[usrnm]

> One of the hardest parts for an English speaker to learn about Hungarian and Finnish is that the length of a sound (how long you articulate it) is significant

I'm not a native English speaker, but I'm pretty sure it exists in English as well.

[friendly_chap]

Absolutely, think "lick" vs "leak". I think the author means Hungarian maybe uses very similar looking letters to denote this (ie "lik" and "lík").

In Hungarian also every vowel comes in pairs of short-long: a-á (what vs high), e-é (ever vs eight), "o-ó" (moss vs most), "u-ú" (put vs you), "ö-ő" (fur vs ... well long version has no English equivalent I think but German does: schön).

[bmacho]

a-á and e-é are not short-long pairs. a is /ɒ/, á is /aː/, e is /ɛ/, é is /eː/.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_phonology#Vowel_exam...

[MarkusQ]

From your source (page up a bit):

"Hungarian has seven pairs of corresponding short and long vowels. Their phonetic values do not exactly match up with each other, so ⟨e⟩ represents /ɛ/ and ⟨é⟩ represents /eː/; likewise, ⟨a⟩ represents /ɒ/ while ⟨á⟩ represents /aː/.[14] For the other pairs, the short vowels are slightly lower and more central, and the long vowels more peripheral."

So yes, they apparently are "short-long pairs".

[bmacho]

No, not in the sense we are talking about it.

[MarkusQ]

Not in the sense _you_ are talking about perhaps?

Typically, when people talk about "long" and "short" vowels they are referring to a combination of duration and pronunciation (e.g. English "bat" vs. "bate"), and that appears to be the case here as well. If you are interpreting the terms differently, I'm not sure what sense you have in mind.

[bmacho]

> