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The Long Vowels The long vowels are – literally – longer than the short vowels. You might be able to hear the difference in the length of the vowels in the two words grin and green. If I am asked to say the vowel that occurs in grin, I am likely to say it as / I /; and if asked to say the vowel in green, I am likely to say it as ‘ee’. Now, if you can, compare the two together: / I / ~ ‘ee’. If you consult phoneticians’ books on the description of English pronunciation, you will find details of this difference in length (see for instance Gimson (2001), Roach (2000) etc). The long vowels are roughly twice the length of the short vowels; this is such a significant phonetic difference that it is the basis of one important grouping of vowels in English: short, and long vowels. There is also a phonological difference between the two: whereas short vowels have to be followed by a consonant in English, this is not the case for the long vowels – they can occur at the end of a word ‘unchecked’, as it were. The vowel in green, appears at the end of the word agree, without the necessity of a consonant following. (A consonant may follow, of course, as in agreed, but it is not required as in the case of short vowels.) Long vowels are themselves divided into two groups according to how steady the tongue is while they are being pronounced. If the tongue is relatively steady, they are called monophthongs (or ‘pure’ vowels); if there is a degree of movement by the tongue, they are called diphthongs. In my pronunciation of the ‘ee’ vowel, the tongue remains relatively stable, but when I pronounce the vowel I (or eye, or aye), the tongue rises to a higher position in the mouth and thus it qualifies as a diphthong. Said slowly, the movement of the tongue can be heard more easily: "aayyee". The length of the monophthongal long vowels is symbolised in the IPA by two points rather like a colon after the vowel symbol; for instance, the vowel in green is / i: /. The length of the diphthongal long vowels is symbolised by a double vowel symbol in which the starting and ending points of the tongue’s movement are represented; for instance, the vowel in I (eye, aye) is transcribed as / aI /, where the / a / represents the position of the tongue before it begins to move, and the / I / its position when it finishes. It is important to think of the diphthongs as an essential part of a single vowel system in English, and not as a separate system. When languages and accents are compared, it may be tempting to treat the monophthongs and diphthongs separately, for convenience; but to do so would be highly misleading, as the short vowels and the long vowels – both monophthongs and diphthongs – form a single system. In fact, what is a diphthong in one accent may correspond to a monophthong in another, and vice versa. And what is a monophthong in one language may have a diphthong as its nearest equivalent in another – and vice versa. We will present the 5 monophthongal long vowels first because they can each be compared with a short vowel. |