Vowel length

Common card · No. 254497

In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived or actual duration of a vowel sound when pronounced. A vowel sound perceived as shorter is often called a short vowel and one perceived as longer called a long vowel. On one hand, many languages do not distinguish vowel length phonemically, meaning that vowel length alone does not change the meanings of words. However, the amount of time a vowel is uttered can change based on factors such as the phonetic characteristics of the sounds around it: its phonetic environment. An example is that vowels tend to be pronounced longer before a voiced consonant and shorter before a voiceless consonant in the standard accents of American and British English (a feature called pre-fortis clipping). On the other hand, vowel length is indeed an important phonemic factor in certain languages, meaning vowel length can change word-meanings, for example in Arabic, Czech, Dravidian languages (such as Tamil), some Finno-Ugric languages (such as Finnish and Estonian...

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