vowellength

Vowellength refers to the duration of a vowel during articulation. It is often described in terms of short and long vowels, with long vowels lasting longer than their short counterparts. In phonology, vowel length can be phonemic, meaning a length difference creates a meaningful contrast between two words, or it can be phonetic, reflecting contextual or articulatory variation without implying a lexical distinction.

In some languages the length of a vowel is phonemic, producing minimal pairs such as a vs. ā that differ in meaning. Languages with this feature include Classical Latin, Sanskrit, and several Finno-Ugric languages such as Finnish and Hungarian, where vowel duration can distinguish morphemes or words. In other languages, vowel duration is not contrastive, but it can influence rhythm, stress placement, and perceptual salience. Vowel length can also interact with consonant length and syllable structure, contributing to a language’s overall timing or moraic organization.

Measurement and notation of vowellength vary. Acoustic measurement uses duration in milliseconds, while theoretical analyses may employ a mora-based approach, counting length as one or two morae. In transcription, long vowels are often indicated with a colon in IPA (for example, /aː/) or using diacritics such as macrons in orthographic conventions. Some writing systems use explicit notation for vowel length, such as the chŏnpu or other length markers.

Typologically, the presence of vowellength distinctions interacts with other prosodic features, including stress, vowel quality, and syllable structure. Diachronic change can alter vowel length through processes of shortening, lengthening, or redistribution, influencing phonology and the prosodic rhythm of a language over time.