Not this is real language tutorial content, these are my favourite kinds of videos you make. Where you look at language features and help people learn them.
When I started learning Finnish, the long and short vowels were definitely a bit tricky, as well as the single and double consonants. But I got used to it really quickly and it became second nature. The biggest pronunciation challenge was/is the rolled R. It took forever to say it properly and I still have problems with it sometimes, but at least now it's a lot easier.
The language that made me truly grasp long/short vowell distinction was Persian. I started listening to recordings of Persian poetry and I noticed that the long vowel wasn't necessarily the stressed syllable (this is different for languages like Arabic). Previously to that I have learned Hungarian, but even though my vowel quality was good, my length was indistinguishable. If you're Brazilian like me, pay attention at how cariocas speak, they make a very clear distinction between their long and short vowels.
@@steniowoneyramosdasilva9238 Pelo menos pra mim que não sou do RJ, sim. Repara nos cariocas que têm sotaque mais "forte", eles dão uma ênfase às sílabas tônicas bem maior que os outros brasileiros.
@@gabriellawrence6598 quando vc diz ênfase vc quer dizer que eles as alongam mais que as outras, né? Hm. Interessante. Eu vou prestar atenção nisso quando eu ouvir um que não tenha tentado modificar o próprio sotaque.
In Hungarian the vowel and consonant lenght really can be very very crucial for the meanings. So it worth a lot to take the time and learn how to make the difference between short and long. ;)
I can differentiate them in hearing and have no problems pronouncing these correctly as long as they're stressed. What is really putting me off are unstressed long vowels 😅
Same. I think I might be pretty good at it now, but I keep second guessing myself as to whether or not I’m accenting the right syllable. I have tricks to confirm that kind of stuff, but it’s still annoying.
6:59 worth noting that in many dialects of English, including several in Scotland, Northern England and India, many diphthongs, including the one in the example you provided with "game" become long monophthongs in stead, i.e. /ge:m/; it's a fairly common phenomenon in English (as well as various dialects of other Germanic languages too).
Yes, Scottish accents in general do not have that Y- “off-glide” - except for people whose schools specifically aimed to teach them a more Anglified speech. (It’s a characteristic of an acquired class-accent inculcated mainly by private schools and elocution teachers.) Long vowels in Scotland (often along with a different pitch) chiefly distinguish what would otherwise be perfect homophones in Scottish accents.
@@jan_kisan that is an interesting possibility. In the case of Indian dialects, they were definitely previously diphthongs. But as for Scottish and Northern English ones, I'm afraid I don't know the answer; but with limited understanding of Early Modern English pronunciation, it does seem like a real possibility.
You make a good point! Rather than 'becoming' a monophthong, though, I think it was never a diphthong in Scots or Scottish English - perhaps an expert on vowel shifts in Scots could add some insight. Also, I would take away the length marker: /gem/ in Scottish English. Consider 'game' /gem/ vs. 'gave' /ge:v/, or 'face' /fes/ vs. 'phase' /fe:z/
Such a useful video, many thanks! Long vowels are a bit of a foreign concept for native Spanish speakers. On a different note, the difference between 'apple' and 'evil' in Latin made me giggle... Reminds me of certain stories where both are linked 😄
Hut & heart is not the same vowel of differing lengths. The correct example would be the vowels of the so-called trap-bath split as pronounced these days in southern England. Shared has a diphthong, not a long vowel. Hurt, herd, work all have a long schwa. But the issue is that English is spoken very differently in different parts if the world.
'full' and 'fool' have a difference in vowel quality as well as length; 'hit' and 'heat' differ in quality but probably *not* in true length (vowel quantity); 'hut' and 'heart' - pairing these two in any way makes me really curious about your accent! They could be similar in some accents, but not for the vast majority of speakers; 'shed' and 'shared' - yes! this is an example of contrastive vowel length in English, in accents of southern England - /ʃɛd/ and /ʃɛ:d/ 'hurt' and 'herd' - yes, the /ɜ/ vowel in these sounds shorter before /t/ than before /d/. It's not considered to be a separate sound (phoneme) in the set of sounds of the language, but it tends to be pronounced a little shorter, so your ear is correct!
@@magyarbondi 'shared' has long /ɛ:/ for many speakers in South-East England, and possibly others. In general, these centring diphthongs (SQUARE, NEAR, CURE) are becoming long monophthongs in English accents: [ɛ:], [ɪ:], [ɔ:]. 'hurt', 'herd' and 'work' would usually be written with /ɜ:/, but a long schwa /ə:/ might be more accurate in some accents, and I'm seeing it used increasingly. It's worth noting that the vowel in 'herd' is different from the other two in accents that don't have the fern-fir-fur merger!
I completely agree with everything you said. This is really important both for speaking and comprehension but can also be frustrating because, for whatever reason (probably insecurity and ignorance) a lot of language learners seem to hate the idea of having to learn pronunciation, because "there's nothing wrong with my accent". Like you said, best thing to do: 1.Lots of listening 2.Listening and repeating drills 3.Record yourself and listen to it next to the native audio for comparison Attention to detail is very important for this. Choosing a specific native speaker you want to sound like and imitating them is a good idea as well and it can make this exercise fun. Treat it like a performance, not just saying some words you've learnt.
My favorite minimal pair in Latin is occīdere (to cut down/kill) vs occidere (to fall down/die). Both are stressed on the same (antepenultimate) syllable, the length of the i is the only difference.
nice! I've always asked myself how the hell we were supposed to distinguish between those two and what if there was a text where tecnically both were a possible interpretation haha. In Germany where I've grown up and am currently studying Latin they do not care at ALL about making even the slightest effort to speak and teach spoken Latin (let alone precise pronunciation) and I think that's absolutely wild, a waste and a total disgrace.
Oh mio dio fra hai fatto un sacco di visualizzazione nel video in cui hai recensito il canale di latino,solo perché sei entrato dinamicamente in scena nella tua intro, camminando dal lato dello schermo per poi sederti sulla sedia, mentre negli altri video eri statico, già seduto e salutando con la mano già in posizione. La natura di questo meccanismo mi rabbrividisce alquanto, comunque buona fortuna per aver trovato il codice dell'algoritmo di TH-cam, questa conoscenza ti porterà sicuramente molte visualizzazioni anche su questo secondo canale.
