Vowel length
Encyclopedia
In linguistics
, vowel length is the perceived duration
of a vowel
sound. Often the chroneme
, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English
, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in many other languages, for instance in
Finnish,
Fijian,
Japanese,
Old English,
and
Vietnamese. It plays a phonetic role in the majority of dialects of English English, and is said to be phonemic in a few other dialects, such as Australian English
and New Zealand English
. It also plays a lesser phonetic role in Cantonese, which is exceptional among the spoken variants of Chinese.
Many languages do not distinguish vowel length, and those that do usually distinguish between short vowels and long vowels. There are very few languages that distinguish three vowel lengths, for instance Luiseño
. 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".
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-so.
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 and Egyptian Arabic
. In languages such as Czech
, Finnish
or Classical Latin
, vowel length is distinctive in unstressed syllables as well.
In some languages, vowel length is sometimes better analyzed as a sequence of two identical vowels. In Finnic languages
, such as Finnish, the simplest example follows from consonant gradation
: haka → haan. In some cases, it is caused by a following chroneme
, which is etymologically a consonant, e.g. jää " ← Proto-Uralic *jäŋe. In noninitial syllables, it is ambiguous if long vowels are vowel clusters — poems written in the Kalevala meter often syllabicate between the vowels, and an (etymologically original) intervocalic -h- is seen in this and some modern dialects (e.g. taivaan vs. taivahan "of the sky"). Morphological treatment of diphthong
s is essentially similar to long vowels. Interestingly, some old Finnish long vowels have developed into diphthongs, but successive layers of borrowing have introduced the same long vowels again, such that the diphthong and the long vowel again contrast (e.g. nuotti "musical note" vs. nootti "diplomatic note").
In Japanese, most long vowels are the results of the phonetic change of diphthong
s; au and ou became ō, iu became yū, eu became yō, and now ei is becoming ē. The change occurred after the loss of intervocalic phoneme /h/. For example, modern kyōto (Kyoto
) exhibits the following changes: kyauto → kyoːto. Another example is shōnen (boy): seunen → syoːnen (shoːnen).
distinction between long and short vowels: Sanskrit, Japanese
, Finnish
, Hungarian
, Kannada etc.
Long vowels may or may not be separate phonemes. In Latin and Hungarian, long vowels are separate phonemes from short vowels, thus doubling the number of vowel phonemes.
Japanese long vowels are analyzed as either two same vowels or a vowel + the pseudo-phoneme /H/, and the number of vowels is five.
Estonian
has three distinctive lengths, but the third is suprasegmental, as it has developed from the allophonic variation caused by now-deleted grammatical markers. For example, half-long 'aa' in saada comes from the agglutination *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 [poʃ] "guava", [poˑʃ] "spider", [poːʃ] "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 [ko.ko.na], [kóó.ma̋], [ko.óma̋], [nétónubáné.éetɛ̂] "hit", "dry", "bite", "we have chosen for everyone and are still choosing".
.
Traditional English phonics
teaching, at the preschool to first grade level, often used the term "long vowel" for any pronunciation that might result from the addition of a silent E
(e.g., like) or other vowel letter as follows:
A mnemonic was that each vowel's long sound was its name.
In Middle English
, the long vowels /iː, eː, ɛː, aː, ɔː, oː, uː/ were generally written i..e, e..e, ea, a..e, o..e, oo, u..e. With the Great Vowel Shift, they came to be pronounced /aɪ, iː, iː, eɪ, oʊ, uː, aʊ/. Because ea and oo are digraphs
, they are not called long vowels today. Under French influence, the letter u was replaced with ou (or final ow), so it is no longer considered a long vowel either. Thus the so-called "long vowels" of Modern English are those vowels written with the help of a silent e.
and, to some extent, General American
, there is allophonic
vowel length: vowel phonemes are realized as longer vowel allophones before voiced consonant
phonemes in the coda of a syllable
. For example, the vowel phoneme /æ/ in /ˈbæt/ ‘bat’ is realized as a short allophone [æ] in [ˈbæt], because the /t/ phoneme is unvoiced, while the same vowel /æ/ phoneme in /ˈbæd/ ‘bad’ is realized as a slightly long allophone (which could be transcribed as [ˈbæˑd]), because /d/ is voiced. (Incidentally, the final consonant allophones in these syllables also have different relative lengths; the [t] of bat is longer than the [d] of bad.)
