Long vowels, diphthongs and triphthongs
3.1 English long vowels
In Chapter 2 the short vowels were introduced. In this chapter we look at other types of English
vowel sound. The first to be introduced here are the five long vowels; these are the vowels which
tend to be longer than the short vowels in similar contexts. It is necessary to say "in similar
contexts" because, as we shall see later, the length of all English vowel sounds varies very much
according to their context (such as the type of sound that follows them) and the presence or
absence of stress. To remind you that these vowels tend to be long, the symbols consist of one
vowel symbol plus a length mark made of two dots . Thus we have We will now look at each of these long vowels individually.