As someone who teaches vowels for English only, this was a neat little video to see a common problem from other languages. However, especially when I am teaching the concept for very young kids (around 5 - 8 year olds,) I have a much "simpler" method for teaching the difference between long vowels and short vowels: If the vowel sounds like the letter itself, that is a long vowel; if it doesn't sound like the letter, it's a short vowel. (The trickiest words are the ones that use the letter O, but they make a slightly modified long or short U sound, ex. book and boot.) The reason I do this is pretty obvious: Instead of having to remember a dozen different short vowels for EACH letter (ah, an, am, at...) you only need to remember what the five long vowel sounds like (A.) This also helps avoid phonic problems due to words that seem to follow similar spelling rules such as having a silent e at the end, ex. skate vs apple, or words where the same spelling can yield different vowel sounds, ex. read versus knead. To my knowledge, and maybe this changes for other language, any vowels that use an R- or L- controlled vowels are technically neither long nor short vowels. If there are only two options (again, keeping it simple for elementary ages,) they will be grouped into the short category because they don't make the long vowel sounds.
I do appreciate every last one of your videos on either channel. The long/short distinction in English was taught to me differently; it doesn't contradict what you've said, but it also makes sense. Simply put, long vowels say their names, and short vowels make a different sound; the letter r usually affects a short vowel sound. The letter o, short or long, is the exception, which is why "for" and "fore", sound the same, regardless of spelling. Also, coming from the south Bronx, NY, I can tell you that there are two forms of the short a, which closely resembles how the British use the short a. For example, in the phrase "last apple", both a's are short, but the a in "last" is different than the a in "apple". You can use either a British or a New York accent, and you'll clearly hear this. I never found out why this is, but it is.
Another reminder of just, how conservative a language Finnish is: We have lots of these minimal pairs that are, specifically, distinguished by the quantity of the vowel; like: _”Tuli”_ (with a short ”U”; meaning: ”Fire”) vs. _”Tuuli”_ (with a long ”Ū”; meaning: ”Wind”); or: _”Tapan”_ (with both short ”A”:s; meaning: ”I kill”) vs. _”Tapaan”_ (with a long 2nd ”Ā”; meaning: ”I meet”); or _”Ku”_ (with a short ”U”; a colloquial form of ”Kun”, meaning: ”When”/”As”, or ”Kuin”, meaning: ”Like”) vs. _”Kuu”_ (with a long ”Ū”; meaning: ”Moon” or: ”Month” (in vernacular)); etc. 😅🇫🇮
@@noamto Not necessarily, yes. Patterns can differ; especially, across different language families (like, how IE languages tend to get more analytical, over time, whereas the Uralic languages tend to grow more agglutinative, over time). However, there are other points to demonstrate Finnish’s conservativeness.
As an American this is different from the long and short vowels I was taught as a child, where long vowels say their name and short vowels have a different sound ate and apple
Absolutely and I will make a dedicated video. But if you will, instead of thinking about General American, think of the following specific accents: the "i" in "side" with a Tennessee or Alabama accent is just an extended A. The "o" in "no" with a Scottish accent is just an extended O. The "a" in "face" with a York accent is just an extended E as in red, but longer. Often accents like this tend to be just conservative, in the sense that they maintain old features that used to be the norm.
The issue is that in english, "short" vowels are often just diohthongs, while the long vowels are simple vowels. Different languages do have different interpretation of their own phonetics, so its a common situation in English
Just happy that my native language has short and long vowels, so knowing and hearing the difference was never an issue when trying to learn other languages which do have them. One less hurdle, as if there weren't enough already.. :-)
7:03 Also, technically, the ”i”-vowel, in ”Game”, is a semivowel/glide [j]. The vowel, in ”Game”, is the same one, as the vowel, in ”Say”; and, if you listen to the word: ”Say”, played backwards, it sounds just like the word: ”Yes”, which, uncontroversially, has a consonant glide [j], at the start of it. So, the more correct transcriptions of ”Game” and ”Say” would be: [gεjm] and [sεj], respectively. Here’s a wonderful video by Dr. Geoff Lindsey, explaining this, in detail: th-cam.com/video/gtnlGH055TA/w-d-xo.html Otherwise, I absolutely agree that they’re 2 distinct phonemes. That’s, why, in Finnish, we write them separately, like in the word: _”Ei”_ (Finnish for: ”No”).
As a native Finnish-speaker, it is normally very easy for me to distinguish between long and short vowels (since Finnish makes that distinction). However, the problem with me, mostly with English-speaking teachers, is, when their rendition of the ”long” vowel is only, like, 1,1 times longer, than the short vowel. Also; what do you do with a vowel, like ”A”, where there’s no difference in openness between the long and short versions, in many (particularly Romance) languages?
In Spanish, at least, the short/long vowel differentiation is generally not considered super important -- in fact, I can't think of any minimal pairs separated by vowel length in formal Spanish. "Alcohol" and "cooperar" both have a long /o/ sound in paper, but they're pronounced as short /o/ by a majority of people (so it's just [al'kol] and [kope'ɾo]). Vowel (and consonant) length seems very important in Finnish from what I gather, so natives must be very attuned to when someone doesn't lengthen a sound enough (though I can't truly know). I know something similar happens in Hungarian, so "tized" and "tízed" should be differentiated clearly, for example. I can't speak for other Romance languages since I don't know their rules very well, but Spanish has very few long vowels in its words and a lot of people ignore them and say every vowel as if it was short. An example I could give from colloquial speech is the "está/estaba" pair that, in Chile, is typically separated by vowel length: both are the 3rd person singular version of "to be", in present and imperfect past respectively, and have a short /a/ and a long /a/ (the B disappears in casual speech in this case) to distinguish them.
In British English: car is pronounced 'caa' with a long a sound. If you say 'ca' with a short vowel, most people probably won't know what you're on about.
I've noticed a lot of Czech learners confuse Czech long vowels (á, é, í, ó, ú) for stressed vowel. In Czech, stress is always on the first syllable. In fact, Czech vowels sound a lot like Latin vowels.
that's hella interesting, a language with solely first stressed syllables sounds absolutely wild to me, I can't even begin to imagine how that would work!
@@afiiik1doesn't it get a bit, say "boring" though? Like monotonous with the stress always on the same, initial syllable? I do see where it'd be convenient and helpful haha
@@LorenzooCesar there are secondary stresses on long words and the rhythm is usually similar to a polka. There are long and short vowels that can create syncopation and a prolonged rolled R can provide percussion when agitated 😁 (I know people who can stretch it to 3 measures). There are only 4 intonation levels in Czech so it is more percussion centric than melodic. Slovak is a more melodic language.
