Long vowel sounds in English language.
If you are just learning to read English, you may have noticed something strange about the written language. Unlike many languages that have consistent rules for pronunciation. A lot of English words that use the same letters are pronounced differently. This especially is true with English vowels. We are already familiar with the English alphabet which has five vowels, a,e,i,o,u and sometimes y. But with up to 20 different vowel sounds in English, how can just five or six vowels represent all the different sounds? English is full of exceptions to rules. So if you are not sure whether to pronounce a word as long or short, we recommend you look up the word in the dictionary. Every word should come with a pronunciation guide in the international phonetic alphabet (IPA). IPA is used to help people pronounce words in any language around the world including English. Get informed more through the video below.