What is vowel length?
Q: What is vowel length?
A: Vowel length is a feature in languages where how long a vowel is spoken in a word can create a completely different word.
Q: What languages have this feature?
A: This feature can be found in many languages such as Japanese, Arabic, Hawaiian, Classical Latin and Thai.
Q: Can you give an example of this?
A: An example of this would be the Japanese words chizu and chīzu. The only difference between these two words is that the "I" vowel in chīzu is spoken for longer than it is in chizu. Chizu means "map", while chīzu means "cheese".
Q: How do we show long vowels when using IPA?
A: When using IPA, the colon (:) is used to show that the vowel before it is a long vowel. For example, chizu in IPA would be written as /t͡ɕizɯ/, but chīzu would be written as /t͡ɕi:zɯ/.
Q: Does English have any features related to vowel lengthening?
A: Old English had some features related to vowel lengthening, however most modern dialects of English do not use this feature anymore. In Old English, spellings used to spell long vowels included spelling with two vowels together like book or break and putting a silent "E" at the end of the word like hate. These changes were all made until the Great Vowel Shift occurred which changed how vowels sounded drastically from before.
Q: How did Classical Latin distinguish between words by their length? A: In Classical Latin, they used macrons which are straight horizontal lines above long vowels to distinguish between words by their length. For example Ānus (/ˈaː.nus/), annus (/ˈan.nus/) and anus (/ˈa.nus/) are three different words with each having different meanings despite having similar pronunciations due to their differing lengths of vowels being indicated by macrons above them . Ānus means "buttocks", annus means year and anus means old woman respectively .
Q: Do any Romance Languages still retain distinguishing features based on vowel length ? A: No , none of the Romance languages , which are daughter languages of Latin , can distinguish words by vowel length although Italian does have consonant lengthening . Italian also has some form of vowel lengthening but it cannot make differences between two words like it could in Latin .
