"long" and "short" vowels

Mon Jun 15 05:34:59 UTC 2009

It IS for RP, although Wells (1982) describes many varieties of
English, including American ones.  RP has a length cline (according
to Gimson 1962 and many observers), with vowels becoming longer
before certain consonants than others, and, like American English,
tends to have diphthongs for many of the vowels that were long
monophthongs in Middle English, but also has less of an overlap
between the length of what he calls long and short vowels than most
Americans do.
There are dialects out there in the UK with real length distinctions
still:  I think of Yorkshire dialects where sheep = [Siip~SIip] and
ship =[SIp], and cat and cart differ by length alone--[kat]: [ka:t].
We're most like the Southwest of England or East Anglia where there's
been a tendency to lengthen all short vowels in a lot of
environments, especially in monosyllables, and the old short/long
distinction is really tenuous.  Not surprisingly, these two groups
settled a lot of the Original 13 States, and I have a feeling the
pattern was more widespread in the South of England generally.
Scotland and Northern Ireland have also largely gotten rid of length
distinctions via the Scottish Vowel Length Rule--and the latter in
particular donated a lot of settlers, too.

Paul Johnston
On Jun 14, 2009, at 11:26 PM, Tom Zurinskas wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "long" and "short" vowels
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> John Wells says
>  "The earliest general dictionaries to adopt IPA seem to have been
> dictionaries aimed at learners of English as a foreign language:
> the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (first edition 1948), the
> Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (first edition, 1978).
> This was in response to market forces, since specialist teachers of
> pronunciation for EFL had been using IPA for many years. The first
> native-speaker dictionary with IPA may have been Collins English
> Dictionary (first edition 1979)."
> http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/ipa-english.htm
>
> This seems incredible since the IPA was created 90 years earlier.
> Why did it take so long?  He describes the long/short vowels in the
> same strange way as below.  He doesn't say it's merely for received
> pronunciation.
>
> My point still is "Do US English teachers and reading teachers
> describe long/short vowels as Wells does, or as I learned them a
> half century ago?
>
>
> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
> see truespel.com
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------
>> Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:50:11 -0400
>> From: hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM
>> Subject: Re: "long" and "short" vowels
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Herb Stahlke
>> Subject: Re: "long" and "short" vowels
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ----------
>>
>> Tom,
>>
>> Unlike France, Spain, the Arabic-speaking world, and other nations,
>> English has never had a central authority, like France's L'Académie
>> française, that takes upon itself the authority to determine what's
>> "official" in the language. Standard American English is a loosely
>> defined construct that represents a loose consensus of a variety of
>> user populations, and there is disagreement among groups of users as
>> to what Standard and what is not.
>>
>> The terms "long" and "short," as used in phonics instruction, roughly
>> reflect a distinction that was true of English vowels before the
>> onset
>> of the Great Vowel Shift in the 15th c., or the 13th or 14th
>> depending
>> on which sources you read. Here's a link to a brief description of
>> the Great Vowel Shift:
>> http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/vowels.html. There's also
>> a decent Wikipedia article on it. One of the consequences of the GVS
>> was that long vowels became diphthongs, as they are in many varieties
>> of Modern English.
>>
>> The page you provided a link to gives the IPA representation of the
>> vowels and consonants of what is called British Received
>> Pronunciation, not American English.
>>
>> Herb
>>
>> On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 6:05 PM, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>> Poster: Tom Zurinskas
>>> Subject: Re: "long" and "short" vowels
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> -----------
>>>
>>> The reason I bring it up is that the "long vowels" as I was
>>> taught were the "letter name" vowels for a,e,i,o,u, as in bay,
>>> bee, by, beau, boo. The short vowels are also for a,e,i,o,u, as
>>> in hat, get, hit, hot, hut. I think USA teachers still teach this
>>> way. Is the change as indicated by the site below official for
>>> USA English?
>>>
>>>
>>> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
>>> see truespel.com
>>>
>>>
>>>> Formulate what you think the terms "long" and "short" vowels are
>>>> and see the site below to see if you are correct.
>>>>
>>>> http://www.worldwidewords.org/pronguide.htm
>>>>
>>>> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
>>>> see truespel.com
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