Learn English – How do we differentiate long vowels from short vowels in English

orthographypronunciationvowel-lengthvowels

I was finding a school for my toddler. I saw this new theory called long vowels and short vowels

The teacher talk about apple, which she read something like "eiple" and the hat, which she claims use short vowels.

She says that some vowels are long vowels and some vowels are short vowels.

Now I know where I got my accent. I never knew about it. In Indonesian language every vowel have just one spelling.

That being said, she does sound like native speakers.

The question is:

How do we know when we should use long vowels and when we should use short vowels. For example, is a in apple short or long? Is the a in hat short or long? Do we sort of just memorize that or is there a rule.

Best Answer

Unfortunately, there is no good rule - children struggle with this when learning to write. There are a few rules of thumb that hold in most cases, though:

  • Diphthongs (ou, ie, ei, eu, ...) are long (accOUnt), unless they're unstressed and turn into a schwa (succOUr)
  • Single vowels (a, e, i, o, u) are short before double consonants (AttAck)
  • Single vowels are long if they are followed by a single consonant and then an 'e', all in the same syllable (sAve, mOle), and in -ing forms of such verbs (sAve -> sAving)
  • Single vowels are short if they are followed by a single consonant in the same or next syllable, unless the above applies (cAt, At-lAs, nO-mEn-clA-ture)
  • And loads of exceptions to all of these rules, and they vary across dialects and idiolects. The consonants 'r', 'w' and 'y' do funny things to vowels, too.

These might help a little:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_length#Short_and_long_vowels_in_English

http://improvingenglishspelling.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/long-and-short-vowels.html

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