Heh, Finnish has double vowels constantly, like for "Earth and Moon" "Maa ja kuu". Estonian has triple vowels, iirc, but they are 2,5 length. Helpful thing in our languages is that the vowel is written as double (or triple) then. EDIT: Also to add: it feels a bit weird as a native speaker of this kind of language that has long vowels, so people that can't tell the difference sounds funny, like there are double consonants so how is it hard to make vowels longer :D. Also that "amare" would be written in finnish style "amaare". For historical reasons languages are written in different style, and it would help to reconstruct the written style, English being the first in that regard... EDIT 2 Finnish facts: The vowel lenght is really important; for example "kuusi" (number 'six' or a spruce tree) compared to "kusi" (piss). "Kuusi kuusta kusessa" "Six spruces (covered) in pee" that's a tongue twister for you :D
Yeah, and it's kinda baffling to think that they are hard to differentiate when listening, but then again, there are other languages that have probably sounds I don't even know how to do or distinguish. And of course, later in the video those open and close examples like in arena I couldn't really say what's different but they did sound a bit different.
As a native italian speaker, when learning about latin I thought it was really weird that it had long vowels, then I realised that it's just as weird as having long (double, as we call them) consonants. Also, about the long vowels in italian, they are important to achieve native-like pronunciation, but in Italy nobody thinks about them because they don't change the meaning of words
what's funny is you say no one keeps extending their vowels but I know of one obscure albeit hypothetical example, which is the reconstruction for proto Germanic, in which so called overlong vowels are distinguished from long and short vowels.
Either Estonian, Latvian, or Lithuanian still distinguishes nowadays between short, long, and overlong vowels (I don't remember which one and I'm currently trying to go to sleep)
Thanks Metatron. I suppose in English, vowel-length is more about quality than quantity, so isn’t as transparent to grasp?; at least at first. In my accent (UK Midlands) I can find the following: /iː/ in FEET /uː/ in FOOD /ɜː/ in FIRST /ɔː/ in FOUGHT /ɑː/ in FARM This doesn’t include the 6 short vowels, or the 7 diphthongs! (Not to mention the reduced-vowel ø). Thanks English 😁.
We always have to be a little bit careful in discussing vowel "length" in English. I think it's fair enough to say that the vowels in START and PALM are usually long, while TRAP is short. but there is also a difference in vowel quality between them: back /ɑ/ and front /a/ - often represented phonemically as /æ/. As such, 'Pam' and 'palm' can differ in: quality and quantity - as in southern English accents; quality only - many North American accents; neither quality nor quantity - Scottish English. As far as I know, there's no accent that has contrastive length between these sounds. (And, indeed, you didn't suggest otherwise in the video!) As for /i/ and /ɪ/, while they're often paired as being somehow 'long' and 'short' versions of related sounds, they really differ in quality and *not* in length. 'seen' and 'sin' take approximately the same length of time to pronounce, as do 'leap' and 'lip'! The length marker often placed on the /i:/ in phonetic transcriptions is a traditional way of marking 'free' vowels, and not really an indicator of true vowel "length" (i.e. quantity). The vowels in 'leave' /li:v/ and 'live' /lɪv/ are - or at least can be - equally long. The vowel in 'leaf' /lif/ is shorter, due to pre-fortis clipping, but the difference is not phonemic, and traditional phonemic transcriptions would keep the length marker on /i/. Additionally, some accents of English pronounce the NEAR diphthong (traditionally /ɪə/) as a long monophthong [ɪ:]. This creates contrastive vowel length between pairs like 'bid' and 'beard' for these speakers. In the same accents, the SQUARE diphthong (traditionally /ɛə/) has become a long [ɛ:], giving contrastive vowel length between 'ferry' and 'fairy' - for these speakers, it's the same vowel sound held for longer. In short, English does have long and short vowels, but (1) the difference is not always what you might think it is; (2) vowel length is only contrastive in some accents.
To me the second long vowel in words like amare, finire, vedere sounds not just longer, but also slightly more open. This is much more evident in Dutch where the long versions of a, e, i, o, u (when not at the end of a syllable written as aa, ee, ie, oo, uu) are pronounced much more open.
A crucial aspect in German pronunciation as we have both, possibly with a change in meaning (Höhle = cave - Hölle = hell). Even if the corresponding short vowel sound is not associated with a difference in meaning, native speakers may have difficulties understanding you. Brot = bread, Brott= ?, Mehl = flour, Mell=?, Käse = cheese, Kässe =? So, it's not a matter of being picky when people don't understand you for what seems to be a slight pronunciation error. ,
Glad to hear someone from the Christian tradition point out Adam didn't eat an apple. The idea that the fruit was an apple is alien to Semites. I am an Arab, and was rather confused as a kid when I found out many Christians seem to think it was an apple.
So when a consonant is doubled/geminated it basically means that there is a split there, where each goes on separate syllables. A trick is to imagine a space between them, almost like if they were separate words. Try comparing these: Bote Bot te Now a bit harder Fabrica Fab brica record yourself and you should notice you properly distinguish both consonants
If you really think about it, it's kinda weird how english and german write short vowels by doubling the next consonant, why would you write a property of a vowel by modifying the next consonant?
2:06 Depends on the language though. In Dutch the sounds often do change when the vowel is long vs short (which can depend on things such as if it's double vowels, the position in the word or what consonants come after it)
I was hoping to learn how to distinguish short & long vowels when reading unfamiliar latin words. While listening, it is easy enough to tell even though remembering them is another matter.
I am not sure how much sense it makes to talk about long and short vowels in English. So called 'short' and 'long' pairs always seem to be distinguished qualitatively, but quantitative length can actually vary a lot depending on the voicing of the following consonant. In regards to understanding real length distinctions, there is the problem that for many modern European languages vowel length is tied to stress. So speakers tend to automatically lengthen stressed vowels and shorten unstressed ones, or they inadvertently displace the stress from a short vowel to a long one in the same word.
I know in English, at least in my dialect (kind of General American), vowel length shows up in weird places, affected by consonants (bat vs. bad, with the second being longer)
Palatalized consonants are consonants with a palatal secondary articulation This means that you need to pronounce the consonant while putting the tongue in the same way you would while pronouncing an [i] Basically raise your tongue and you'll be able to pronounce it Learning to hear the difference requires exposure to them (something you can achieve by learning how to pronounce them), so it mostly takes time
I was confused at first by the title, because this is not what short and long means in English. In English short and long versions of a vowel are completely different sounds, it's not based on length of rhythm. For example, long i is actually a diphthong of ah+ee, but short i is the short i is actually the short version of long E. The vowels in English are just crazy.
