Since we were on the subject of vowels (see Auditory Discrimination of Vowel Sounds and Vowel Discrimination Activities), it occurred to me that you may have heard of short and long vowels and not know what they are. You would think that a long vowel is a longer version of a short vowel, but they are completely different sounds. Quite simply, short vowels are the sounds made by /a,e,i,o,u/, and long vowels are the names of those five letters. Show
Short and long vowels? Who cares? I’d rather have a zzzzz.
WHAT DO SHORT AND LONG VOWELS LOOK LIKE?Short Vowels.The easiest short vowel words are 3-letter CVC words eg. bag, beg, big, bog, bug. In each case we pronounce the vowel as its basic sound. When syllables end in a vowel and then a consonant (as in the examples above), the vowel is usually short. If there is more than one consonant, the vowel is almost always short, eg. “back, stopped”. Long Vowels.There are several ways of making long vowels.
Remember that this is English, and there are almost invariably exceptions. VOWELS OTHER THAN SHORT AND LONG VOWELS.Short and long vowels aren’t the only vowel sounds, and the other vowels will be discussed next time. Take a look at The Italian man who went to Malta for a giggle about how long and short vowels can go drastically wrong. And remember that most non-native speakers will, one day, ask for a shit on my bed or a piss of toast and give the English speakers around them a good giggle. Except for those Scandinavians out there; those lucky sons of beaches don’t seem to have any problems with English.A long vowel has a long sound. A long vowel sounds like the name of its vowel. For example, the letter ‘a’ in aim is pronounced as /ā/, or “ayy. The five long vowel sounds in the English language are ‘a’ as in name ‘e’ as in eat ‘i’ as in wine ‘o’ as in go ‘u’ as in human Given below are some words that contain long vowel sounds. A: ape,lake, name, date, rain E: deep, heed, eat, feet, feel I: wine, bite, hide, kite, ice, O: oak, boat, long, soak, hope U: mule, fuse, unite, cube What are Short VowelsShort vowels are the opposite of long vowels; they produce a short vowel sound. A short vowel sound is produced when the vowel in a syllable is followed by a consonant. This type of syllable is called a closed syllable. Thus, short vowels are caused by closed syllables. Unlike in long vowels, the vowel sound of short vowels is not similar to the name of the vowel. The five short vowel sounds in the English language are, Phonics teaching materials often talk about "short" and "long" vowels, as though the latter are just extended versions of the former. The five vowels usually called "short" are:
The five vowels usually called "long", and which children are told "say their (letter) name", are:
But are we talking about sounds here, or particular spellings of these sounds? If "short" vowels are sounds (regardless of spelling), then the following are short vowels too:
Following the same logic, the following are also "long" vowels:
Try saying "capped-caped", "dinner-diner", "bellow-below" (stressing both syllables in "below"), hopping-hoping and "cutter-cuter". The spoken versions don't just differ by length, and the written words with "short" vowels are actually longer, due to their double letters. The terms "short" and "long" are misleading and confusing. These vowels are not short and long versions of each other. They're completely different vowels If you stretch out an "a" as in cat, you don't get an "a" as in paper. "A" as in "cat" is a low front pure vowel, and "a" as in paper is a diphthong (two vowels run together) which moves from low to high in the front of the mouth. The same goes for the other "short-long" pairs. The long" vowel "e" as in "be" is a pure vowel, but "i" as in "find" and "o" as in "go" are both diphthongs. The sound "u" as in "human" is actually a consonant-vowel combination ("y" as in "yes" plus "u" as in "hula"), which makes sense of the spelling of "you", but not most of its other spellings. Which part of the letter "u" in "human" is representing the "y" sound, and which part the "ooh"? For learning-spelling purposes it's counterproductive to slice it so finely. However, children will often hear the "y" and want to write it, and teachers need to know that it's not a figment of childish imaginations, there really is a "y" sound in "new" (unless you speak American English). Why people think "short" vowels are short The "short" vowel sounds cannot occur at the end of a syllable in English. They must be followed by a consonant. In linguistics, they are called "checked" vowels. We actually have six of them, the other one being "u/oo" as in "put" or "good". Since we only have five vowel letters, but we have 20 vowel sounds, we have to use syllable position and letter-combining to get a bit of clarity around which sounds we mean. Often we use vowel combinations like ai, ee, ea, ie, oa, oo, oe and ue. Often we use a vowel plus a letter Y, W, R or L, as in ay, ey, oy, aw, ew, ow, ar, er, ir, or, ur, and sometimes al (as in calm or walk) and ol (as in yolk). The letters Y, W, R and L otherwise represent consonants that are quite open and vowel-like. Well, actually, the letter Y by itself is almost always a vowel spelling (as in "by", "baby" and "gym"), but not at word beginnings, where people writing "X is for xylophone" type alphabet books tend to focus. A doubled consonant letter (ff, ss, ll, zz etc) usually indicates that the vowel before it is a "short" vowel, i.e. it's not an open syllable, it ends with a consonant (as per the "capped-caped" etc example above). What about the other vowels? In the dialect I speak, there are twenty vowel sounds, not ten. The missing-in-action ones in the five-short-five-long classification are:
If the other 19 vowel sounds and their spellings are not all taught systematically and well, expect some students to have a lot of trouble spelling the unstressed vowel. It's what signwriters get wrong all the time. Adults can use the terms "short vowel" and "long vowel" among ourselves if we like, but I don't think it's helpful to teach this misleading and confusing terminology to children. Instead, we can just say the sounds ("the sound ay", "the sound oy" etc) and teach children all the main spelling patterns for each sound, systematically and explicitly, before the end of their third year of schooling. This will be extremely bad for my business, but hey, the people at school will be among the ones giving out pills in my nursing home. I want them literate. « Reorganising high-frequency word lists18 thoughts on “What’s the difference between short and long vowels?”
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