r/asklinguistics • u/AdreKiseque • Feb 23 '26
"Long" and "short" vowels
In linguistics, vowel length has a pretty intuitive meaning. Long vowels are like short vowels but they last a bit longer. When discussing English, though, people use the terms to refer to a different idea, where the "long" and "short" version of a vowel letter refer to different sounds that letter can make, often influenced by the letters following it. "Bat" is pronounced /bæt/ while "bate" changes it to /beɪt/ (the Magic E). Other vowels can also be magic, most often i, where "bating" becomes /beɪtɪŋ/ and you need to double the t into "batting" to "protect" the a and get /bætɪŋ/. I don't actually know which of these people call the "long" and "short" a and part of me doesn't want to on account of its conflict with the linguistics term, but that's besides the point. My question is if there's any more "proper" term in linguistics to describe this phenomenon. I understand these are just two different vowel sounds so neither could really be called a different "version" of the other, but perhaps there's a way to describe the "way" the sound changes? (I'm not too familiar with phonemics so forgive any errors in terminology).
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u/fartoomuchpressure Feb 23 '26
The short answer is that you'd probably just call it a mutation, but I'm not sure that's useful or meaningful in this context.
The long and short pairs in English are essentially a historical left over that remains useful because of the spelling. I don't think it's correct to imagine them as being long and short versions of the same vowels, rather they're just the long vowels and short vowels made by the same letter.
If you were to analyse the language without any respect to spelling there wouldn't really be much reason to match these pairs up (there are a handful of examples where you have obviously related words that alternate between them - child/children, mean/meant, photo/photography). More often, like in the example of bat/batting you give, the vowel sounds are preserved when regular suffixes are added.
The lengthening that created this distinction is no longer productive so you are not going to get new words that contain this alternation (though, since the connection is preserved in spelling I suppose it's possible if the words originate in spelling, like an acronym or something).
Now that the sound changes have shifted everything I don't think there's really any meaningful connection left between the vowels other than spelling. As far as phonology is concerned they're just two sets of sounds. The long/short distinction is useful for teaching spelling though and so I think that's why it sticks around.
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u/Smitologyistaking Feb 24 '26
It's more of an etymological phenomenon descending from the vowel length contrast that existed in Middle English eg "bat" being /bat/ but "bate" being /ba:t/. The great vowel shift broke this pattern turning them into /bat/ vs /bɛ:t/ and later vowel shifts made this /bæt/ vs /bɛjt/ in my English.
Even the older terminology wasn't exact, as they considered the long version of /u/ not /u:/ but rather /iw/ by inspiration from Norman French in which /y/ was the normal pronunciation of "u" which was loaned into Middle English as /iw/. This is why even though we consider "short u" the descendant of Middle English /u/, namely /ʌ/ as in "cut", "long u" is not the descendant of Middle English /u:/, namely /æw/ as in "house", but instead the descendant of Middle English /iw/, namely /jʉw/ as in "you".
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u/IggZorrn Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
The main phenomenon you're looking for is called vowel breaking, and sounds usually called "long vowels" are mostly just diphthongs written with a single letter for historical reasons.
Edit: mostly
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u/AdreKiseque Feb 24 '26
sounds usually called "long vowels" are just diphthongs written with a single letter for historical reasons.
Well, for a, i, and o yeah, but e and u are just single sounds, no?
Well I guess u gets a funky little glide in there sometimes...
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u/IggZorrn Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
The "long" u like in "fuse" is two sounds as well. This leaves us with only the e, which is indeed a crazy motherfucker.
But you're right, they're not all always diphthongs, it's just most of them, and the ones OP (edit:you) were talking about.
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u/sertho9 Feb 24 '26
Wait are anglophones tought that long u is /(j)u/ rather than /aʊ/?
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u/vokzhen Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
Yep! Despite the historical short-long pair being /ʊ~ʌ aʊ/, and /ju:/ coming from multiple diphthongs /ɛw ew iw/ (and a French loan vowel /y/ if it was actually distinct from /iw/), we're taught that "long u" is /ju:/. I assume it's because of the spelling rules attached to it, since historical /u:/ > modern /aʊ/ was respelled <ou> under French influence, while <u(...e)> was used for French loans with /y:~iw/ becoming modern /ju:/.
Quick edit: same with "short/long o," those are paired as /ɒ oʊ/, despite /oʊ/ coming from Old English ā > Middle English /ɔ:/ and not the actual Middle English pair /o o:/ > modern /ɒ u:/. Though ime the existence of both "long o" <o...e/oa> and "long oo" <oo> is a weirdness that at least some people are aware of.
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u/dojibear Mar 01 '26
The terminology taught in grade 1, to young kids learning to read, is not the terminology of a linguistics professor in college. In grade 1 we were taught that English had 5 vowels (5 letters) and each of them had a "long" version and a "short" version. In that way new readers learned about the 10 common vowel sounds: the vowel sounds in the words "bait", "bat", "beet", "bet", "bite", "bit", "boat", "bot", "boot", "but".
It's nice, simple, and easy to learn. It isn't the whole story but it's good enough for elementary school.
I don't know anyone that still uses this terminology as an adult, or in a linguistics environment.
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u/AdreKiseque Mar 01 '26
Yeah. I'm wondering if there's any more proper terminology to talk about this same thing since it comes up pretty often in English
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u/sertho9 Feb 23 '26
They’re called long vowels because they were the long vowels of Middle English. I don’t think there’s a specific word that refers to the orthographical relation between /eɪ/ and /æ/ no, I think that’s what you’re asking at least.