Yes English is different and will require a dedicated video, but since I did bring up the example with "game", if you hear people from the North East of England pronounce it, they will actually just extend the sound. That's because the "ei" of "game" is a "recent" development, and before the long vowel used to follow the rules I mention here. Accents such as the "York" accent, preserve the old pronunciation still. And if you are familiar with Scottish accents, they tend to preserve the elongated "o" as opposed to the "ou", in words such as "no".
To me it feels more like pitch rather than length in some cases. When you gave the Amare example you tried to pronounce it without the long vowel and you removed the pitch from the word, or you brought the stress to the first syllable. I don't know if I'm using the correct terms to express the idea, but I guess u can get what I mean
Italian is a stress accent language, meaning that accent (called stress normally in English, but it is called accent in linguistics, as far as I know) is expressed mostly through syllable length (and a couple other less salient ways, like pitch) Italian is also a syllable timed language, so the length of each syllable is around the same and there's no reduction in the vowels (you gotta pronounce them all correctly) This means that lengthening the accented syllable ends up with what is very similar to a long vowel (but it isn't always the same, and luckily the IPA has a symbol for half of a long vowel)
Greetings, I have a question for you about Latin as well as Italian. On channels, such as Polymathy, when he writes Latin, he will often put accent marks over the long vowels to indicate that they are long. However, whenever I try to read ancient written Latin, I don’t see these marks. Is there a way to know which vowels are short or long without just learning and memorizing all of the words? Thanks, ciao.
In Italian the difference between a long vowel and a short one really just applies to stress, as it is often expressed through a long vowel (Italian is a stress accent language) In Latin the difference is phonemic, this means that minimal pairs exist and thus you have to suck it up and learn them all by heart
Most dictionaries will mark vowel length as also do many textbooks. Vowel length in Latin isn't random and there are patterns that you can learn that will help you remember when vowels are short and long
The only difference I could hear in the two "ARENA" words was pitch 👀. The vowel lengths sounded the same to me 😬. Like one sounds like a question and the other one sounds like a statement. That's a REALLY subtle difference 👀. I can hear the difference, but it doesn't sound like enough to be two completely different words/pronunciations to me 👀...
Exactly. That was the point. The two "E" in the different "ARENA" have the same lenght, but different "quality": the first one is a "closed" e and the second is an "open" e.
6:20 Not exactly true, English is considered not to have long/short vowels, definitely not as a distinction, but rather tense/lax vowels. Tense vowels tend to be longer but not always, and length is not the distinctive feature in general.
True but not for all accents, particularly the conservative ones. Look at how a Scottish renders the word “no”, how someone from York renders the word “face”, and I believe my example of ee and machine fit. I could give a few other examples. In some accents, these vowels are indeed just lengthened, which used to be the norm. I see where you are coming from, so I’m not saying that what you wrote is incorrect, but not all accents follow RP rules or General American rules.
sorry Metatron but i cannot do that funny things with my fingers🤣 luckily, duration difference is apparent to me although my native language doesn't distinguish vowel length (and actually doesn't have long vowels at all)
use hungarian languige if you write I is short if long is í :D keep it simple :D its by all a-á o-ó u-ú ü-ű e-é most of the time you write what you say :D
I'm sorry, but _what?_ Is this kind of video really necessary? It would be the same as "how to tell apart a half-full glass from a full one". You just need to use your senses and notice the difference. Short is obviously shorter than the longer one. It's not rocket science.
As I have mentioned, the video is a response to those in the comments to have a problem recognizing the difference. You are clearly not among them, but that doesn't mean that everyone has the same ear or expertise as you. Also the second part of the video addresses common over compensation problems with vowel length which are present even with advanced learners.
@@metatronacademy Most people have the sense of hearing, and for those people there should not be any problems recognizing the difference, unless that person's sense of hearing is somehow impaired. It's not expertise; it's just making observations using your hearing.
Not this is real language tutorial content, these are my favourite kinds of videos you make. Where you look at language features and help people learn them.
When I started learning Finnish, the long and short vowels were definitely a bit tricky, as well as the single and double consonants. But I got used to it really quickly and it became second nature. The biggest pronunciation challenge was/is the rolled R. It took forever to say it properly and I still have problems with it sometimes, but at least now it's a lot easier.
The language that made me truly grasp long/short vowell distinction was Persian. I started listening to recordings of Persian poetry and I noticed that the long vowel wasn't necessarily the stressed syllable (this is different for languages like Arabic). Previously to that I have learned Hungarian, but even though my vowel quality was good, my length was indistinguishable. If you're Brazilian like me, pay attention at how cariocas speak, they make a very clear distinction between their long and short vowels.
" *I have learned Hungarian* "
Claim your Guiness world record, you gotta be one of the very few who managed to do it! ;-)
Os cariocas pronunciam vogais longas e curtas?
@@steniowoneyramosdasilva9238 Pelo menos pra mim que não sou do RJ, sim. Repara nos cariocas que têm sotaque mais "forte", eles dão uma ênfase às sílabas tônicas bem maior que os outros brasileiros.
@@gabriellawrence6598 quando vc diz ênfase vc quer dizer que eles as alongam mais que as outras, né?
Hm. Interessante. Eu vou prestar atenção nisso quando eu ouvir um que não tenha tentado modificar o próprio sotaque.
In Hungarian the vowel and consonant lenght really can be very very crucial for the meanings. So it worth a lot to take the time and learn how to make the difference between short and long. ;)
I can differentiate them in hearing and have no problems pronouncing these correctly as long as they're stressed. What is really putting me off are unstressed long vowels 😅
Yes that's actually tough for me too in Classical Latin.
Same. I think I might be pretty good at it now, but I keep second guessing myself as to whether or not I’m accenting the right syllable. I have tricks to confirm that kind of stuff, but it’s still annoying.
6:59 worth noting that in many dialects of English, including several in Scotland, Northern England and India, many diphthongs, including the one in the example you provided with "game" become long monophthongs in stead, i.e. /ge:m/; it's a fairly common phenomenon in English (as well as various dialects of other Germanic languages too).
