Could somebody please give me an example of the vowels a, e and i in english both in long and short pronounciation.
Thanks.
These examples are from Collar and Daniell’s First Year Latin:
ā like in the last a in aha’.
ă like in the first a in aha.
ē as in they (My view: this is somewhat confusing, as the “y” does not belong to the pronounciation of the long e. To me, a long e is better exemplified by the e in memory.)
ĕ as in met
ī as in machine
ĭ as in pin
Hope this helps.
In the Indian, Spanish, and Italian accents of English, among others, this is all true, Amadeus. However, for American, Australian, and British natives, none of those examples would produce the correct vowels.
We Anglophones are vocally poor beings.
If those are the spanish sounds what would the english ones be?
Thanks.
…“None of the above examples…”
Could you explain please? The only one which to my, British (Northern English English), ear that is obviously wrong is ‘memory’ - I’ve never heard a British speaker ever pronounce that with a long ‘e’.
Of course, English English pronunciation being what it is, I suppose we could construct a suitable example table…
Long ‘a’ as in ‘bath’
Short ‘a’ as in ‘bath’
Long ‘o’ as in ‘scone’
Short ‘o’ as in ‘scone’
Long ‘u’ as in ‘book’
Short ‘u’ as in ‘book’
… and then everybody would be happy!
Seriously, please could you give me better examples for the vowel sounds?
Many thanks
David
I have two examples here which i cannot figure out for e:
long e: pay
short e: pet
pet sounds like met
i cannot get they or memory to sound like pay
Thanks.
And I can’t get ‘they’ NOT to sound like ‘pay’. But ‘memory’ is nothing like either.
(Or ‘either’, of course, depending on how you want to pronounce that 
)
Ah. Just had a thought… Some regional english english accents (Brummie, for example) pronounce the final ‘y’ in memory close to ‘memoray’ - could that be it?
David
Then your pronouncing pay ‘pey’, but i don’t live in england so i wouldn’t know.
Also, memoray is changing the end of the word. Not the beginning where the e is. Unless of course this final y change is altering the beginning, like i said, i’m not from england.
blutoonwithcarrotandnail
(Or may I call you ‘blu’?..)
Yes, pay = pey although off hand I can’t think of many timest the latter appears in English words.
Where do you come from - didn’t mean to confuse with the reference to the final y in memory (although what I said is true). And the table of examples I gave before are all well-known (to the English of course) examples of how different English social groups pronounce the same words - I was just having a little fun with our habit of assuming that our own pronunciation is the natural one and everybody else is wrong wrong wrong.
Sorry if I confused matters.
David
You all are encountering the confusion of applying English vowels to those of Latin. It doesn’t work.
The Italian vowel system is the only one that is truly identical.
Lucus
Actually, I’m not confused about it - such comparisons between languages are approximate (and as per my earlier post, depend too much on too many variations in pronunciation of the comparison word anyway) - I was merely curious whether you had a better approximation.
Now, if you’re saying that the words given are the best approximations in English (for a given regional variation), fine.
BTW I’ve been lurking for some time and am grateful for the insights you’ve given me into the language - many thanks.
David
I can tell. 
People keep using words like “pay, may, they…” to reproduce the long e. But clearly, all of them contain two distinct sounds: eh-ee, and that’s not latin. Here’s a hint: get rid of that annoying “y”.
Valete (that’s right, not ualete!)
I really don’t think there is, especially after being inside the sounds of the vocal inheritor of Latin, being Italian. Italian just fits the Romans’ description of their vowels too perfectly to be ignored.
Now, if you’re saying that the words given are the best approximations in English (for a given regional variation), fine.
Which words?
BTW I’ve been lurking for some time and am grateful for the insights you’ve given me into the language - many thanks.
David
You honor me, David. You’re quite welcome; I’m very glad to have helped. 
I hate to be snobby about the aim for perfect pronunciation, or to be chauvinist with my Italian-pushing, but I am very convinced of the validity of these pursuits.
I can tell. People keep using words like “pay, may, they…” to reproduce the long e. But clearly, all of them contain two distinct sounds: eh-ee, and that’s not latin. Here’s a hint: get rid of that annoying “y”.
Easier said than done, amīce.
Valete (that’s right, not ualete!)
You say that like I wouldn’t spell it the same. 
Valē et tūte!
LV·EQ
Amadeus wrote…
I can tell. Laughing People keep using words like “pay, may, they…” to reproduce the long e. But clearly, all of them contain two distinct sounds: eh-ee, and that’s not latin. Here’s a hint: get rid of that annoying “y”.
