Short and Long Vowels in English
Vowel length (i.e., "long" and "short"), when applied to English, has several different related meanings.
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Famous quotes containing the words short, long, vowels and/or english:
“Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.”
—Book Of Common Prayer, The. Burial of the Dead, “First Anthem,” (1662)
“A long time ago people often said, “Why did you become a teacher?” Well, that was about the only decent thing when I was growing up for a girl to be. If you became a secretary ... you got a hard name.”
—Knowles Witcher Teel (b. c. 1906)
“As no one can tell what was the Roman pronunciation, each nation makes the Latin conform, for the most part, to the rules of its own language; so that with us of the vowels only A has a peculiar sound.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“He is, I think, already pondering a magisterial project: that of buggering the English language, the ultimate revenge of the colonialised.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)