Yes, Scottish accents in general do not have that Y- “off-glide” - except for people whose schools specifically aimed to teach them a more Anglified speech. (It’s a characteristic of an acquired class-accent inculcated mainly by private schools and elocution teachers.)
Long vowels in Scotland (often along with a different pitch) chiefly distinguish what would otherwise be perfect homophones in Scottish accents.
or perhaps they didn't "become", but rather "stayed" long monophthongs in this case? 🤔 what was the earlier condition of that vowel?
@@jan_kisan that is an interesting possibility. In the case of Indian dialects, they were definitely previously diphthongs. But as for Scottish and Northern English ones, I'm afraid I don't know the answer; but with limited understanding of Early Modern English pronunciation, it does seem like a real possibility.
You make a good point! Rather than 'becoming' a monophthong, though, I think it was never a diphthong in Scots or Scottish English - perhaps an expert on vowel shifts in Scots could add some insight. Also, I would take away the length marker: /gem/ in Scottish English. Consider 'game' /gem/ vs. 'gave' /ge:v/, or 'face' /fes/ vs. 'phase' /fe:z/
Such a useful video, many thanks! Long vowels are a bit of a foreign concept for native Spanish speakers. On a different note, the difference between 'apple' and 'evil' in Latin made me giggle... Reminds me of certain stories where both are linked 😄
Full fool, hit heat, hut heart, shed shared, hurt herd
Hut & heart is not the same vowel of differing lengths. The correct example would be the vowels of the so-called trap-bath split as pronounced these days in southern England.
Shared has a diphthong, not a long vowel.
Hurt, herd, work all have a long schwa.
But the issue is that English is spoken very differently in different parts if the world.
'full' and 'fool' have a difference in vowel quality as well as length;
'hit' and 'heat' differ in quality but probably *not* in true length (vowel quantity);
'hut' and 'heart' - pairing these two in any way makes me really curious about your accent! They could be similar in some accents, but not for the vast majority of speakers;
'shed' and 'shared' - yes! this is an example of contrastive vowel length in English, in accents of southern England - /ʃɛd/ and /ʃɛ:d/
'hurt' and 'herd' - yes, the /ɜ/ vowel in these sounds shorter before /t/ than before /d/. It's not considered to be a separate sound (phoneme) in the set of sounds of the language, but it tends to be pronounced a little shorter, so your ear is correct!
@@magyarbondi 'shared' has long /ɛ:/ for many speakers in South-East England, and possibly others. In general, these centring diphthongs (SQUARE, NEAR, CURE) are becoming long monophthongs in English accents: [ɛ:], [ɪ:], [ɔ:].
'hurt', 'herd' and 'work' would usually be written with /ɜ:/, but a long schwa /ə:/ might be more accurate in some accents, and I'm seeing it used increasingly. It's worth noting that the vowel in 'herd' is different from the other two in accents that don't have the fern-fir-fur merger!
I completely agree with everything you said. This is really important both for speaking and comprehension but can also be frustrating because, for whatever reason (probably insecurity and ignorance) a lot of language learners seem to hate the idea of having to learn pronunciation, because "there's nothing wrong with my accent".
Like you said, best thing to do:
1.Lots of listening
2.Listening and repeating drills
3.Record yourself and listen to it next to the native audio for comparison
Attention to detail is very important for this.
Choosing a specific native speaker you want to sound like and imitating them is a good idea as well and it can make this exercise fun. Treat it like a performance, not just saying some words you've learnt.
Best English tutorial I've ever seen 🥺❤❤
My favorite minimal pair in Latin is occīdere (to cut down/kill) vs occidere (to fall down/die). Both are stressed on the same (antepenultimate) syllable, the length of the i is the only difference.
nice! I've always asked myself how the hell we were supposed to distinguish between those two and what if there was a text where tecnically both were a possible interpretation haha. In Germany where I've grown up and am currently studying Latin they do not care at ALL about making even the slightest effort to speak and teach spoken Latin (let alone precise pronunciation) and I think that's absolutely wild, a waste and a total disgrace.
The problem is not to recognize long vowels but to know where they are and why. I haven't seen any video so far that does the job.
Oh mio dio fra hai fatto un sacco di visualizzazione nel video in cui hai recensito il canale di latino,solo perché sei entrato dinamicamente in scena nella tua intro, camminando dal lato dello schermo per poi sederti sulla sedia, mentre negli altri video eri statico, già seduto e salutando con la mano già in posizione. La natura di questo meccanismo mi rabbrividisce alquanto, comunque buona fortuna per aver trovato il codice dell'algoritmo di TH-cam, questa conoscenza ti porterà sicuramente molte visualizzazioni anche su questo secondo canale.
As someone who teaches vowels for English only, this was a neat little video to see a common problem from other languages. However, especially when I am teaching the concept for very young kids (around 5 - 8 year olds,) I have a much "simpler" method for teaching the difference between long vowels and short vowels: If the vowel sounds like the letter itself, that is a long vowel; if it doesn't sound like the letter, it's a short vowel. (The trickiest words are the ones that use the letter O, but they make a slightly modified long or short U sound, ex. book and boot.)
The reason I do this is pretty obvious: Instead of having to remember a dozen different short vowels for EACH letter (ah, an, am, at...) you only need to remember what the five long vowel sounds like (A.) This also helps avoid phonic problems due to words that seem to follow similar spelling rules such as having a silent e at the end, ex. skate vs apple, or words where the same spelling can yield different vowel sounds, ex. read versus knead.
To my knowledge, and maybe this changes for other language, any vowels that use an R- or L- controlled vowels are technically neither long nor short vowels. If there are only two options (again, keeping it simple for elementary ages,) they will be grouped into the short category because they don't make the long vowel sounds.
This new channel is really interesting and helpful. Thanks.
I do appreciate every last one of your videos on either channel. The long/short distinction in English was taught to me differently; it doesn't contradict what you've said, but it also makes sense. Simply put, long vowels say their names, and short vowels make a different sound; the letter r usually affects a short vowel sound. The letter o, short or long, is the exception, which is why "for" and "fore", sound the same, regardless of spelling. Also, coming from the south Bronx, NY, I can tell you that there are two forms of the short a, which closely resembles how the British use the short a. For example, in the phrase "last apple", both a's are short, but the a in "last" is different than the a in "apple". You can use either a British or a New York accent, and you'll clearly hear this. I never found out why this is, but it is.
Thai is another language that has short and long vowels. You might want to check it out. Really love yor channel.
