Learn English – When does the letter “e” get to have a long sound before a consonant

phoneticsspelling

When does the letter 'e' have a long sound before a consonant? For example:

  • senior
  • venal
  • menial
  • -melia
  • penal
  • Venus
  • Pelias

And in the case of Pelias, why can 'e' have both a short sound and a long sound?

Best Answer

These are fairly obscure words (except perhaps senior and Venus). The usual reason for any pronunciation in English is "because it is" and you have to get used to it. The deeper answer is the history of words changing sound without the spelling following.

The general reason for the letter "e" being pronounced as /iː/ is the great vowel shift in which the stressed or long "e" /eː/ changed to /iː/. In the case of "senior", "venal" and "Venus", the word is influenced by the French accented vowel, "sénior", "vénal" and "Vénus". The accented vowel sound becomes a long /iː/ when shifted in the great vowel shift. The word "menial" and "penal" seems to have gone down a similar route, originally "meinial" and "peinal", with a vowel change from /ei/ to /iː/, and and a spelling change too. "Pelias" is the same here the "e" is used to represent the greek letter "epsilon", but there has been a sound shift. Not a common word - I needed to look it up to check the pronunciation. The native Greek would be closer to /e/ than /i:/. I can't find any words that are even slightly commom that have a -melia suffix, the closest was "camelia", a type of flowering shrub.

That may have been interesting, but it won't help you decide if "genus" "Juvenal" or "plenary" have a long or short "e" sound (The first two don't and plenary has both pronunciations)

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