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In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration.In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, for example in Arabic, Czech, Dravidian languages (such as Tamil), some Finno-Ugric languages (such as Finnish and Estonian), Japanese, Kyrgyz, Samoan ...
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.
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 /).
Also, tonal contour may reinforce the length, as in Estonian, where the over-long length is concomitant with a tonal variation resembling tonal stress marking. In transcription in the International Phonetic Alphabet, long vowels or consonants are notated with the length sign (ː Unicode U+02D0 MODIFIER LETTER TRIANGULAR COLON) after the letter.
Its name derives from Ancient Greek μακρόν (makrón) 'long' because it was originally used to mark long or heavy syllables in Greco-Roman metrics. It now more often marks a long vowel. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the macron is used to indicate a mid-tone; the sign for a long vowel is instead a modified triangular colon ː .
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 ...
I know the longest word in the whole English language,” Jimmy tells Jenny by the playground swings. It's antidisestablishmentarianism. Jenny slurps up the last of her juice box, unimpressed.
The letters a e i o u y , each of which could represent either a short vowel or a long one. The long vowels were sometimes marked with apices, as in á é ó ú ý , while long /iː/ could be marked with the special character ꟾ . [3] Since the 19th century, long vowels have been marked with macrons, as in ā ē ī ō ū ȳ ; sometimes breves ...