"long" and "short" vowels

[Tom Zurinskas]

In summary, I think we can say this about "long and short" vowels:

Back a half century ago when I was a kid all textbooks for kids said that the "long and short vowels" were such that the "long" vowels had the sound of the letter names for a,e,i,o,u (as in take,Pete,kite,hope,mute - note the connection to silent e) and "short" vowels had different sounds for the same letters as in hat,get,hit,pot,gum.  I believe all textbooks for kids in USA today teach this same thing.

Apparently, the terms "long" and "short" are vestigle nicknames from 700 years ago during Chaucer times in the 1300's (during the Lithuanian empire out east lest we forget).  At that time for English there were both "long" durations and "short" durations of the same 5 vowel sounds, and these durations were lexical - changing one word to another if the vowel were held longer or shorter.

The great vowel shift of 600 years ago changed the vowel sounds and the labels "long" and "short" became attached to different sounds, becoming nicknames with no meaning in relation to the duration of the sounds as they once had.

Truespel recognizes 17 vowel sounds for USA English.  The 5 long and 5 short vowels are spelled as typical (note silent e is added to the long vowels resulting in ~ae,~ee,~ie,~oe,~ue.  In summary

10 long/short vowels

3 "r" influenced ~air (as in "fair"),~er(as in "her"),~or(as in "for"),

2 diphthongs ~oi(as in point),~ou(as in "out")

2 remaining are ah/awe "ah" ~aa and "awe" ~au

17 total vowel in USA English.

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













----------------------------------------
> Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2009 08:51:37 -0400
> From: db.list at PMPKN.NET
> Subject: Re: "long" and "short" vowels
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: David Bowie
> Subject: Re: "long" and "short" vowels
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> From: Tom Zurinskas
>
>> I would think that the word, "speech," encompasses all languages.
>> And I would think the word "speech" is exclusive of non language
>> sounds, such that it doesn't need the word "human" in front of it.
>
> It also comes, I think, from the fact that there are a number of people
> who were trying to teach non-human animals to speak (with "speak" here
> including signing).[1] It's unclear whether these animals ever actually
> learned to speak, but if they did it's important to draw a distinction
> between the human language they learned (or at least were attempted to
> be taught[2] by the researchers) and the non-human language they may
> have had coming into the experience, since any such non-human languages
> could presumably have different rules and restrictions.
>
> Also, there are a number of computer languages that certainly have
> syntax (and arguably, in some cases, a sort of phonology-like system),
> but they're quite different than any human language.
>
> I think that in general the human vs. non-human distinction is more
> important for morphology and syntax than phonetics and phonology, but
> it's a not-worthless bit of carefulness.
>
> [1] Are any of these projects still going on, or has all the funding
> finally dried up for them?
>
> [2] I can't think up an elegant passive construction for this. Weird.
>
> --
> David Bowie University of Central Florida
> Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
> house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
> chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.
>
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