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In some languages, such as Old English, these behave like short and long vowels, occupying one and two morae, respectively. Languages that contrast three quantities in diphthongs are extremely rare, but not unheard of; Northern Sami is known to contrast long, short and "finally stressed" diphthongs, the last of which are distinguished by a ...
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration.In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, for example in Arabic, Czech, Dravidian languages (such as Tamil), some Finno-Ugric languages (such as Finnish and Estonian), Japanese, Kyrgyz, Samoan ...
The short vowels are / æ ɛ ɪ ɒ ʌ / while the equivalent long vowels are / eɪ iː aɪ oʊ j uː /. However, because of the complications of the Great Vowel Shift, the long vowel is not always simply a lengthened version of the corresponding short one; and in most cases (for example with ride) is in fact a diphthong (/ r aɪ d /).
Greek poetry is based on syllable length, not on syllable stress, as in English.The two syllable lengths in Greek poetry are long and short.It is probable that in the natural spoken language there were also syllables of intermediate length, as in the first syllable of words such as τέκνα /tékna/ 'children', where a short vowel is followed by a plosive + liquid combination; but for poetic ...
The languages that distinguish between different lengths have usually long and short sounds. The Mixe languages are widely considered to have three distinctive levels of vowel length, [1] as do Estonian, some Low German varieties in the vicinity of Hamburg [2] and some Moselle Franconian [3] and Ripuarian Franconian varieties.
The process of deciding which syllables are long and which are short is known as scansion. A syllable is long if it contains a long vowel or a diphthong: Ae-nē-ās, au-rō. It is also long (with certain exceptions) if it has a short vowel followed by two consonants, even if these are in different words: con-dunt, et terrīs, tot vol-ve-re.
The short vowels /ɛ, ʊ/ occur before /ŋ/ only in assimilated non-native words such as ginseng and Song (name of a Chinese dynasty) or non-finally in some dialects in words like strength and length as well as in varieties without the foot-strut split.
A short diphthong had the same length as a short single vowel, and a long diphthong had the same length as a long single vowel. [125] As with monophthongs, their length was not systematically marked in Old English manuscripts, but is inferred from other evidence, such as a word's etymological origins or the pronunciation of its descendants.