Quantitative Vowel Length in English

English has quantitative vowel length, but this is phonetically conditioned. For this reason, it is not phonemic as in other languages. In Finnish, the words tuli (fire) and tuuli (wind), are distinguished by vowel length alone. English also has vowel length, but this never distinguishes words.

The words made and mate are minimal pairs. They have different word-final consonants, but the vowel quantity is also different. The diphthong of made is longer than the diphthong of mate. In the word pair maze/mace, the diphthong of maze is longer than the diphthong of mace. The reason is that vowels become long before tautosyllablic voiced consonants. This can be written as a phonological rule: V → [+long] / _ [+consonant] $.  The symbol $ represents a syllable boundary.

Vowel length also differs before plosives and fricatives. In the pair maze/made, the diphthong is longer before maze than before made. The word maze ends with a word-final continuant. The continuous airflow of the fricative results in a longer diphthong than is the case with made, a word which ends with a plosive.

Here are more examples of words with different quanitative vowel lengths from shortest to longest:

hit hiss hid his
neat niece need knees

The words which end with voiceless plosives have the shortest vowel length. The ones which end with voiced fricatives have the longest. The words with the shortest vowel lengths end with voiceless consonants, and those with the longest vowel lengths end with voiced consonants.

Unlike in languages such as Hungarian and Finnish, vowel length in English is not phonemic. However, English has examples of quantitative vowel length. Vowels are lengthened before voiced plosives, and vowels are longest before voiced fricatives.