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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 ...
The TRAP – BATH split is a vowel split that occurs mainly in Southern England English (including Received Pronunciation), Australian English, New Zealand English, Indian English, South African English and to a lesser extent in some Welsh English as well as older Northeastern New England English by which the Early Modern English phoneme /æ/ was lengthened in certain environments and ...
For example, in some non-rhotic varieties of English the /t/ of the word party may be nearly elided, with just some breathy-voice remaining, in which case it may be transcribed [ˈpɑː̤ɪ]. [4] When both length and tone are moraic, a tone diacritic may appear twice, as in [sáː̀] (falling tone on a long vowel).
There are two complementary definitions of vowel, one phonetic and the other phonological.. In the phonetic definition, a vowel is a sound, such as the English "ah" / ɑː / or "oh" / oʊ /, produced with an open vocal tract; it is median (the air escapes along the middle of the tongue), oral (at least some of the airflow must escape through the mouth), frictionless and continuant. [4]
Cases such as please, pleasant and dine, dinner come from how French words were adapted into Middle English: a stressed French vowel was borrowed into English as an equivalent long vowel. However, if the stressed English vowel was originally an unstressed vowel in French, the vowel was not lengthened; [2] examples of this which did not create ...
As free written vowels a, e, i, o, u correspond to the spoken vowels / eɪ /, / iː /, / aɪ /, / oʊ /, / uː /; as checked vowels a, e, i, o, u correspond to / æ /, / ɛ /, / ɪ /, / ɒ /, / ʊ /. In spelling free and checked vowels are often called long and short, based on their historical pronunciation, though nowadays some or all of the ...
the short vowels indicated in Old English spelling as a , æ and ea ; the long equivalents ā , ēa , and often ǣ when directly followed by two or more consonants (indicated by ā+CC, ǣ+CC, etc.); occasionally, the long vowel ē when directly followed by two consonants, particularly when this vowel corresponded to West Saxon Old English ǣ ...
In Greek synaeresis, two vowels merge to form a long version of one of the two vowels (e.g. e + a → ā), a diphthong with a different main vowel (e.g. a + ei → āi), or a new vowel intermediate between the originals (e.g. a + o → ō). Contraction of e + o or o + e leads to ou, and e + e to ei, which are in this case spurious diphthongs.