"long" and "short" vowels

Tue Jun 16 00:17:24 UTC 2009

Thanks kari,

We were taught the same definitions for "long and short vowels".  I think you are right, that it is a traditional Amglish (American English) teaching convention.  I suppose any talk of them should be explained so folks know what is meant. I hope teachers still use that phraseology to link with the past.

Yes John Wells is an Englishman.  I met him when I was in England last summer.  We presented papers at the Spelling Society.  He's quite a well known linguist and is creating quite a stir over there advocating liberalizing spelling toward phonetics.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
see truespel.com

----------------------------------------
> Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:48:27 -0500
> From: castor.kari 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: Kari Castor
> Subject: Re: "long" and "short" vowels
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Tom,
> The second link your provided (
> http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/ipa-english.htm) comes from a .uk web
> address and notes that the author is affiliated with University College
> London.
>
> I'd say it's a fair assumption then that the material in question refers to
> British English rather than American English. It's awfully Amero-centric t=
> o
> assume otherwise.
>
>
> To answer your question about long and short vowels:
>
> When I was in gradeschool (beginning in the late 80s) I was taught that lon=
> g
> vowels were the sounds in these words: pay, fee, high, snow, rule.
>
> Short vowels were: cat, met, tall, hit, etc...
>
> I'm a pre-service teacher (not a linguist, just an interested student of
> language), although I'll be teaching at the high school level, so I doubt
> this issue is likely to come up much. However, if it did, I would likely
> use the same classifications I was taught in grade school.
>
> As has been pointed out, there is no "official" US English, and no one is
> issuing orders about how to use this terminology correctly. Since most
> grade teachers are probably not linguists, and they were probably taught
> about long and short vowels the same way you and I appear to have been, I
> suspect most teachers continue to use that terminology in the same way.
>
> Kari
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 7:50 PM, Herb Stahlke wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- 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'Acad=E9mie
>> fran=E7aise, 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. T=
> he
>> short vowels are also for a,e,i,o,u, as in hat, get, hit, hot, hut. I th=
> ink
>> USA teachers still teach this way. Is the change as indicated by the sit=
> e
>> 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 s=
> ee
>> 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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>>
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>
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