what is the difference bet. short  vowel sounds and long vowel sounds??
91058
long vowels sound like the letter it's self\na  e  i  o  u
870923
The sentence is correct.\nThe 'two vowel' rule is a rule of thumb for the beginning of French.  It's basically only the 'e' that disappears and then only on two letter words. (me, de, se,)  Que is the only three letter word (that I know) that elides (loses the e) and you lose the 'a' in la, ma, ta, sa...  In longer words (notre) or with other letters at the end (tu, stylo), you don't lose the vowel.
1106744
I think  there is a rule about the a/an coming right before the h where you use the second letter. If the second letter is a vowel, than you use 'an', otherwise, an 'a'.
822265
English is a very difficult language to learn, and one of the many resons for this is that English has so many sounds which speakers of other languages don't generally learn to produce.  In Japanese, for example, there is no 'l' sound.  When an English word containing l is written in katakana, which is the alphabet in which most Japanese first encounter English words,  the character which SHOULD have an l sound is replaced with a character that actually has an r sound.  For this reason, gettings ls and rs confused is one of the most common mistakes Japanese make when speaking in English.  The other part is that English simply has more different types of sounds than Japanese does, and it's easy to get confused about pronunciation.\n\nThe simple answer: English has many sounds which can't be written in Japanese; and even when Japanese  people branch off from katakana and learn to use the Roman alphabet, there are still so many different sounds in English that some of them are easy to forget.\n\nOn an interesting footnote, it is also very difficult for Japanese people to end words with letters that aren't vowels.  The only consonant that can end a Japanese word is n, which is why many native Japanese speakes will accidentally throw a vowel sound at the end of a word which shouldn't actually have a vowel sound at the end.  They are simply not used to all of those extra consonants.
878439
short - puffs you out\nlong - you get more puff
742229
Depends on what you mean:\n\n1) If you mean fewest letters there are THREE (not two, as many suggest):not just a and I, but also O (as used in addressing someone, e.g., in prayer -"O Lord") \n\n2) If by shortest you mean the length of the PRINTED word, than "I" wins out over "a" and "O".\n\n3) I you mean shortest in SOUND, that is, in the length of TIME it takes to speak it, "a" in expressions like "a man" (sounding like "uh") is the shortest/quickest to say.   "O" and "I" take a bit longer because they actually each have a combination of TWO vowel sounds (a 'diphthong') -- "O" in English adds a quick u-sound to the end; "I" is pronounced "ah-ee".   (When "a" is emphasized it is also a diphthong - "eh-ee".)\n\nActually, by this last measure "uh" and the exclamations "ooh!" and "ah!" and  are as short as "a", and "oh" is the same as "O".
388584
two vowels together e.g. ee, oo ie, ei, ea, ai, au have a long sound, seem, look etc whereas a single vowel is short, cat, dog etc
404908
i think its called a long a...so pronounce it like it has 2 a's
218934
Nobody did it on purpose.  It's just that there are a limited number of sounds in English, and a limited number of ways those sounds can be combined into syllables.  In general, though, nobody gets confused about which one you're trying to use.
58818
Teaching English reading using phonics involves relating certain rules about English pronunciation:\n\n\nBasic rules\nEach letter is like an animal, which has a name and the sound(s) that it makes. e.g. A cat says "meow". \nEach vowel has two sounds: one long and one short. The long sound is the same as its name. The long sounds are in Ape, Eat, Eye, Oh, and You. Their short equivalents are A (a as in at), E (e as in elm), I (i as in it), O (o as in hop), and U (u as in up). (A criticism of this statement would be that in fact every vowel has a third sound -- the schwa -- the sound of a vowel that is unstressed in an unstressed syllable. The schwa is the most frequent vowel sound in English. Additionally, the 'a' in 'father' is different from the 'a' in 'cat'. \nEach syllable is made by blending the sounds of each component. e.g. reading the word by adding one sound at a time, as in -e, -ed, bed. \nWhen a single vowel letter is in the middle of a word (or syllable), it usually says its short sound. e.g. "Got", "Bed". But there are many exceptions to this rule. See irregular vowels below. \nWhen a single vowel letter is in the end of a word (or syllable), it usually says its long sound (or its name.) e.g. "Go", "Be". \nWhen two vowels go hand in hand in the same word (or syllable), the first vowel usually says its own name (long sound) and the second vowel stays silent. e.g. "Bake" (Ay sound + silent E), "Goal" (Oh sound + silent A), etc. But there are many exceptions to this rule. See irregular vowels below.
929529
Dialects are varieties differing in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar not to be confused with the regional accents of English speakers, which mark speakers as members of groups by their various pronunciations of the standard language.\n\nAustralian English is a non-rhotic dialect. The Australian accent is most similar to that of New Zealand and is also similar to accents from the South-East of Britain, particularly those of Cockney and Received Pronunciation. As with most dialects of English, it is distinguished primarily by its vowel phonology.\n\nAustralian English vowels are divided into two categories: long, which includes long monophthongs and diphthongs, and short, all of which are monophthongs. The short vowels mostly correspond to the lax vowels used in analyses of Received Pronunciation with the long vowels corresponding to its tense vowels as well as its centralising diphthongs. Unlike most varieties of English, it has a phonemic length distinction: a number of vowels differ only by the length.\n\nAustralian English consonants are similar to those of other non-rhotic varieties of English. In comparison to other varieties, it has a flapped variant of /t/ and /d/ in similar environments as in American English. Many speakers have also coalesced /tj/ and /dj/ into /tʃ/ and /dʒ/, with pronunciations such as /tʃʉːn/ being standard.
904680
No, it's not a physical difference.  It's the same reason that we English speakers have trouble "trilling" the 'r' in Spanish, Italian, etc.  It's a sound that we do not make in our native language.  It takes lots of practice to get our mouths to make the sound.
383200
English is a crazy language!\n\nRough\nCough\nThrough\nThough\nBough\n\nThe same "ough" has different sounds.
110965
the e in the pronunciation guide was simply to illustrate the fact that the i sound is a long i, as in fire. therefore: en vire un ment is how you would pronounce the word.
58085
they are called ligatures, in printing anyway.  you usually see them more often in british english than in american english - it's some relic from latin.\n\nalso, did you know that the & is a ligature too - it's a squished-together e and t, supposedly, to mean the latin "et" which means "and".\n\nin linguistics when two letters represent a single sound, it is called a diphthong.\n\nhope this helps.
30067
British English - privacy with a short I (priv a see)\nAmerican English - privacy with a long I (pr-eye va see)\n\nAs for private, I think BE and AE are similar with a long I, but BE has a softer t sound at the end. (a glottal stop... if that means anything to you.)
1065032
It depends which language they originated from - English is a mixture of lots of languages like Latin, Old German, Old English, French and even Arabic - all of which have different ways of pronouncing words.\n\nThere is a (very old, but I've updated it) story of a language student who thought he'd finally got the hang of English, then he saw a sign saying "Yahoo Answers pronounced success!"\n\n...and he gave up and went home.