Jj is for Jottings 85. Short and Long Vowels.
Since we were on the subject of vowels (see Auditory Discrimination of Vowel Sounds and Vowel Discrimination Activities), it occurred to me that you may have heard of short and long vowels and not know what they are. You would think that a long vowel is a longer version of a short vowel, but they are completely different sounds. Quite simply, short vowels are the sounds made by /a,e,i,o,u/, and long vowels are the names of those five letters.
Short and long vowels? Who cares? I’d rather have a zzzzz.
WHAT DO SHORT AND LONG VOWELS LOOK LIKE?
Short Vowels.
The easiest short vowel words are 3-letter CVC words eg. bag, beg, big, bog, bug. In each case we pronounce the vowel as its basic sound. When syllables end in a vowel and then a consonant (as in the examples above), the vowel is usually short. If there is more than one consonant, the vowel is almost always short, eg. “back, stopped”.
Long Vowels.
There are several ways of making long vowels.
- Putting two vowels next to each other. As a result, the word usually makes the sound of the first vowel’s name (“When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking”). Examples are “bead”, “mail”, “boat”.
- Another way of creating a long vowel sound is by putting an ‘e’ on the end of the word. This is often referred to as the “bossy ‘e’” or the “magic ‘e’”. (“The ‘e’ on the end makes the vowel say its name. The ‘e’ is silent.”) Examples are “bake”, “seed”, “hike”, “poke”, “mute”. See how you can use a bossy ‘e’ to change a short vowel to a long vowel with these minimal pairs: can/cane; bet/beet; rid/ride; hop/hope; cut/cute. If you say each of these aloud, it is very clear that the first half of the pair uses the sound made by the vowel, and the second half uses the vowel’s name.
- A vowel at the end of a syllable is almost always long. Some examples of this are “I, we, he, she, go, try, potato and tomato”.
- -Igh and -ight are usually long I (and silent GH), so we have “bright, fight, high, light, might, night, right, sigh, sight, tight”.
Remember that this is English, and there are almost invariably exceptions.
VOWELS OTHER THAN SHORT AND LONG VOWELS.
Short and long vowels aren’t the only vowel sounds, and the other vowels will be discussed next time.
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