Symbolic representation of the two allophonic rule
s:
In addition, the vowels of Received Pronunciation are commonly divided into short and long, as obvious from their transcription. The short vowels are /ɪ/ (as in kit), /ʊ/ (as in foot), /ɛ/ (as in dress), /ʌ/ (as in strut), /æ/ (as in trap), /ɒ/ (as in lot), and /ə/ (as in the first syllable of ago and in the second of sofa). The long vowels are /iː/ (as in fleece), /uː/ (as in goose), /ɜː/ (as in nurse), /ɔː/ as in north and thought, and /ɑː/ (as in father and start). While a different degree of length is indeed present, there are also differences in the quality (lax vs tense) of these vowels, and the currently prevalent view tends to emphasise the latter rather than the former.
, there is contrastive vowel length in closed syllables between long and short /e æ ä/ and sometimes /ɪ/. The following can be minimal pair
s of length for many speakers:
. In Australian English, the second element [ə] of a diphthong [eə] has assimilated to the preceding vowel, giving the pronunciation of bared as [beːd], creating a contrast with bed [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'.
Estonian, of Finnic languages
, exhibits a rare phenomenon, where allophonic length variation becomes phonemic following the deletion of the suffixes causing the allophony. Estonian already distinguishes two vowel lengths, but a third one has been introduced by this phenomenon. For example, the Finnic imperative marker *-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 /æː/ was created by the incomplete application of a rule extending /æ/ before certain voiced consonants, a phenomenon known as the bad–lad split.
Many long vowels in the Indo-European languages
were formed from short vowels and one of the laryngeal sounds
, conventionally written h1, h2 and h3. If a laryngeal followed a vowel in Proto-Indo-European
, it was usually lost in its later descendants and the preceding vowel became long. However, Proto-Indo-European itself already possessed long vowels as well, usually as the result of older sound changes such as Szemerényi's law
and Stang's law
.
the sign ː (not a colon, but two triangles facing each other in an hourglass shape; Unicode ) is used for both vowel and consonant length. This may be doubled for an extra-long sound, or the top half (ˑ) used to indicate a sound is "half long". A breve
is used to mark a short vowel or consonant.
Estonian has a three-way phonemic contrast:
Although not phonemic, the distinction can also be illustrated in certain accents of English:
and Old 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.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, vowel length is the perceived duration
Length (phonetics)
In phonetics, length or quantity is a feature of sounds that are distinctively longer than other sounds. There are long vowels as well as long consonants .Many languages do not have distinctive length...
of a vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
sound. Often the chroneme
Chroneme
In linguistics, a chroneme is a basic, theoretical unit of sound that can distinguish words by duration only of a vowel or consonant. The noun chroneme is derived from Greek χρονος , and the suffixed -eme, which is analogous to the -eme in phoneme...
, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in many other languages, for instance in
Finnish,
Fijian,
Japanese,
Old English,
and
Vietnamese. It plays a phonetic role in the majority of dialects of English English, and is said to be phonemic in a few other dialects, such as Australian English
Australian English
Australian English is the name given to the group of dialects spoken in Australia that form a major variety of the English language....
and New Zealand English
New Zealand English
New Zealand English is the dialect of the English language used in New Zealand.The English language was established in New Zealand by colonists during the 19th century. It is one of "the newest native-speaker variet[ies] of the English language in existence, a variety which has developed and...
. It also plays a lesser phonetic role in Cantonese, which is exceptional among the spoken variants of Chinese.
Many languages do not distinguish vowel length, and those that do usually distinguish between short vowels and long vowels. There are very few languages that distinguish three vowel lengths, for instance Luiseño
Luiseño language
The Luiseño language is an Uto-Aztecan language of California spoken by the Luiseño, a Native American people who at the time of the first contacts with the Spanish in the 16th century inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging 50 miles from the southern part of Los Angeles County,...
