Latin alphabet IPA In the
International Phonetic Alphabet the sign (not a colon, but two triangles facing each other in an
hourglass shape; Unicode ) is used for both vowel and consonant length. This may be doubled for an extra-long sound, or the top half () may be used to indicate that a sound is "half long". A
breve is used to mark an
extra-short vowel or consonant. Estonian has a three-way
phonemic contrast: :
saada "to get" (overlong) :
saada "send!" (long) :
sada "hundred" (short) Although not phonemic, a half-long distinction can also be illustrated in certain accents of English: :
bead :
beat :
bid :
bit Diacritics •
Macron (ā), used to indicate a long vowel in
Māori,
Hawaiian,
Samoan,
Latvian and many transcription schemes, including romanizations for
Sanskrit and
Arabic, the
Hepburn romanization for
Japanese, and
Yale for
Korean. While not part of their standard orthography, the macron is used as a teaching aid in modern
Latin and
Ancient Greek textbooks. Macron is also used in modern official
Cyrillic orthographies of some minority languages (
Mansi,
Kildin Sami,
Evenki). •
Breves (ă) are used to mark short vowels in several
linguistic transcription systems, as well as in
Vietnamese and Alvarez-Hale's orthography for
O'odham. •
Acute accent (á), used to indicate a long vowel in
Czech,
Slovak,
Old Norse,
Hungarian,
Irish, traditional
Scottish Gaelic (for long [oː] ó, [eː] é, as opposed to [ɛː] è, [ɔː] ò) and pre-20th-century transcriptions of
Sanskrit,
Arabic, etc. • An
apex, which was a light acute accent that was angled lower and aligned with a letter's right, was used in
Classical Latin. (However, for I, a taller ꟾ was sometimes used instead.) •
Circumflex (â), used for example in
Welsh. The circumflex is occasionally used as a surrogate for the macrons, particularly in
Hawaiian and in the
Kunrei-shiki romanization of
Japanese, or in transcriptions of
Old High German. In transcriptions of
Middle High German, a system where inherited lengths are marked with the circumflex and new lengths with the macron is occasionally used. •
Grave accent (à) is used in
Scottish Gaelic, with a e i o u. (In traditional spelling, [ɛː] is è and [ɔː] is ò as in gnè, pòcaid, Mòr (personal name), while [eː] is é and [oː] is ó, as in dé, mór.) •
Ogonek (ą), used in
Lithuanian to indicate long vowels. •
Trema (ä), used in
Aymara to indicate long vowels. •
Kroužek (ů), used in
Czech for the long U sound, e.g.,
kůň "horse". (It actually developed from the
ligature "uo", which noted the
diphthong until it shifted to .)
Additional letters •
Vowel doubling, used consistently in
Estonian,
Finnish,
Lombard,
Navajo and
Somali, and in closed syllables in
Dutch,
Afrikaans, and
West Frisian. Example: Finnish
tuuli 'wind' vs.
tuli 'fire'. • Estonian also has a rare "overlong" vowel length but does not distinguish it from the normal long vowel in writing, as they are distinguishable by context; see the example below. •
Consonant doubling after short vowels is very common in
Swedish and other Germanic languages, including English. The system is somewhat inconsistent, especially in loanwords, around consonant clusters and with word-final nasal consonants. Examples: :
Consistent use: byta 'to change' vs
bytta 'tub' and
koma 'coma' vs
komma 'to come' :
Inconsistent use: fält 'a field' and
kam 'a comb' (but the verb 'to comb' is
kamma) • Classical
Milanese orthography uses consonant doubling in closed short syllables, e.g.,
lenguagg 'language' and
pubblegh 'public'. •
ie is used to mark the long sound in
German because of the preservation and the generalization of a historic
ie spelling, which originally represented the sound . In
Low German, a following
e letter lengthens other vowels as well, e.g., in the name
Kues . • A following
h is frequently used in
German and older
Swedish spelling, e.g., German
Zahn 'tooth'.
