Expertlatin
How do you determine the length of a vowel?
IPA. In the International Phonetic Alphabet the sign ː (two triangles facing each other in an hourglass shape) is used for both vowel and consonant length. This may be doubled for an extra-long sound, or the top half (ˑ) used to indicate a sound is "half long". A breve is used to mark a short vowel or consonant.
What is meant by vowel length?
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration.
Is vowel length phonemic?
I prefer the analysis that vowel length is not phonemic, and that vowel length is only incidental to certain vowel phonemes where the main distinction is the vowel quality (the precise sound) rather than the quantity (the length), but it's also possible to analyse it the other way around: that some vowels sound (only ...
