Hey, fellas. Thanks for your extraordinary interest in the free LPAT rescue pack. I hope you find it useful.
I have got some questions coming in, asking whether it is a typo that I write in the pack that words like <sheep> and <eat> have short vowels. Quick answer: No.
I care about how words actually sound, rather that what their symbols suggest. If the matter in question is not suprasegmental (think rhythm or trailing), before voiceless consonants, vowels are ‘clipped’ short by a different degree. This effect is more prominent when the vowels concerned are 1) high or 2) diphthongs. This is also a paramount clue for the native ear to distinguish between word-final consonants (e.g. /t/ and /d/). Because quite often they actually sound the same.
Yes, the symbols of ‘long’ vowels have two dots (or two tiny triangles pointing towards each other, to be more precise). The symbols are kept intact for numerous reasons, and as a linguist, I care about how they actually sound rather than what the symbols might suggest. So if you ask a native speaker they probably would say what the dictionaries say. However, again, how they actually say the words matters much more than their own opinion on the language. The separation of the two is an important part of scientific training, in case anyone is interested in the field.
Dictionaries are a very important source for research, nonetheless, I have seen numerous cases where the recordings differ from the transcriptions, and different dictionaries having different transcriptions of the exact same word. That’s why we have different dictionaries in the first place.
Yes, there are serious books on phonetics which tell the reader that there are LONG and SHORT vowels. That’s because those are for the trained audience. We are well informed that the two classes behave more distinctively in the phonemic sense, rather than, in most cases, phonetically (how the words actually sound).
If you join one of my courses, you would know how unhelpful symbols are with regard to pronunciation learning. This is an area I feel most frontline teachers are less informed, and my business is here to fill the gap.
Best wishes,
Ben