vowel lengthening
Extended vowel duration
Vowel lengthening is the pronunciation of a vowel for a longer duration than usual.
In some languages, vowel length distinguishes word meanings—Japanese and Finnish mark the difference in spelling.
In English, vowel lengthening happens naturally before voiced consonants: the vowel in bead is slightly longer than in beat.
Speakers also lengthen vowels for emphasis: That was sooo good.
- moraProsodic duration unit
- diacriticsMarks altering letter pronunciation
- Old EnglishGermanic language of early Britain
- diphthongsCombined vowel sounds
- assimilationAbsorbing into a whole
drawl · slow speech · held note · quantity · Germanic · accent · duration · sustain · linger · stress · phoneme · intonation · stretch · articulation · contraction · elongation · speech · reduplication
- accentsBritish accent, Australian accent, New England accent, New York accent, Boston accent
- phoneticsphonemes, phoneme, vocal folds, consonants, vowels
- Tajweedreciter, harakat, reciters, elongation, nasalization
- sound changesassimilation, elision, deletion, voicing, nasalization
- vowel changesablaut, umlaut, monophthongization, centralization, tensing
- Vowel Studieslong vowels, short vowels, diphthongs, schwa, double vowels