Another reminder of just, how conservative a language Finnish is: We have lots of these minimal pairs that are, specifically, distinguished by the quantity of the vowel; like: _”Tuli”_ (with a short ”U”; meaning: ”Fire”) vs. _”Tuuli”_ (with a long ”Ū”; meaning: ”Wind”); or: _”Tapan”_ (with both short ”A”:s; meaning: ”I kill”) vs. _”Tapaan”_ (with a long 2nd ”Ā”; meaning: ”I meet”); or _”Ku”_ (with a short ”U”; a colloquial form of ”Kun”, meaning: ”When”/”As”, or ”Kuin”, meaning: ”Like”) vs. _”Kuu”_ (with a long ”Ū”; meaning: ”Moon” or: ”Month” (in vernacular)); etc. 😅🇫🇮
That's not necessarily tied to being conservative, sometimes it might be the complete opposite even.
@@noamto Not necessarily, yes. Patterns can differ; especially, across different language families (like, how IE languages tend to get more analytical, over time, whereas the Uralic languages tend to grow more agglutinative, over time). However, there are other points to demonstrate Finnish’s conservativeness.
Or every Finnish learner's favourite, Kuusi and Kusi. 😅😂
@@corinna007 True 😅!
@@PC_Simo all of the possibilities for wordplay in Finnish make me laugh. One of my favourite things about the language.
Thank you, this is very useful indeed.
As an American this is different from the long and short vowels I was taught as a child, where long vowels say their name and short vowels have a different sound ate and apple
Absolutely and I will make a dedicated video. But if you will, instead of thinking about General American, think of the following specific accents: the "i" in "side" with a Tennessee or Alabama accent is just an extended A. The "o" in "no" with a Scottish accent is just an extended O. The "a" in "face" with a York accent is just an extended E as in red, but longer. Often accents like this tend to be just conservative, in the sense that they maintain old features that used to be the norm.
The issue is that in english, "short" vowels are often just diohthongs, while the long vowels are simple vowels. Different languages do have different interpretation of their own phonetics, so its a common situation in English
As a tonal Asian speaker,
this is my final boss
Just happy that my native language has short and long vowels, so knowing and hearing the difference was never an issue when trying to learn other languages which do have them. One less hurdle, as if there weren't enough already.. :-)
7:03 Also, technically, the ”i”-vowel, in ”Game”, is a semivowel/glide [j]. The vowel, in ”Game”, is the same one, as the vowel, in ”Say”; and, if you listen to the word: ”Say”, played backwards, it sounds just like the word: ”Yes”, which, uncontroversially, has a consonant glide [j], at the start of it. So, the more correct transcriptions of ”Game” and ”Say” would be: [gεjm] and [sεj], respectively. Here’s a wonderful video by Dr. Geoff Lindsey, explaining this, in detail:
th-cam.com/video/gtnlGH055TA/w-d-xo.html
Otherwise, I absolutely agree that they’re 2 distinct phonemes. That’s, why, in Finnish, we write them separately, like in the word: _”Ei”_ (Finnish for: ”No”).
As a native Finnish-speaker, it is normally very easy for me to distinguish between long and short vowels (since Finnish makes that distinction). However, the problem with me, mostly with English-speaking teachers, is, when their rendition of the ”long” vowel is only, like, 1,1 times longer, than the short vowel. Also; what do you do with a vowel, like ”A”, where there’s no difference in openness between the long and short versions, in many (particularly Romance) languages?
In Spanish, at least, the short/long vowel differentiation is generally not considered super important -- in fact, I can't think of any minimal pairs separated by vowel length in formal Spanish. "Alcohol" and "cooperar" both have a long /o/ sound in paper, but they're pronounced as short /o/ by a majority of people (so it's just [al'kol] and [kope'ɾo]).
Vowel (and consonant) length seems very important in Finnish from what I gather, so natives must be very attuned to when someone doesn't lengthen a sound enough (though I can't truly know). I know something similar happens in Hungarian, so "tized" and "tízed" should be differentiated clearly, for example.
I can't speak for other Romance languages since I don't know their rules very well, but Spanish has very few long vowels in its words and a lot of people ignore them and say every vowel as if it was short.
An example I could give from colloquial speech is the "está/estaba" pair that, in Chile, is typically separated by vowel length: both are the 3rd person singular version of "to be", in present and imperfect past respectively, and have a short /a/ and a long /a/ (the B disappears in casual speech in this case) to distinguish them.
@@Mirulkaire Yes, vowel and consonant length is very important, in Finnish; and there are tons of minimal pairs, with both; like:
”Tapaan” ~ ”Tapan”
”Tuuli” ~ ”Tuli” ~ ”Tulli”
”Kuusi” ~ ”Kusi”
”Palo” ~ ”Pallo”
and many more.
*Translations:*
”Tapaan” (long /aː/) = ”I meet”
”Tapan” (short /a/) = ”I kill”
”Tuuli” (long /uː/) = ”Wind”
”Tuli” (short /u/ and short /l/) = ”Fire”
”Tulli” (long /lː/) = ”Customs”
”Kuusi” (long /uː/) = ”Six” or ”Spruce”
”Kusi” (short /u/) = ”Piss” (Vulgar)
”Palo” (short /l/) = ”Fire” (like: ”house
fire”, ”forest fire”, etc.)
”Pallo” (long /lː/) = ”Ball”/”Sphere”
In British English: car is pronounced 'caa' with a long a sound. If you say 'ca' with a short vowel, most people probably won't know what you're on about.
I didn't know British English had vowel length
I've noticed a lot of Czech learners confuse Czech long vowels (á, é, í, ó, ú) for stressed vowel. In Czech, stress is always on the first syllable. In fact, Czech vowels sound a lot like Latin vowels.
that's hella interesting, a language with solely first stressed syllables sounds absolutely wild to me, I can't even begin to imagine how that would work!
@@LorenzooCesar it's quite convenient - you always know where the word begins. All vowels are fully pronounced - no schwa...
@@afiiik1doesn't it get a bit, say "boring" though? Like monotonous with the stress always on the same, initial syllable? I do see where it'd be convenient and helpful haha
@@LorenzooCesar there are secondary stresses on long words and the rhythm is usually similar to a polka. There are long and short vowels that can create syncopation and a prolonged rolled R can provide percussion when agitated 😁 (I know people who can stretch it to 3 measures).