. Some languages, such as Finnish, Estonian and Japanese, also have words where long vowels are immediately followed by more vowels, e.g. Japanese hōō
Hoo
Hoo is used in placenames in the east of England to indicate coastal peninsulas and promontories. It appears in:* Fort Hoo, a fort on an island in the River Medway, Kent* Hoo St Werburgh and Cliffe-at-Hoo on the Hoo Peninsula in Kent* Hoo, Suffolk...
"phoenix" or Estonian jäääär "ice edge".
Vowel length and related features
StressStress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
is often reinforced by allophonic vowel length, especially when it is lexical. For example, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
long vowels always occur on stressed syllables. Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
, 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-so.
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
Alemannic German
Alemannic is a group of dialects of the Upper German branch of the Germanic language family. It is spoken by approximately ten million people in six countries: Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, France and Italy...
dialect and Egyptian Arabic
Egyptian Arabic
Egyptian Arabic is the language spoken by contemporary Egyptians.It is more commonly known locally as the Egyptian colloquial language or Egyptian dialect ....
. In languages such as Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
, Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
or Classical Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, vowel length is distinctive in unstressed syllables as well.
In some languages, vowel length is sometimes better analyzed as a sequence of two identical vowels. In Finnic languages
Finnic languages
The term Finnic languages often means the Baltic-Finnic languages, an undisputed branch of the Uralic languages. However, it is also commonly used to mean the Finno-Permic languages, a hypothetical intermediate branch that includes Baltic Finnic, or the more disputed Finno-Volgaic languages....
, such as Finnish, the simplest example follows from consonant gradation
Consonant gradation
Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation, in which consonants alternate between various "grades". It is found in some Uralic languages such as Finnish, Estonian, Northern Sámi, and the Samoyed language Nganasan. In addition, it has been reconstructed for Proto-Germanic, the parent...
: haka → haan. In some cases, it is caused by a following chroneme
Chroneme
In linguistics, a chroneme is a basic, theoretical unit of sound that can distinguish words by duration only of a vowel or consonant. The noun chroneme is derived from Greek χρονος , and the suffixed -eme, which is analogous to the -eme in phoneme...
, which is etymologically a consonant, e.g. jää " ← Proto-Uralic *jäŋe. In noninitial syllables, it is ambiguous if long vowels are vowel clusters — poems written in the Kalevala meter often syllabicate between the vowels, and an (etymologically original) intervocalic -h- is seen in this and some modern dialects (e.g. taivaan vs. taivahan "of the sky"). Morphological treatment of diphthong
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
s is essentially similar to long vowels. Interestingly, some old Finnish long vowels have developed into diphthongs, but successive layers of borrowing have introduced the same long vowels again, such that the diphthong and the long vowel again contrast (e.g. nuotti "musical note" vs. nootti "diplomatic note").
In Japanese, most long vowels are the results of the phonetic change of diphthong
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
s; au and ou became ō, iu became yū, eu became yō, and now ei is becoming ē. The change occurred after the loss of intervocalic phoneme /h/. For example, modern kyōto (Kyoto
Kyoto
is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...
) exhibits the following changes: kyauto → kyoːto. Another example is shōnen (boy): seunen → syoːnen (shoːnen).
Phonemic vowel length
Many languages make a phonemicPhoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
distinction between long and short vowels: Sanskrit, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
, Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, Kannada etc.
Long vowels may or may not be separate phonemes. In Latin and Hungarian, long vowels are separate phonemes from short vowels, thus doubling the number of vowel phonemes.
| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| short | long | short | long | short | long | |
| High Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the... |
/ɪ/ | /iː/ | /ʊ/ | /uː/ | ||
| Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel... |
/ɛ/ | /eː/ | /ɔ/ | /oː/ | ||
| Low Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue... |
/a/ | /aː/ | ||||
Japanese long vowels are analyzed as either two same vowels or a vowel + the pseudo-phoneme /H/, and the number of vowels is five.
| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| short | long | short | long | short | long | |
| High Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the... |
/i/ | /ii/ or /iH/ | /u/ | /uu/ or /uH/ | ||
| Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel... |
/e/ | /ee/ or /eH/ | /o/ | /oo/ or /oH/ | ||
| Low Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue... |
/a/ | /aa/ or /aH/ | ||||
Estonian
Estonian language
Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
has three distinctive lengths, but the third is suprasegmental, as it has developed from the allophonic variation caused by now-deleted grammatical markers. For example, half-long 'aa' in saada comes from the agglutination *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 [poʃ] "guava", [poˑʃ] "spider", [poːʃ] "knot". Similar claims have been made for Yavapai
Yavapai language
Yavapai is an Upland Yuman language, spoken by Yavapai people in central and western Arizona. There are four dialects: Kwevkepaya, Wipukpaya, Tolkepaya, and Yavepe...
and Wichita
Wichita language
Wichita is a moribund Caddoan language spoken in Oklahoma by the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes. Only one fluent speaker remains, Doris McLemore, although in 2007 there were only three first language learners still alive...
.
Four-way distinctions have been claimed, but these are actually long-short distinctions on adjacent syllables. For example, in kiKamba
Kikamba language
The Kamba language, or Kikamba, is a Bantu language spoken by the Kamba people of Kenya. It is spoken by 5,000 people in Tanzania .The Kamba language has lexical similarities to other Bantu languages such as Kikuyu, Meru, and Embu....
, there is [ko.ko.na], [kóó.ma̋], [ko.óma̋], [nétónubáné.éetɛ̂] "hit", "dry", "bite", "we have chosen for everyone and are still choosing".
Short and long vowels in English
Vowel length (i.e., "long" and "short"), when applied to English, has several different related meanings.Traditional long and short vowels in English orthography
Traditionally, the vowels /eɪ iː aɪ oʊ juː/ (as in bait beet bite boat beauty) are said to be the "long" counterparts of the vowels /æ ɛ ɪ ɒ ʌ/ (as in bat bet bit bot but) which are said to be "short". This terminology reflects their pronunciation before the Great Vowel ShiftGreat Vowel Shift
The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in England between 1350 and 1500.The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto Jespersen , a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term....
.
Traditional English phonics
Phonics
Phonics refers to a method for teaching speakers of English to read and write that language. Phonics involves teaching how to connect the sounds of spoken English with letters or groups of letters and teaching them to blend the sounds of letters together to produce approximate pronunciations...
teaching, at the preschool to first grade level, often used the term "long vowel" for any pronunciation that might result from the addition of a silent E
Silent E
Silent e is a writing convention in English spelling. A silent letter e at the end of a word often signals a specific pronunciation of the preceding vowel letter, as in the difference between "rid" and "ride" . This orthographic pattern followed the phonological changes of the Great Vowel Shift...
(e.g., like) or other vowel letter as follows:
| Letter | "Short" | "Long" | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| A a | /æ/ | /eɪ/ | "mat" / "mate" |
| E e | /ɛ/ | /iː/ | "pet" / "Pete" |
| I i | /ɪ/ | /aɪ/ | "twin" / "twine" |
| O o | /ɒ/ | /oʊ/ | "not" / "note" |
| U u | /ʌ/ | /juː/ | "cub" / "cube" |
A mnemonic was that each vowel's long sound was its name.
In Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
, the long vowels /iː, eː, ɛː, aː, ɔː, oː, uː/ were generally written i..e, e..e, ea, a..e, o..e, oo, u..e. With the Great Vowel Shift, they came to be pronounced /aɪ, iː, iː, eɪ, oʊ, uː, aʊ/. Because ea and oo are digraphs
Digraph (orthography)
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
, they are not called long vowels today. Under French influence, the letter u was replaced with ou (or final ow), so it is no longer considered a long vowel either. Thus the so-called "long vowels" of Modern English are those vowels written with the help of a silent e.
Allophonic vowel length
In certain dialects of the modern English language, for instance British Received PronunciationReceived Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation , also called the Queen's English, Oxford English or BBC English, is the accent of Standard English in England, with a relationship to regional accents similar to the relationship in other European languages between their standard varieties and their regional forms...
and, to some extent, General American
General American
General American , also known as Standard American English , is a major accent of American English. The accent is not restricted to the United States...
