Vowel length is a feature in languages when how long avowel is spoken in aword can create a completely different word. Although this is a feature in manylanguages likeJapanese,Arabic,Hawaiian,Classical Latin, andThai, there are also many languages that do not have this feature.
An example of this would be the Japanese wordschizu, which has a short vowel (a vowel spoken for a short time), andchīzu, which has a long vowel (a vowel spoken for a long time). The only difference that can be heard is how long the vowel "I" is spoken. The amount of time the vowel is spoken could create two entirely different words.Chizu means "map", whilechīzu "cheese".
When usingIPA, this symbolː is used to show that the vowel before it is a long vowel. For example,chizu in IPA is written as /t͡ɕizɯ/, butchīzu is written as /t͡ɕi:zɯ/. This symbol is like acolon (:), but it is really two triangles, while a colon is two circles.
WhileOld English hadvowel lengthening, most moderndialects ofEnglish do not. For example, the wordsGod andgood used to have the same vowel sound, but the vowel ingood (/go:d/), which was a long vowel, was said longer than it was inGod (/god/), which was a short vowel.[1] Although the vowel sounds inModern English are very different than in Old English, readers can often get an idea of how vowels used to sound like based on an English word'sspelling, which often shows words'historical roots rather than their currentpronunciation. Long vowels in Old English could be written with a bar on top of the vowel like ingōd (good). Later, during the days ofMiddle English, spellings used to spell long vowels included spelling with two vowels together like inbook orbreak and putting a silent "E" at the end of the word like inhate. These vowels were all long vowels until theGreat Vowel Shift in English, in which the vowel sounds in English changed to sound very differently from before.
Classical Latin had both vowel andconsonant lengthening, and long vowels had amacron, or a straight horizontal line, written above them. In Classical Latin,ānus (/ˈaː.nus/),annus (/ˈan.nus/), andanus (/ˈa.nus/) were all different words.Ānus means "buttocks",annus means year, andanus means old woman. Today, none of theRomance languages, the languages that aredaughter languages of Latin, can distinguish words by vowel length, thoughItalian can distinguish words by consonant length: /anno/ "year", /ano/ "anus". Italian also has vowel lengthening in accented syllables ending in a vowel, but vowel length cannot make the difference between two words as it could in Latin.[2]