Finnish, a language with two phonemic lengths (i.e. For example, French long vowels are always in stressed syllables. Stress is often reinforced by allophonic vowel length, especially when it is lexical. Some languages that do not ordinarily have phonemic vowel length but permit vowel hiatus may similarly exhibit sequences of identical vowel phonemes that yield phonetically long vowels, such as Georgian გააადვილებ, 'you will facilitate it'. However, some languages with two vowel lengths also have words in which long vowels appear adjacent to other short or long vowels of the same type: Japanese hōō, 'phoenix', or Ancient Greek ἀάατος, 'inviolable'. Very few languages distinguish three phonemic vowel lengths, such as Estonian, Luiseño, and Mixe. Languages that do distinguish vowel length phonemically usually only distinguish between short vowels and long vowels. Many languages do not distinguish vowel length phonemically, meaning that vowel length does not change meaning, and the length of a vowel is conditioned by other factors such as the phonetic characteristics of the sounds around it, for instance whether the vowel is followed by a voiced or a voiceless consonant. It also plays a lesser phonetic role in Cantonese, unlike in other varieties of Chinese. While vowel length alone does not change word meaning in most dialects of English, it is said to do so in a few dialects, such as Australian English, Lunenburg English, New Zealand English, and South African English. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, for example in: Arabic, Estonian, Finnish, Fijian, Japanese, Kannada, Kyrgyz, Latin, Malayalam, Old English, Scottish Gaelic, and Vietnamese.

In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. JSTOR ( September 2015) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message).Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This article needs additional citations for verification.

What is a long vowel sound