, there is allophonic
Allophone
In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...
vowel length: vowel phonemes are realized as longer vowel allophones before voiced consonant
Consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
phonemes in the coda of a syllable
Syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
. For example, the vowel phoneme /æ/ in /ˈbæt/ ‘bat’ is realized as a short allophone [æ] in [ˈbæt], because the /t/ phoneme is unvoiced, while the same vowel /æ/ phoneme in /ˈbæd/ ‘bad’ is realized as a slightly long allophone (which could be transcribed as [ˈbæˑd]), because /d/ is voiced. (Incidentally, the final consonant allophones in these syllables also have different relative lengths; the [t] of bat is longer than the [d] of bad.)
Symbolic representation of the two allophonic rule
Allophonic rule
An allophonic rule is a phonological rule that indicates which allophone realizes a phoneme in a given phonemic environment. In other words, an allophonic rule is a rule that converts the phonemes in a phonemic transcription into the allophones of the corresponding phonetic transcription...
s:
| /æ/ | → | [æˑ] | |
| /ˈbæd/ | → | [ˈbæˑd] | |
| /æ/ | → | [æ] | |
| /ˈbæt/ | → | [ˈbæt] |
In addition, the vowels of Received Pronunciation are commonly divided into short and long, as obvious from their transcription. The short vowels are /ɪ/ (as in kit), /ʊ/ (as in foot), /ɛ/ (as in dress), /ʌ/ (as in strut), /æ/ (as in trap), /ɒ/ (as in lot), and /ə/ (as in the first syllable of ago and in the second of sofa). The long vowels are /iː/ (as in fleece), /uː/ (as in goose), /ɜː/ (as in nurse), /ɔː/ as in north and thought, and /ɑː/ (as in father and start). While a different degree of length is indeed present, there are also differences in the quality (lax vs tense) of these vowels, and the currently prevalent view tends to emphasise the latter rather than the former.
Contrastive vowel length
In Australian EnglishAustralian English phonology
Australian English is a non-rhotic variety of English spoken by most native-born Australians. Phonologically, it is one of the most regionally homogeneous language varieties in the world...
, there is contrastive vowel length in closed syllables between long and short /e æ ä/ and sometimes /ɪ/. The following can be minimal pair
Minimal pair
In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, which differ in only one phonological element, such as a phone, phoneme, toneme or chroneme and have distinct meanings...
s of length for many speakers:
| [bɪd] bid | vs | [bɪːd] as in beard |
| [feɹi] ferry | vs | [feːɹi] fairy |
| [kæn] can meaning able to | vs | [kæːn] as in tin can |
| [kät] cut | vs | [käːt] cart |
Origin
The long vowel may often be traced to assimilationAssimilation (linguistics)
Assimilation is a common phonological process by which the sound of the ending of one word blends into the sound of the beginning of the following word. This occurs when the parts of the mouth and vocal cords start to form the beginning sounds of the next word before the last sound has been...
. In Australian English, the second element [ə] of a diphthong [eə] has assimilated to the preceding vowel, giving the pronunciation of bared as [beːd], creating a contrast with bed [bed]. Another etymology is the vocalization
Speech production
Speech production is the process by which spoken words are selected to be produced, have their phonetics formulated and then finally are articulated by the motor system in the vocal apparatus...
of a fricative such as the voiced velar fricative
Voiced velar fricative
The voiced velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in various spoken languages. It is not found in English today, but did exist in Old English...
or voiced palatal fricative, e.g. Finnish illative case
Illative case
Illative is, in the Finnish language, Estonian language and the Hungarian language, the third of the locative cases with the basic meaning of "into ". An example from Hungarian is "a házba"...
, or even an approximant, as the English 'r'.
Estonian, of Finnic languages
Finnic languages
The term Finnic languages often means the Baltic-Finnic languages, an undisputed branch of the Uralic languages. However, it is also commonly used to mean the Finno-Permic languages, a hypothetical intermediate branch that includes Baltic Finnic, or the more disputed Finno-Volgaic languages....