Amadeus - sorry, I don’t hear that at all in most English English. Pay/May/they all sound the same and none of them has a second sound. Basically, to me it sounds like the letter ‘A’ with a P in front etc.
It sounds to me that you hear something closer to the French ‘pays’, which definitely has two distinct sounds (it’s a classic English person’s error for this word to pronounce it as english ‘pay’.)
Perhaps we need regional variations of the text books - Wheelocks West Cheshire Latin anybody? Or is it time to update Astaire…
(I understand Lucus’ point about the gap between any equivalent in English, but the differences in English pronunciations are fascinating.)
Regards
David (long ‘a’, short ‘i’)
David — in truth that is not the case. Our word “pay” has an initial consonant, and then a diphthong. A diphthong is composed of two vowels. In the diphthong which we represent here as “-ay,” the first sound is close to the ‘e’ in “get.” The following vowel is much the same as the ‘i’ in “nit.”
A pure vowel is defined as a continuous sound, one that may be produced at length by the singing of a single note, or merely uttered in a continuous, monotone fashion. If I try to say “pay,” and hold the vowel indefinitely for seconds, one of two things will occurr: I will either hold out the ‘y’, the ‘i’ sound of “nit,” making for something that we might write as: payyyyyyyyyyyyyy. (The Irish tendency in song.) Or, alternatively, I would hold the initial ‘e’ sound, and in this way draw out the word: “paaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.” (This is the British præference.)
The point is, in so many words, to “get rid of that annoying ‘y’.” The remaining vowel is higher, more closed, more nasalized, than the open English ‘e’. This remaining vowel is the sound of letter ‘e’ in Spanish, Italian, and Latin, among many others.
In short, Amadeus’ assertion is completely correct.
Lucus,
Please could you clear up something for me? In the IPA scheme, does the ‘e’ symbol represent the pure Italian vowel?
I’ve found this an interesting discussion - I can see (hear…) the effect you’re describing - ‘aaaaaaaaay’ was helpful! - but to me my normal pronunciation of ‘ay’ is closer to the IPA ‘e’ than to ‘ε+I’.
However, although I have a background in languages, I didn’t study phonetics at all, so am fully prepared to be wrong and thank you for taking the time to explain.
Regards
DevId
Yes.
I’ve found this an interesting discussion - I can see (hear…) the effect you’re describing - ‘aaaaaaaaay’ was helpful! - but to me my normal pronunciation of ‘ay’ is closer to the IPA ‘e’ than to ‘ε+I’.
Then good for you! The same goes for me. Most of my diphthong-vowels are smoothed out into nearly pure vowels, an accent which comes from my father’s partial Italian influence and a lifetime of casual singing. It makes me sound very pompous.
However, although I have a background in languages, I didn’t study phonetics at all, so am fully prepared to be wrong and thank you for taking the time to explain.
Regards
DevId
Hardly! you’re very right. It’s my pleasure to help.
May I ask what might be your regional accent? or just yours, that is.
Lucus
I would describe my accent as broadly speaking Northern English, but not particularly strongly so (Cheshire is nowhere near as distinctive as say Liverpudlian, Mancunian, Yorkshire, Geordie etc), and I’ve also spent a lot of time elsewhere. For example, having spent some years in the South before I was 10, I’m as likely to say ‘baath’ as ‘bath’, ‘caastle’ as ‘castle’ and so on - I use them interchangeably for some reason.
Definitely non-rhotic, though - I may one day get close to a Latin vowel, but I’ll never approach the trilled ‘r’…
Thanks again
DevId.
when you say the english “a sound” before a vowel you can really hear the “i sound” in there. you might not hear the i in gay but you can hear it in gaiety. nevermind how about laying the natural tendency is to say ley-ying instead of ley-ing because there is a i/y sound.
did you think we write the y there just for fun? NO! it stands for the diphthong.
Excuse me for the tangent, but we are not poor, we just have different equipment. In fact, English has a higher than average amount of vowels.
In California English (one of the less rich accents) there are the following monophthongs (and I’m excluding r-vowels too)
ash/bad
father
not
caught (note : many Californians merge the father/not/caught into one vowel - I myself only pronounce these with a weak difference in day to day speech)
see/me/machine
sit/lip/get (the way I say ‘get’, it rhymes with ‘sit’)
bed/red/kept/said
cup/luck
about/the (this is the schwa vowel)
put/could/look
soon/through
That adds up to 9 monophtongs if you lump father/not/caught together. Most Romance languages (and Latin?) only have 5 monophthongs (a, e, i, o, u)