Other signs •
Colon, , from
Americanist phonetic notation, and used in orthographies based on it such as
Oʼodham,
Mohawk or
Seneca. The triangular colon in the
International Phonetic Alphabet derives from this. •
Middot or half-colon, , a more common variant in the Americanist tradition, also used in language orthographies. •
Saltillo (straight apostrophe), used in
Miꞌkmaq, as evidenced by the name itself. This is the convention of the Listuguj orthography (Miꞌgmaq), and a common substitution for the acute accent (Míkmaq) of the Francis-Smith orthography.
No distinction Some languages make no distinction in writing. This is particularly the case with ancient languages such as
Old English. Modern edited texts often use macrons with long vowels, however.
Australian English does not distinguish the vowels from in spelling, with words like 'span' or 'can' having different pronunciations depending on meaning. Other modern languages that do not represent vowel length in their standard orthography include
Serbo-Croatian,
Slovene and
Hausa.
Other writing systems In non-Latin writing systems, a variety of mechanisms have also evolved. • In abjads derived from the
Aramaic alphabet, notably
Arabic and
Hebrew, long vowels are written with consonant letters (mostly
approximant consonant letters) in a process called
mater lectionis e.g. in Modern Arabic the long vowel is represented by the letter
ا (
Alif), the vowels and are represented by
و (
wāw), and the vowels and are represented by
ي (
yāʼ), while short vowels are typically omitted entirely. Most of these scripts also have optional diacritics that can be used to mark short vowels when needed. • In
South-Asian abugidas, such as
Devanagari or the
Thai alphabet, there are different vowel signs for short and long vowels. •
Ancient Greek also had distinct vowel signs, but only for some long vowels; the vowel letters (
eta) and (
omega) originally represented long forms of the vowels represented by the letters (
epsilon, literally "bare
e") and
ο (
omicron – literally "small
o", by contrast with
omega or "large
o"). The other vowel letters of Ancient Greek, (
alpha), (
iota) and (
upsilon), could represent either short or long vowel phones. •
Japanese phonology: • In the
hiragana syllabary, long vowels are usually indicated by adding a vowel character after. For vowels , , and , the corresponding independent vowel is added. Thus: (a), , "okaasan", mother; (i), にいがた "Niigata", city in northern Japan (usually , in
kanji); (u), "ryuu" (usu. ), dragon. The mid-vowels and may be written with (e) (rare) ( (), neesan, "elder sister") and (o) [ (usu ), ookii, big], or with (i) ( (), "meirei", command/order) and (u) ( (), ousama, "king") depending on etymological, morphological, and historic grounds. • Most long vowels in the
katakana syllabary are written with a special bar symbol (vertical in
vertical writing), called a
chōon, as in
mēkā "maker" instead of
meka "
mecha". However, some long vowels are written with additional vowel characters, as with hiragana, with the distinction being orthographically significant. • Some analyses make a distinction between a long vowel and a succession of two identical vowels, citing pairs such as
satōya 'sugar shop' vs. . They are usually identical in normal speech, but when enunciated a distinction may be made with a pause or a
glottal stop inserted between two identical vowels. • In transcription:
tsuki 'moon' vs.
tsūki 'airflow'. • In the Korean
Hangul alphabet, vowel length is not distinguished in normal writing. Some dictionaries use a double dot, , for example "
Daikon radish". • In the Classic
Maya script, also based on syllabic characters, long vowels in monosyllabic roots were generally written with word-final syllabic signs ending in the vowel -
i rather than an echo-vowel. Hence,
chaach "basket", with a long vowel, was written as
cha-chi (compare
chan "sky", with a short vowel, written as
cha-na). If the nucleus of the syllable was itself
i, however, the word-final vowel for indicating length was -
a:
tziik- "to count; to honour, to sanctify" was written as
tzi-ka (compare ''sitz'
"appetite", written as si-tz'i''). ==See also==