, exhibits a rare phenomenon, where allophonic length variation becomes phonemic following the deletion of the suffixes causing the allophony. Estonian already distinguishes two vowel lengths, but a third one has been introduced by this phenomenon. For example, the Finnic imperative marker *-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 /æː/ was created by the incomplete application of a rule extending /æ/ before certain voiced consonants, a phenomenon known as the bad–lad split.
Many long vowels in the Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
were formed from short vowels and one of the laryngeal sounds
Laryngeal theory
The laryngeal theory is a generally accepted theory of historical linguistics which proposes the existence of one, or a set of three , consonant sounds termed "laryngeals" that appear in most current reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European language...
, conventionally written h1, h2 and h3. If a laryngeal followed a vowel in Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European may refer to:*Proto-Indo-European language, the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages.*Proto-Indo-Europeans, the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language....
, it was usually lost in its later descendants and the preceding vowel became long. However, Proto-Indo-European itself already possessed long vowels as well, usually as the result of older sound changes such as Szemerényi's law
Szemerényi's law
Szemerényi's law is a Proto-Indo-European phonological rule, named after Hungarian linguist Oswald Szemerényi, according to which word-final clusters of vowels , resonants and of either */s/ or */h₂/ are simplified by dropping the word-final fricative , with compensatory lengthening of the...
and Stang's law
Stang's law
Stang's law is a Proto-Indo-European phonological rule named after Norwegian linguist Christian Stang. The law governs the word-final sequences of a vowel, followed by a laryngeal or a semivowel */y/ or */w/, followed by a nasal, and according to the law those sequences are simplified in a way that...
.
IPA
In the International Phonetic AlphabetInternational Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
the sign ː (not a colon, but two triangles facing each other in an hourglass shape; Unicode ) is used for both vowel and consonant length. This may be doubled for an extra-long sound, or the top half (ˑ) used to indicate a sound is "half long". A breve
Breve
A breve is a diacritical mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. It resembles the caron , but is rounded, while the caron has a sharp tip...
is used to mark a short vowel or consonant.
Estonian has a three-way phonemic contrast:
- saada [saːta] "to get"
- saada [saˑta] "send!"
- sada [sata] "hundred"
Although not phonemic, the distinction can also be illustrated in certain accents of English:
- bead [biːd]
- beat [biˑt]
- bid [bɪˑd]
- bit [bɪt]
Diacritics
- MacronMacronA macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long or heavy syllable in Greco-Roman metrics, but now marks a long vowel...
(ā), used to indicate a long vowel in MaoriMaori languageMāori or te reo Māori , commonly te reo , is the language of the indigenous population of New Zealand, the Māori. It has the status of an official language in New Zealand...
, HawaiianHawaiian languageThe Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...
, SamoanSamoan languageSamoan Samoan Samoan (Gagana Sāmoa, is the language of the Samoan Islands, comprising the independent country of Samoa and the United States territory of American Samoa. It is an official language—alongside English—in both jurisdictions. Samoan, a Polynesian language, is the first language for most...
, LatvianLatvian languageLatvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...
and many transcription schemes, including romanizations for SanskritSanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
and ArabicArabic languageArabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, the Hepburn romanizationHepburn romanizationThe is named after James Curtis Hepburn, who used it to transcribe the sounds of the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet in the third edition of his Japanese–English dictionary, published in 1887. The system was originally proposed by the in 1885...
for JapaneseJapanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, and Yale for KoreanKorean languageKorean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
. While not part of their standard orthography, the macron is also used as a teaching aid in modern LatinLatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
and Ancient Greek textbooks.- BreveBreveA breve is a diacritical mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. It resembles the caron , but is rounded, while the caron has a sharp tip...
s (ă) are used to mark short vowels in several linguisticLinguisticsLinguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
transcription systems, as well as in VietnameseVietnamese languageVietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
.
- Breve
- Acute accentAcute accentThe acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
(á), used to indicate a long vowel in CzechCzech languageCzech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
, SlovakSlovak languageSlovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
, Old Norse, HungarianHungarian languageHungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
and IrishIrish languageIrish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
. - CircumflexCircumflexThe circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...
