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Long vowels shorten in unstressed syllables. Long vowels shorten in stressed closed syllables. Short vowels lengthen in stressed open syllables. On account of the above, the vowel inventory changes from /iː i eː e a aː o oː u uː/ to /i ɪ e ɛ a ɔ o ʊ u/, with pre-existing differences in vowel quality achieving phonemic status and with ...
The affricate [dʒ] was always phonetically long between vowels; [14] it could also occur after /n/ or at the end of a word. There seems to have been no merge between [dʒ] and [j] at the end of a word, so there was a distinction in pronunciation between weġ 'way', pronounced [wej], and weċġ 'wedge', pronounced [wedːʒ] [15] or [wedʒ].
if the vowel is long or a diphthong in Latin, or in the Latin transliteration of Greek: ā, cā, scā, scrā (a long vowel) or æ, cæ, scæ, scræ (a diphthong). Latin diphthongs may be written æ or ae , œ or oe . Long vowels are written with a macron: ā ē ī ō ū ȳ, though this is a modern convention. Greek long vowels are ει, η ...
The long vowels /eː oː/ from the Great Vowel Shift become diphthongs /eɪ oʊ/ in many varieties of English, though not in Scottish and Northern England English. Voicing of /ʍ/ to /w/ results in the wine – whine merger in most varieties of English, aside from Scottish, Irish , Southern American , and New England English .
The short vowels are / æ ɛ ɪ ɒ ʌ / while the equivalent long vowels are / eɪ iː aɪ oʊ j uː /. However, because of the complications of the Great Vowel Shift, the long vowel is not always simply a lengthened version of the corresponding short one; and in most cases (for example with ride) is in fact a diphthong (/ r aɪ d /).
Euouae, a medieval musical term, is the longest English word consisting only of vowels, and the word with the most consecutive vowels. However, the "word" itself is simply a mnemonic consisting of the vowels to be sung in the phrase "seculorum Amen" at the end of the lesser doxology.
Still other words, such as roof, hoof, and root, are variable, with some speakers preferring /uː/ and others preferring /ʊ/ in such words, such as in Texan English. For some speakers in Northern England, words ending in -ook that have undergone shortening to /ʊ/ elsewhere, such as book and cook, still have the long /uː/ vowel.
Trisyllabic laxing is a process which has occurred at various periods in the history of English: The earliest occurrence of trisyllabic laxing occurred in late Old English and caused stressed long vowels to become shortened before clusters of two consonants when two or more syllables followed.