There are only 4 intonation levels in Czech so it is more percussion centric than melodic.
Slovak is a more melodic language.
Cassazione, come sempre. 👏
Heh, Finnish has double vowels constantly, like for "Earth and Moon" "Maa ja kuu". Estonian has triple vowels, iirc, but they are 2,5 length. Helpful thing in our languages is that the vowel is written as double (or triple) then.
EDIT: Also to add: it feels a bit weird as a native speaker of this kind of language that has long vowels, so people that can't tell the difference sounds funny, like there are double consonants so how is it hard to make vowels longer :D. Also that "amare" would be written in finnish style "amaare". For historical reasons languages are written in different style, and it would help to reconstruct the written style, English being the first in that regard...
EDIT 2 Finnish facts: The vowel lenght is really important; for example "kuusi" (number 'six' or a spruce tree) compared to "kusi" (piss). "Kuusi kuusta kusessa" "Six spruces (covered) in pee" that's a tongue twister for you :D
Yeah, and it's kinda baffling to think that they are hard to differentiate when listening, but then again, there are other languages that have probably sounds I don't even know how to do or distinguish. And of course, later in the video those open and close examples like in arena I couldn't really say what's different but they did sound a bit different.
As a native italian speaker, when learning about latin I thought it was really weird that it had long vowels, then I realised that it's just as weird as having long (double, as we call them) consonants.
Also, about the long vowels in italian, they are important to achieve native-like pronunciation, but in Italy nobody thinks about them because they don't change the meaning of words
what's funny is you say no one keeps extending their vowels but I know of one obscure albeit hypothetical example, which is the reconstruction for proto Germanic, in which so called overlong vowels are distinguished from long and short vowels.
Either Estonian, Latvian, or Lithuanian still distinguishes nowadays between short, long, and overlong vowels (I don't remember which one and I'm currently trying to go to sleep)
Thanks Metatron. I suppose in English, vowel-length is more about quality than quantity, so isn’t as transparent to grasp?; at least at first. In my accent (UK Midlands) I can find the following:
/iː/ in FEET
/uː/ in FOOD
/ɜː/ in FIRST
/ɔː/ in FOUGHT
/ɑː/ in FARM
This doesn’t include the 6 short vowels, or the 7 diphthongs! (Not to mention the reduced-vowel ø). Thanks English 😁.
Facts bro 💯
We always have to be a little bit careful in discussing vowel "length" in English.
I think it's fair enough to say that the vowels in START and PALM are usually long, while TRAP is short. but there is also a difference in vowel quality between them: back /ɑ/ and front /a/ - often represented phonemically as /æ/. As such, 'Pam' and 'palm' can differ in: quality and quantity - as in southern English accents; quality only - many North American accents; neither quality nor quantity - Scottish English. As far as I know, there's no accent that has contrastive length between these sounds. (And, indeed, you didn't suggest otherwise in the video!)
As for /i/ and /ɪ/, while they're often paired as being somehow 'long' and 'short' versions of related sounds, they really differ in quality and *not* in length. 'seen' and 'sin' take approximately the same length of time to pronounce, as do 'leap' and 'lip'! The length marker often placed on the /i:/ in phonetic transcriptions is a traditional way of marking 'free' vowels, and not really an indicator of true vowel "length" (i.e. quantity). The vowels in 'leave' /li:v/ and 'live' /lɪv/ are - or at least can be - equally long. The vowel in 'leaf' /lif/ is shorter, due to pre-fortis clipping, but the difference is not phonemic, and traditional phonemic transcriptions would keep the length marker on /i/.
Additionally, some accents of English pronounce the NEAR diphthong (traditionally /ɪə/) as a long monophthong [ɪ:]. This creates contrastive vowel length between pairs like 'bid' and 'beard' for these speakers.
In the same accents, the SQUARE diphthong (traditionally /ɛə/) has become a long [ɛ:], giving contrastive vowel length between 'ferry' and 'fairy' - for these speakers, it's the same vowel sound held for longer.
In short, English does have long and short vowels, but (1) the difference is not always what you might think it is; (2) vowel length is only contrastive in some accents.
Grazie mille!
To me the second long vowel in words like amare, finire, vedere sounds not just longer, but also slightly more open. This is much more evident in Dutch where the long versions of a, e, i, o, u (when not at the end of a syllable written as aa, ee, ie, oo, uu) are pronounced much more open.
A crucial aspect in German pronunciation as we have both, possibly with a change in meaning (Höhle = cave - Hölle = hell). Even if the corresponding short vowel sound is not associated with a difference in meaning, native speakers may have difficulties understanding you. Brot = bread, Brott= ?, Mehl = flour, Mell=?, Käse = cheese, Kässe =? So, it's not a matter of being picky when people don't understand you for what seems to be a slight pronunciation error.
,
Glad to hear someone from the Christian tradition point out Adam didn't eat an apple. The idea that the fruit was an apple is alien to Semites. I am an Arab, and was rather confused as a kid when I found out many Christians seem to think it was an apple.
People do because people are not taught the literal translation. Something I intend to correct on my main channel soon ;)
@@metatronacademy That sounds like a really interesting video. Can't wait, Metatron.
could you please make a video about double consonants? I am a Brazilian Portuguese speaker, so it is hard to tell word with and without them apart.
So when a consonant is doubled/geminated it basically means that there is a split there, where each goes on separate syllables.
A trick is to imagine a space between them, almost like if they were separate words.
Try comparing these:
Bote
Bot te
Now a bit harder
Fabrica
Fab brica
record yourself and you should notice you properly distinguish both consonants
Finnish: short vowel A, long vowel AA. Is there a simpler solution? I think not.
If you really think about it, it's kinda weird how english and german write short vowels by doubling the next consonant, why would you write a property of a vowel by modifying the next consonant?
The Romans marked their long vowels with diacritics (ÁÉJÓÚ). Idk if it's better but it is certainly shorter and faster to write.
2:06 Depends on the language though. In Dutch the sounds often do change when the vowel is long vs short (which can depend on things such as if it's double vowels, the position in the word or what consonants come after it)
For me, shortening short vowels is often better than trying to say long ones longer.
I was hoping to learn how to distinguish short & long vowels when reading unfamiliar latin words. While listening, it is easy enough to tell even though remembering them is another matter.
Thank You very for this video 🙂 !
I am not sure how much sense it makes to talk about long and short vowels in English. So called 'short' and 'long' pairs always seem to be distinguished qualitatively, but quantitative length can actually vary a lot depending on the voicing of the following consonant.
