# Long and short vowels: i with an ee sound **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 21, 2017, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889 "2017-09-21T13:31:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889/1 "2017-09-21T13:31:19Z")
This is a difficult thing to Google, so I thought I’d ask directly. A long ‘i’ sound is for words such as _ice_, _kite_, _like_, etc. A short ‘i’ sound is found in _big_, _hid_, _spin_, etc. But what if the _i_ is actually pronounced like an _e_? The example that made me think of this was _lapis lazuli_, where the trailing _i_ is an _ee_ sound. Is that long or short, or something else? ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889/2 "2017-09-21T13:37:27Z")
Because the long/short vowel classification is extremely simplified for grade school. Most vowels have more than two sounds. The IPA classification system shows them all. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889/3 "2017-09-21T13:41:01Z")
Something else. The old rules that they teach in school about long and short vowels is a gross generalization (do they even still teach that?). These words have a “short” a but they are all pronounced differently: father pat calm See also [International Phonetic Alphabet - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet) Long and short vowels in English is a myth. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889/4 "2017-09-21T13:50:48Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > This is a difficult thing to Google, so I thought I’d ask directly. > > A long ‘i’ sound is for words such as _ice_, _kite_, _like_, etc. > > A short ‘i’ sound is found in _big_, _hid_, _spin_, etc. > > But what if the _i_ is actually pronounced like an _e_? The example that made me think of this was _lapis lazuli_, where the trailing _i_ is an _ee_ sound. > > Is that long or short, or something else? In the outdated long/short system, that would simply be called a “long e” sound. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889/5 "2017-09-21T14:00:35Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Because the long/short vowel classification is extremely simplified for grade school. And according to that oversimplified classification, wouldn’t what the OP is talking about be a “long e” sound (even though the letter is an _i_)? ETA: Never mind—just saw **pulykamell** ’s post. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889/6 "2017-09-21T14:24:09Z")
Hmm. I didn’t consider it was a simplification for kids. When I attempted my googling it still came up on many grammar sites like it was part of standardised rules. I was a very cynical kid, and didn’t really like all those rules even at that age. Seemed to me there were far too many exceptions to even call them rules. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889/7 "2017-09-21T14:35:41Z")
See [Great Vowel Shift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift) for part of the explanation of how our spelling system got into this mess. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889/8 "2017-09-21T16:02:10Z")
The whole long/short thing is a leftover of an idiotic attempt to forcefit English into a Latin mold. Generally speaking English does not use the long/short distinction for any phonemic distinction. There are two exceptions I am aware of and possibly a few more: rider (long) vs. writer (short) and ladder (long) vs. latter (short). I have read that English uses two dozen distinct vowel sounds and I don’t they all have names. And the rules, if any, are extremely dialect dependent. For example, I just had occasion to read something about Stan and Jan Berenstain. I imagine that for most of you, Stan and Jan rhyme. But not for me. And not for them either since they, like me, grew up in West Philadelphia. But how did I even know that the two a’s were different? I guess because the a in Stanley is different from the one in Janet. But my internal grammar knows things I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889/9 "2017-09-21T16:21:49Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > But what if the _i_ is actually pronounced like an _e_? The example that made me think of this was _lapis lazuli_, where the trailing _i_ is an _ee_ sound. That final ‘i’ sounds like ‘eye’, just like _anno domini_. And the name is Latin anyway (_lapis_ is Latin for stone). ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889/10 "2017-09-21T16:31:36Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > The whole long/short thing is a leftover of an idiotic attempt to forcefit English into a Latin mold. The distinction between long and short vowel sounds is a useful one, or at least I found it so when I was a kid. For one thing, it helps to explain how [silent e](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kftn-X26-lg) works. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889/11 "2017-09-21T16:35:07Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > That final ‘i’ sounds like ‘eye’, just like _anno domini_. And the name is Latin anyway (_lapis_ is Latin for stone). According to Wikipedia, [dictionary.com](http://dictionary.com), Miriam-Webster, and MacMillan, the final vowel is “ee”, although some of them give “eye” as an alternate pronunciation. It’s a general problem in pronouncing Latin words in English, since there are several variant pronunciation systems (Classical, Ecclesiastical, Traditional English, etc). In ancient Latin it would have been pronounced “ee”. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889/12 "2017-09-21T16:37:47Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > That final ‘i’ sounds like ‘eye’, just like _anno domini_. And the name is Latin anyway (_lapis_ is Latin for stone). In the [predominant pronunciation](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anno%20Domini), the final i in \*domini \*is pronounced like “ee”, not like “eye”. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889/13 "2017-09-21T16:40:15Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > That final ‘i’ sounds like ‘eye’, just like _anno domini_. And the name is Latin anyway (_lapis_ is Latin for stone). Never heard the final “I” in either word as “eye.” ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889/14 "2017-09-21T16:48:42Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > That final ‘i’ sounds like ‘eye’, just like _anno domini_. And the name is Latin anyway (_lapis_ is Latin for stone). Plus I know you’re in the U.K., but even looking up various British speaker readings of Yeats’s famous poem “Lapus LazulI,” they’ve all been pronounced with an “ee” sound. Plus within the poem, while it is not in strict rhyme, the “ee” pronunciation is strongly suggested, being paired with the word “longetivity” a couple lines down. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889/15 "2017-09-21T17:01:10Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > T There are two exceptions I am aware of and possibly a few more: rider (long) vs. writer (short) and ladder (long) vs. latter (short). On this side of the water, there’s no distinction in the vowel length that I can tell in those examples. And to my ears, some Americans tend to pronounce some “t” sounds much closer to “d” than we would anyway, which would make them sound even closer to each other. I absolutely agree about standardised _rules_, but generally speaking, [vowel]+[single consonant]+[e] indicates, if not a longer vowel sound, then at least a rounder one, and very different from [vowel]+[double consonant]+[e], where the vowel sounds flatter and crisper - and in other Germanic languages as well. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889/16 "2017-09-21T17:09:34Z")
> [@PatrickLondon](#): > > On this side of the water, there’s no distinction in the vowel length that I can tell in those examples. And to my ears, some Americans tend to pronounce some “t” sounds much closer to “d” than we would anyway, which would make them sound even closer to each other. It’s pretty much all Americans that pronounce “t” similar to “d” in intervocalic situations like “petal” vs “pedal” and “ladder” vs “latter.” It’s not the usual “d” sound, but rather an intervocalic flap. We’ll do it in words like “eating,” “attic,” and “Saturday,” but not works like “mad” or “fifteen” or “anyday.” [There’s a list of “rules” here](https://www.quora.com/When-do-t-and-d-become-a-flap-consonant-in-American-English). I put “rules” in quotes, because it’s not something that we formally learn. It’s just a feature of our accent that we pick up naturally. It sounds really weird to me when somebody enunciates a “t” in these situations but otherwise has an American accent. (I actually came across one person last week who did this with a specific word, and it was driving me nuts. I can’t remember the word, unfortunately, and it was only with that particular word she would pronounce the intervocalic “t” as a “t” rather than a flap.) ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889/17 "2017-09-21T17:16:28Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Because the long/short vowel classification is extremely simplified for grade school. Most vowels have more than two sounds. > > The IPA classification system shows them all. ^^^^ This. I haven’t heard anyone refer to “long” and “short” vowels in decades. IPA isn’t difficult to learn. Bit more difficult to _type_, I’ll admit, but so are the little bendy caps and flat caps they used to have us utilize in 2nd grade to indicate long and short vowels 😉 ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889/18 "2017-09-21T17:22:44Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > Something else. The old rules that they teach in school about long and short vowels is a gross generalization (do they even still teach that?). These words have a “short” a but they are all pronounced differently: > > father > pat > calm I know that different dialects pronounce things differently, but I’m trying to imagine a dialect that would pronounce a different vowel sound in “father” versus “calm” and can’t do it. I struggle to hear the difference when some people say “father” and “bother” differently, but “father” and “calm” seem like they would be the same sound. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889/19 "2017-09-21T17:39:32Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > ^^^^ This. I haven’t heard anyone refer to “long” and “short” vowels in decades. While the classifications themselves are outdated, I still hear people referring to both quite commonly when talking about pronunciation. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2017, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889/20 "2017-09-21T17:42:01Z")
> [@CurtC](#): > > I know that different dialects pronounce things differently, but I’m trying to imagine a dialect that would pronounce a different vowel sound in “father” versus “calm” and can’t do it. In my Great Lakes dialect, they are two distinct sounds. I imagine your dialect is probably part of the cot-caught merger. Do those two words sound the same to you? The majority of American dialects (about 60%) distinguish those two sounds. To us not in the merger, it’s the difference between an “ah” sound and an “aw” sound. But if you’re part of the merger, I imagine that description doesn’t mean anything to you. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/long-and-short-vowels-i-with-an-ee-sound/796889.md?page=2)