(â), used for example in WelshWelsh languageWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
. The circumflex is occasionally used as a surrogate for the macrons, particularly in the Kunrei-shikiKunrei-shikiis a Japanese romanization system, i.e. a system for transcribing the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet. It is abbreviated as Kunrei-shiki. Its name is rendered Kunreisiki using Kunrei-shiki itself....
romanization of Japanese. - Grave accentGrave accentThe grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, French, Greek , Italian, Mohawk, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, Romansh, and other languages.-Greek:The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient...
(à) is used in Scottish Gaelic. - OgonekOgonekThe ogonek is a diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the Latin alphabet used in several European and Native American languages.-Use:...
(ą), used in LithuanianLithuanian languageLithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they...
to indicate long vowels. - Umlaut markUmlaut (diacritic)The diaeresis and the umlaut are diacritics that consist of two dots placed over a letter, most commonly a vowel. When that letter is an i or a j, the diacritic replaces the tittle: ï....
(ä), used in AymaraAymara languageAymara is an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara people of the Andes. It is one of only a handful of Native American languages with over three million speakers. Aymara, along with Quechua and Spanish, is an official language of Peru and Bolivia...
to indicate long vowels.
Additional letters
- Vowel doubling, used consistently in EstonianEstonian languageEstonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
, FinnishFinnish languageFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
, Lombard and in closed syllables in DutchDutch languageDutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
. Example: Finnish tuuli /ˈtuːli/ 'wind' vs. tuli /ˈtuli/ 'fire'.- Estonian also has a rare "overlong" vowel length, but does not distinguish this from the normal long vowel in writing; see the example below.
- Consonant doubling after short vowels is very common in SwedishSwedish languageSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
and other Germanic languages, including English. The system is somewhat inconsistent, especially in loan-words, around consonant clusters and with word final nasal consonants. Examples:
- Consistent use: byta /ˈbyːta/ 'to change' vs bytta /ˈbyta/ 'tub' and koma /ˈkoːma/ 'coma' vs komma /ˈkoma/ 'to come'
- Inconsistent use: fält /ˈfɛlt/ 'a field' and kam /ˈkam/ 'a comb' (but the verb 'to comb' is kamma)
- Classical MilaneseMilaneseMilanese is the central variety of the Western Lombard language spoken in the city and province of Milan....
orthography uses consonant doubling in closed short syllables, e.g., lenguagg 'language' and pubblegh 'public'. - ie is used to mark the long /iː/ sound in GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
. This is due to the preservation and generalization of a historical ie spelling that originally represented the sound /iə̯/. In northern German, a following e letter lengthens other vowels as well, e.g., in the name KuesBernkastel-KuesBernkastel-Kues is a well-known winegrowing centre on the Middle Moselle in the Bernkastel-Wittlich district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany...
/kuːs/. - A following h is frequently used in GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and older SwedishSwedish languageSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
spelling, e.g., German Zahn [tsaːn] 'tooth'. - In CzechCzech languageCzech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
, the additional letter ů 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 diphthongDiphthongA diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
/uo/, which later shifted to /uː/.)
- Classical Milanese
Other signs
- ApostropheApostropheThe apostrophe is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets...
, used in Mi'kmaqMi'kmaq languageThe Mi'kmaq language is an Eastern Algonquian language spoken by nearly 9,100 Mi'kmaq in Canada and the United States out of a total ethnic Mi'kmaq population of roughly 20,000. The word Mi'kmaq is a plural word meaning 'my friends' ; the adjectival form is Míkmaw...
, as evidenced by the name itself. This is the convention of the Listuguj orthography (Mi'gmaq), and a common substitution for the official acute accent (Míkmaq) of the Francis-Smith orthography. - Colon (punctuation)Colon (punctuation)The colon is a punctuation mark consisting of two equally sized dots centered on the same vertical line.-Usage:A colon informs the reader that what follows the mark proves, explains, or lists elements of what preceded the mark....