In regards to understanding real length distinctions, there is the problem that for many modern European languages vowel length is tied to stress. So speakers tend to automatically lengthen stressed vowels and shorten unstressed ones, or they inadvertently displace the stress from a short vowel to a long one in the same word.
I know in English, at least in my dialect (kind of General American), vowel length shows up in weird places, affected by consonants (bat vs. bad, with the second being longer)
My native language has short and long vowels for all except o, because it's special.
Could you also make a video about the palatalized consonants in the slavic languages?
Palatalized consonants are consonants with a palatal secondary articulation
This means that you need to pronounce the consonant while putting the tongue in the same way you would while pronouncing an [i]
Basically raise your tongue and you'll be able to pronounce it
Learning to hear the difference requires exposure to them (something you can achieve by learning how to pronounce them), so it mostly takes time
Short vowel: time to raise OR down a finger
Long vowel: time to raise AND down a finger
That is how I learnt it in my language
Glorious
I was confused at first by the title, because this is not what short and long means in English. In English short and long versions of a vowel are completely different sounds, it's not based on length of rhythm. For example, long i is actually a diphthong of ah+ee, but short i is the short i is actually the short version of long E. The vowels in English are just crazy.
Yes English is different and will require a dedicated video, but since I did bring up the example with "game", if you hear people from the North East of England pronounce it, they will actually just extend the sound. That's because the "ei" of "game" is a "recent" development, and before the long vowel used to follow the rules I mention here. Accents such as the "York" accent, preserve the old pronunciation still. And if you are familiar with Scottish accents, they tend to preserve the elongated "o" as opposed to the "ou", in words such as "no".
This is what short and long vowels SHOULD mean.
As opposed to what it means in English.
hu: veréb (sparrow) véreb (bloodhound)
cs: dráhy (roads) drahý (dear/expensive)
la: pālus (stake/pole) palūs (marsh)
Also an essential part of Arabic. But thankfully long vowels are almost always written.
To me it feels more like pitch rather than length in some cases. When you gave the Amare example you tried to pronounce it without the long vowel and you removed the pitch from the word, or you brought the stress to the first syllable. I don't know if I'm using the correct terms to express the idea, but I guess u can get what I mean
Italian is a stress accent language, meaning that accent (called stress normally in English, but it is called accent in linguistics, as far as I know) is expressed mostly through syllable length (and a couple other less salient ways, like pitch)
Italian is also a syllable timed language, so the length of each syllable is around the same and there's no reduction in the vowels (you gotta pronounce them all correctly)
This means that lengthening the accented syllable ends up with what is very similar to a long vowel (but it isn't always the same, and luckily the IPA has a symbol for half of a long vowel)
Greetings, I have a question for you about Latin as well as Italian. On channels, such as Polymathy, when he writes Latin, he will often put accent marks over the long vowels to indicate that they are long. However, whenever I try to read ancient written Latin, I don’t see these marks. Is there a way to know which vowels are short or long without just learning and memorizing all of the words? Thanks, ciao.
In Italian the difference between a long vowel and a short one really just applies to stress, as it is often expressed through a long vowel (Italian is a stress accent language)
In Latin the difference is phonemic, this means that minimal pairs exist and thus you have to suck it up and learn them all by heart
Most dictionaries will mark vowel length as also do many textbooks. Vowel length in Latin isn't random and there are patterns that you can learn that will help you remember when vowels are short and long
That’s an intriguing theory for, why there is an ”apple”, in particular, in the Bible. Makes sense, alright. 🤔🍎😈
You should do a Conlanging video
The only difference I could hear in the two "ARENA" words was pitch 👀. The vowel lengths sounded the same to me 😬. Like one sounds like a question and the other one sounds like a statement. That's a REALLY subtle difference 👀. I can hear the difference, but it doesn't sound like enough to be two completely different words/pronunciations to me 👀...
Exactly. That was the point. The two "E" in the different "ARENA" have the same lenght, but different "quality": the first one is a "closed" e and the second is an "open" e.
6:20 Not exactly true, English is considered not to have long/short vowels, definitely not as a distinction, but rather tense/lax vowels. Tense vowels tend to be longer but not always, and length is not the distinctive feature in general.
True but not for all accents, particularly the conservative ones. Look at how a Scottish renders the word “no”, how someone from York renders the word “face”, and I believe my example of ee and machine fit. I could give a few other examples. In some accents, these vowels are indeed just lengthened, which used to be the norm. I see where you are coming from, so I’m not saying that what you wrote is incorrect, but not all accents follow RP rules or General American rules.
sorry Metatron but i cannot do that funny things with my fingers🤣 luckily, duration difference is apparent to me although my native language doesn't distinguish vowel length (and actually doesn't have long vowels at all)
My pronunciation is improving 🤸♀
Long vowels aren't necessarily longer than short ones.
Appel or Apfel just means originally round fruit. 🤔
こんにちは
I don't understandgerman
I don't think you're pronouncing the long vowels the way I have heard them. I didn't want to say wrong but do you have an accent?
8:45 in Spanish the words are the same as Italian but there is no difference in pronunciation, unlike your example.
The long ones have a macron above. I kid.
Macron?
@@cheerful_crop_circle The line over a vowel: ā. That line (macron) means the vowel is long. Eg: “a” = bad, ā = bay.
...did you find jesus!? ( you right he was Italian
use hungarian languige if you write I is short if long is í :D keep it simple :D its by all a-á o-ó u-ú ü-ű e-é most of the time you write what you say :D
malum est👹
mālum ēst🍎
est*
soah
2:05 UwU
Latin moment
Example from Turkish:
Ama with short a’s means But.
Ama with long a’s means Blind.
The vowels are either both short or both long in the example.
I'm sorry, but _what?_ Is this kind of video really necessary? It would be the same as "how to tell apart a half-full glass from a full one". You just need to use your senses and notice the difference. Short is obviously shorter than the longer one. It's not rocket science.
As I have mentioned, the video is a response to those in the comments to have a problem recognizing the difference. You are clearly not among them, but that doesn't mean that everyone has the same ear or expertise as you. Also the second part of the video addresses common over compensation problems with vowel length which are present even with advanced learners.
@@metatronacademy Most people have the sense of hearing, and for those people there should not be any problems recognizing the difference, unless that person's sense of hearing is somehow impaired. It's not expertise; it's just making observations using your hearing.