Short vs.

Long Vowels
The easiest way to remember the difference between short and long vowels is by remembering the
rule about long vowels, specifically. If a word with a certain vowel in it says the name of the vowel,
then that vowel is making a “long” sound. By “name” we mean, the name of the actual letter. When
we look at “a” we pronounce it /ā/, or “ayy.” This is the first letter of the alphabet, and when
looking at the isolated letter, we’ll refer to it by its name: the way we say it when we begin to recite
the alphabet. This is known as a long vowel sound, because it says the “name” of the letter. The
same goes for the other vowels.

A short vowel sound is a vowel sound that does not follow this rule. When reading a word that uses
a short vowel sound, will say the sound that the letter can make that is not its actual name. So in
the case of “A,” the word “main” might have a long “A” sound because we pronounce the “A” as /ā/,
whereas the word “man” has a short vowel sound.

Don’t know the American English alphabet? Learn how to read and write the alphabet in
this course.

Short and Long Vowels Examples

Now we’ll go down the list of vowels and show you their pronunciation in the phonic code, and give
examples of how to pronounce both. If the phonic code is too confusing, just remember:

/a/ is short and /ā/ is long. Same goes for the rest of the vowels:

 /a/ and /ā/

 /e/ and /ē/
 /i/ and /ī/
 /o/ and /ō/
 /u/ and /ū/

Let’s get started with those examples.

Aa
Short: /æ/ Long: /eɪ/

Short: “fat” Long: “fāte”

Ee
Short: /ɛ/ Long: /iː/

Short: “wet” Long: “whēat”

Ii
Short: /ɛ/ Long: /iː/

Short: “win” Long: “wīne”

Oo
Short: /ɒ/ Long: /oʊ/

Short: “bot” Long: “bōat”

Uu
Short: /ʌ/ Long: /juː/

Short: “cup” Long: “cūbe”