Showing Length with IPA Transcriptions

Here's a quick overview of how to show the length of a sound using the IPA:

I also get into what tends to make a vowel longer and what tends to make it shorter: 

Usually tense vowels are longer, and lax vowels are shorter. Similarly, vowels before voiced consonants or at the end of a word tend to be longer, and vowels before unvoiced consonants tend to be shorter because the voicing wants to cut off to prepare for that consonant. You'll learn the symbols for lengthening and shortening a sound.

Here's a transcript of the video:

I want to talk about vowel length. So vowels will tend to either be shorter or longer and there's a couple of ways to mark that with the International Phonetic Alphabet. So here's an outline.

This is the full chart and this is a chart of just the vowels. So on this, there are these diacritics that can do little tweaks. So if you take a vowel at random, let's say the /i/ sound, which is this lowercase /i/, you can indicate length by adding two dots after that, they're actually little teeny tiny triangles that face one another, but those are a pain in the butt to write. So I'm just going to do a couple of dots, which looks like a colon, which suggests more length. If you want to suggest maybe not quite so much length, it can be a single one of those dots. But the main one that you probably want to use is to use the double dot.

Now, when you want to make something shorter, indicate that with the IPA, you can take this very same vowel and then simply put this over it. A little sort of U-shaped thing. It's something that people will commonly use with Shakespeare to indicate an unstressed syllable in iambic pentameter, but that indicates short vowel versus long vowel. Okay.

You can also not mark it and then we just don't know what it is. And or you can assume that it's something in the middle.

So, what makes vowels longer or shorter? Well, if they're at the end of a word, a word like ME, then it tends to be longer.

If it's got after it a voiced consonant, then that voiced consonant because the voicing is continuing, you will tend to stay on your voice. So, the vowel tends to be longer. So, a word like BEAD, the vowel tends to be longer.

If you have an unvoiced consonant after it like a T and you have a word like BEAT, it tends to be a shorter vowel because your voice is basically cutting off faster to try to be ready for not voicing. So this is the unvoiced. This is the voiced.

You can substitute other things for it as well. You could go with a G and a K as different examples. BEAK. BEEG... Yeah, it doesn't really work, but it does the same thing. So, vowel length can be determined by where it lies. It can be determined by what follows it, right?

It can also just be determined by you stressing a word or not stressing stressing a word.

One other thing that I want to throw at you is that there are vowels that tend to be a little bit longer and vowels that tend to be a little bit shorter.

And the ones that tend to be longer are often times called tense vowels.

And the ones that tend to be a little bit shorter are often times called lax vowels.

So for example, an /i/ sound is considered a tense vowel whereas the /ɪ/ sound as in SIT tends to be considered a lax vowel. So it tends to be shorter.

That's the quick version of long vowels versus short vowels. I hope that helps. For more info, check out www.AccentHelp.com.