the long and the short of it

[Beverly Flanigan]

Mark's system is the one I remember too.  "Short o" is actually the /a/ of
'hot', 'pot', etc. (as opposed to the 'long o' of 'note').  But what about
'ah' [a] in 'father' and 'pasta' (Italian-style)?   Was there really no
name for that?

At 04:15 PM 3/17/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>On Mon, 17 Mar 2003, Peter A. McGraw wrote:
>
>#Doesn't anyone but me remember having grade school English teachers
>#describe [ae] as "short a" and [a:] as "long a"?
>
>(raises hand halfway)
>                 grade school name
>         /ae/    short A
>         /ey/    long A
>         /a:/    [no name]
>
>"The long vowels say their own names." That was the rule, well dinned
>in, in my 50s grade schooling.
>
>graph   "short" "long"
>a       /ae/    /ey/
>e       /E/     /i:/
>i       /I/     /ay/
>o       /a/     /o:/
>u       /^/     /ju:/
>
>-- Mark A. Mandel