, commonly used as an approximation of the IPAInternational Phonetic AlphabetThe International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
phonetic transcription, and in a few orthographies based on the IPA. - InterpunctInterpunctAn interpunct —also called an interpoint—is a small dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script, which also appears in some modern languages as a stand-alone sign inside a word. It is present in Unicode as code point ....
, commonly used in non-IPA phonetic transcription, such as the AmericanistAmericanist phonetic notationAmericanist phonetic notation is a system of phonetic notation originally developed by European and American anthropologists and language scientists for the phonetic and phonemic transcription of Native American and European languages...
system developed by linguists for transcribing the indigenous languages of the Americas. Example: Americanist = IPA [tʰoː].
No distinction
Some languages make no distinction in writing. This is particularly the case with ancient languages such as LatinLatin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
and Old English
Old English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
. Modern edited texts often use macrons with long vowels, however. Australian English
Australian English
Australian English is the name given to the group of dialects spoken in Australia that form a major variety of the English language....
does not distinguish the vowels /æ/ from /æː/ in spelling, with words like ‘span’ or ‘can’ having different pronunciations depending on meaning.
Notations in other writing systems
In non-Latin writing systems, a variety of mechanisms have also evolved.- In abjads derived from the Aramaic alphabetAramaic alphabetThe Aramaic alphabet is adapted from the Phoenician alphabet and became distinctive from it by the 8th century BC. The letters all represent consonants, some of which are matres lectionis, which also indicate long vowels....
, notably ArabicArabic alphabetThe Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...
and HebrewHebrew alphabetThe Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, or more historically, the Assyrian script, is used in the writing of the Hebrew language, as well as other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic. There have been two...
, long vowels are written with consonant letters (mostly approximant consonantApproximant consonantApproximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...
letters) in a process called mater lectionisMater lectionisIn the spelling of Hebrew and some other Semitic languages, matres lectionis , refers to the use of certain consonants to indicate a vowel. The letters that do this in Hebrew are aleph, he, waw and yod...
, 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-Asian abugidaAbugidaAn abugida , also called an alphasyllabary, is a segmental writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as a unit: each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel notation is obligatory but secondary...
s, such as DevanagariDevanagariDevanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal...
or the Thai alphabetThai alphabetThai script , is used to write the Thai language and other, minority, languages in Thailand. It has forty-four consonants , fifteen vowel symbols that combine into at least twenty-eight vowel forms, and four tone marks ....
, there are different vowel signs for short and long vowels. - In the Japanese hiraganaHiraganais a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
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: (a), , "okaasan", mother; (i), にいがた "Niigata", city in northern Japan (usu. , in kanjiKanjiKanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
); (u), "ryuu" (usu. ), dragon. The mid-vowels /eː/ and /oː/ may be written with (e) (rare) ( , neesan, "elder sister") and (o) [ (usu ), ookii, big] , or with (i) ( , "meirei", command/order) and (u) ( , ousama, "king") depending on etymological, morphological, and historic grounds.- Most long vowels in the katakanaKatakanais a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
syllabary are written with a special bar symbol (vertical in vertical writing), called a chōonChoonThe , also known as ', ', or Katakana-Hiragana Prolonged Sound Mark by the Unicode Consortium, is a Japanese symbol which indicates a chōon, or a long vowel of two morae in length. Its form is a horizontal or vertical line in the center of the text with the width of one kanji or kana character...
, as in mēkā "maker" instead of meka "mechaMechaA mech , is a science fiction term for a large walking bipedal tank or robot, including ones on treads and animal shapes.-Characteristics:...
". However, some long vowels are written with additional vowel characters, as with hiragana, with the distinction being orthographically significant.
- Most long vowels in the katakana
- In the KoreanKorean languageKorean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
HangulHangulHangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
alphabet, vowel length is not distinguished in normal writing. Some dictionaries use a double dot, , for example “Daikon radishDaikonDaikon , Raphanus sativus var. longipinnatus, also called White Radish, Japanese radish, Oriental radish, Chinese radish, lo bok and Mooli , is a mild flavoured, very large, white East Asian radish...
”.