The Shocking Truth About Long And Short English Vowels – American English Pronunciation

Everyone has heard about long and short vowels, and that the length of vowels is very important in English. But you know that already, right? What you probably don't know is that you may have learned it the wrong way.

In this video, we're going to address common misunderstandings about the length of vowels and discuss essential rules to help you improve your pronunciation.

• Do you know that there are no such things as the "long vowel 'A' and the short vowel 'A' in phonetics?
• By the way, the vowel length symbol doesn't always mean that you need to pronounce a longer vowel.
• All this doesn't mean that all American vowels have the same length. No, they don't. And there's a rule for this, but it's a secret ;). You have to watch this video to find out.

Quick Links:
• Intro 00:00
• Vowel Length Symbol: 00:55
• Long 'A' – Short 'A' : 04:12
• Misconceptions Cleared Up, Summary: 05:29
• Vowel Length Rule: 06:04
• Tense and Relaxed Vowel Sounds: 07:46
• Pronunciation Exercise: 08:37
• Quiz: 11:30

Related Videos:
► Pronunciation of Vowel Sounds (Playlist)
►Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online
► Interactive Vowel Sounds Chart: American English Pronunciation

[THIS VIDEO HAS ENGLISH, JAPANESE, CHINESE, VIETNAMESE, PORTUGUESE, AND RUSSIAN SUBTITLES]
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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 it's transcription: /li:f/.
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."
Take a look:
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?

[Pronunciation exercise]
• half
• have
• leaf
• leave
• safe
• save
• surface
• service
• base
• bathe
• bat
• bad
• duck
• dug
• leak
• league
• peck
• peg
• cup
• cub
• rip
• rib
• bus
• buzz
• price
• prize
• race
• raise
• batch
• badge

[TorreyNommesen]

I keep coming back to this one. I have been teaching Chinese kids phonics through your videos. It really helps me to teach them correct phonics, not just the "A is for Apple" that everyone else is doing. As an American native speaker (with a little bit of Native American heritage btw) I just speak it well, but until now didn't know how to tell others what I was doing. Thank you for helping me educate my students and for educating me as well!

[biaohuang]

This video has really blown my mind . I have been learning English since I was twelve years old, now I am 39. Always the teacher says the difference is the long or short of vowels. This video really changes my front knowledge, I will practice more using your method. Now I am teaching my kids phonics, your Chanel is really a treasure to me. Thanks so much!

[SmartJandira]

Oh boy, there are tons of material explaining the long/short vowels, mostly to kids. Poor kids. Besides phonics, there are lots of wrong or inadequate lessons, from the linguistic point, about grammar and other language teaching. As a Brazilian ESL teacher, it´s a frustration. But there still are few teachers like you That bring some lights to this darkness. Thanks so much.

[ninaaamodt]

This channel is absolutely the best of pronunciation teaching on youtube. Thank you very much. Appreciate all you have done for non-native speakers.

[MortuusAliena-qpbw]

The vowel length symbol IS used to represent a longer vowel in IPA. It is merely that the British are using some traditional transcription systems, which are using the length symbol due to traditional reasons. It's also why in both British and GA transcription, ʌ is used. The quality of the "ʌ" vowel is distinct from ə, but in English transcription, it is used for the same quality, but in stressed syllables. It comes historically from a short u, and used to have a distinct pronunciation, but has since merged.

[clairej]

Nobody on YouTube can explain like this. 🙏👍👍👍

[cristianegraciliano]

"After watching this video, your life will never be the same". Wow, this is deep.

[xmwang]

Thank you. I have “fit” (relax) and “feet” (tense), both of which have voiceless constant but the vowel are different.

[barondls]

At last, I've been able to understand why in many translators they have different phonetic writing, I have studied so much phonetics and there's always the same pattern, that division that I don't see much sense, between short and long vowels. Thank you change the way I see the world.

[ing.luisgarcia]

Saludos
Excelente explicación. Pero nos ayudaría mucho si estos videos fueran en español.

[santosgarcia]

Now i see very clear that the sound of each vowel is determined by the consonant follow and becomes even easier knowing the sound of the four stop sounds consonant c k t and b

[braedondavies]

You could also use leave and live, then you'll have /liːv/ and /lɪv/.

[joselevicanasenjo]

this video really changed my mind! I teach English and have my students associate i: and I as being tense and relax, but I use this relax and tense concept only with those letters, because they are the most difficult to dinsinguish. Now, this is the first time I ever heard about the "length of the vowel". I am going to use it in my lessons. I noticed that I unconcioulsy sue longer vowel sounds before a voiced consonant, and in fact it sounds weird when it is shortened. Thanks much !!!

[snowwhite]

Really interesting, 1000 thanks from Egypt.

[БорисКормилицын-ие]

There are other factors affecting the length of vowel sound. First, whether it is stressed emphatically or not (whether tone is rising or falling or more complex also matters) Second, the number of unstressed syllables before and after it. Third, the duration of the pause after it (if present). The maximum length is at the end of a sintagma.

[alexho]

Thank you so much.I was confused about long i and short i.

[nevrgonemusic]

You came back! My accent hero! The title sounds so epic :D

[brendarios]

WOW AMAZING you have revealed the best rule, this didn't tell me in my school and neither in my institute .I really love this lesson it is really helpful, thanks a lot you have changed my mind .

[davelind]

This channel is great. Thank you so much, guys!!

[lannguyen]

This video is so interesting. Couple years ago I read a book called "American Accent Training" by Ann Cook. I loved it so much that I decided to translate the whole book into Vietnamese and would share it with other English learners whose English was not good enough to read the original version.
But I was like 80% done and it was still in my computer. That's why now I don't feel much trouble understanding the video, it feels like I'm revising what I learned 2 years ago = )))).

There's still mistakes in what I translated, tho. Ann didn't explain well about the misuse of vowel length and vowel tenseness that I thought they are the same, one is used in America and the other is use in IPA. So for the sake of simplicity, I transferred the whole transcription symbols in her book back to IPA in my translation. How stupid! And thank God I didn't deliver that my translation to other people.

Thank you so much so that video!!!