Hello there! This is the "Sounds American" channel. In this video, we're going to discuss common misunderstandings about the length of vowels and the essential rules for their pronunciation. Since you're watching this video, you've probably heard about long and short English vowels before, haven't you? Beware, after watching this video your life will never be the same. Keep calm and embrace it. For those who haven't heard about them, don't worry, your life won't be the same either. There's a lot of confusion and misconceptions about the length of English vowels. To be honest, it seems like a big mess. Let's clear things up. Number one. We'll start with something that you can find in many English dictionaries: the vowel length symbol. Take a look at this example. Here's the word "leaf" and its transcription: Have you noticed this symbol? This symbol is used to denote a long vowel
sound. In this case, it's the vowel sound /i:/. As opposed to the short vowel sound /ɪ/, as in the word "live." Let's check and compare the actual lengths of these two vowels. Here are the recordings from the Longman online dictionary. Listen to these words very carefully. Which vowel sound do you think is longer? The one in the word on the left or the one in the word on the right? We know, it may be hard to tell. Let's try again... You know, we trust technology more than our ears. So we measured the lengths. The measurements tell us that the so-called "long" /i:/ in "leaf" is approximately the same length as the /ɪ/ in "live." As it turns out, the "long" /i:/ isn't that long, right? Let's try another dictionary. Here are the same two words from the Cambridge online dictionary. Listen: As you can see, this time the so-called "short /ɪ/" is even longer. At this point, we'd like to say that the vowel length symbol is used in traditional British English transcription. In British English, vowel sounds are divided into two major groups that are conventionally called the "long" and "short" vowels. However, as we just saw in our examples, the vowel length symbol doesn't mean that the long vowel is always longer than a short one. In fact, the /i:/ and the /ɪ/ are two different sounds. They are not short and long versions of the same sound. These sounds are different in how you pronounce them but not necessarily in their length. And speaking about the vowel length symbol, we think it doesn't make much sense. Maybe that's why it's not used in General American transcription. Take a look. Now, let's talk about another reason why so many people misuse the terms "long" and "short" vowels. Brace yourself, this is going to be deep. Imagine that you're a little English-speaking kid, learning to read. This is how it usually happens: Look, kids, I'm a vowel 'A'! I can be short and long! In this word I'm short: "tap" And now I'm long and say my name: "tape"! Do you know who helped me say my name? It's magic 'e'! It jumped to the end of the word and made
me long! Hurray! Awesome, isn't it? It's a great way to teach a child to read. Preschool children are too young to understand phonetic terminology. But we're all grown-ups, right? You're learning English as a second language and we're talking about pronunciation. So, the point is, these are not long and short 'A' vowels, these are two completely different sounds represented by the same letter 'A'. All right, now let's summarize what we've just talked about: Remember, there are no such things as the "long vowel 'A' and the short vowel 'A' in phonetics. It's an oversimplification that could be misleading. Beware of the vowel length symbol, it doesn't always mean that you need to pronounce a longer vowel. Use an American English dictionary. There's no vowel length symbol in General American English transcription. All this doesn't mean that all American vowels have the same length. No, they definitely don't. This is what you need to remember: Any vowel can be longer or shorter depending on the following sound. To be more precise, a vowel before a voiceless consonant sound is shorter than a vowel before a voiced one. Take a look at these examples. The words in this pair differ by their final consonant sounds only: The consonant sound at the end of the word on the left is a voiceless consonant and the consonant sound at the end of the word on the right is voiced. Here's another example: Note that the vowel sounds are the same in both words. However, the vowel sound in the word on the left is shorter than the vowel sound in the word on the right. How about another example? This is called the Vowel Length rule. As you can see, any vowel can be longer or shorter depending on the following consonant. So, it may not be the best idea to divide American vowel sounds into long and short ones. If you want to organize them somehow, it's better to use a quality which doesn't change: vowel tenseness. Because In American English vowels are either tense or relaxed. But what does this mean? The vowel sounds on the left are always tense. They're always made with your lips and tongue tensed. The vowel sounds on the right are always relaxed. They're always made with your lips and tongue relaxed. We talked about this a lot in our previous videos. Check the links in the description below. All that you need to remember now and forever is: a tense vowel will always remain tense, no matter if it's long or short. The same is true for relaxed vowel sounds. And with that bombshell, it's time to practice! This is how it works. You’ll see a word on the screen and hear its pronunciation. Like this. You'll have a few seconds to pronounce the word. ♪ Repeat each word after the speaker. Note that the vowel in the first word is shorter than the vowel in the second word. Let's begin. You're done! Congratulations! Before you go, let's complete a quick quiz over what you've learned. Take a look at these words. Your task is to determine the tenseness and the length of the vowels in each word. We'll use the first word as an example: Click Like if you liked this video! Share this video with your friends, pets, and relatives. Don't forget to subscribe and stay tuned on our Sounds American channel!
