longvowel

A long vowel is a vowel sound that lasts longer in time than a nearby short vowel. In some languages, length is phonemic, meaning that the duration of the vowel can distinguish words; in others, vowel length is a secondary phonetic property without lexical contrast. The term is commonly used in phonetics and phonology to describe temporal quantity as a dimension of vowel quality.

Physically, duration is measured in time, such as milliseconds or morae, and can be influenced by speaking rate, emphasis, and surrounding sounds. In languages with contrastive vowel length, long vowels are typically several tens of milliseconds longer than their short counterparts and may also interact with consonant length and syllable structure. In languages without a phonemic length distinction, vowels may still appear longer in closed syllables or stressed syllables, but the meaning remains unchanged.

Cross-linguistic overview

Some languages have a clear phonemic distinction between short and long vowels. Finnish and Hungarian are well-known examples where vowel length forms part of a pair of vowels with separate meanings. In Finnish, length is an inherent part of syllable structure and is often reflected in writing. Turkish has limited or no phonemic vowel length in standard varieties, while Latin and Classical Greek historically contrasted long and short vowels, a feature that influenced the prosody and evolution of those languages. Japanese distinguishes long vowels in many words, and the length can be represented in writing with kana extensions or diacritics in some romanizations and scripts.

Orthography and notation

Vowel length is sometimes indicated in writing by modifying the vowel symbol, such as macrons or acute accents in some languages, or by doubling the vowel in others. In Japanese, long vowels are conveyed through kana lengthening or the chōonpu symbol in katakana. In phonological descriptions, long vowels are treated as a distinct category from short vowels and are described in terms of duration, quality, and their interaction with the syllable and surrounding consonants.