--- In norse_course@..., Louis Erickson <wwonko@...> wrote:

> On Thu, 5 Sep 2002 tsdoughty@... wrote:

[snip]

> > Wow, you nailed the other _big_ thing that's made it very hard to

master

> > pronunciation of ON/Icelandic! In English we are never taught

the concept of

> > long vs. short vowels in terms of quantity. Every schoolchild

when learning

> > to read is taught "long" vowels (cane) vs. "short" vowels (can),

but in this

> > case it's a misuse of the terms, since it really means two

totally different

> > vowels. We are actually unaware, as you point out, that the

vowels take

> > longer to sound. And when I read that in many languages one has

to pronounce

> > the vowels for a longer or shorter period of time, I was

mystified. It took

> > me years to understand that concept, let alone hear the

difference.

>
> Interesting; this is a difference that I haven't heard clerly. Do

you

> know of anywhere that tries to explain it well?
>

I learned the difference when learning Japanese. In fact, they
write out the long and short vowels differently when using roman
characters. For example: Tookyo (Tokyo) the first o is long, the
second is short. The vowel sound is exactly the same ("long O" in
english - I'd write it as "oh", I'm not a linguist). The amount of
time spend saying the vowel is different.
-Ástriðr