chaach "basket", with a long vowel, was written ascha-chi (comparechan "sky", with a short vowel, written ascha-na). If the nucleus of the syllable was itselfi, however, the word-final vowel for indicating length was -a:tziik- "to count; to honour, to sanctify" was written astzi-ka (comparesitz'"appetite", written assi-tz'i).

• Gemination
• Length (phonetics)
• Mora (linguistics)

• Labrune, Laurence (2012),The Phonology of Japanese, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press,ISBN 978-0-19-954583-4

• Phonetics
• Vowels

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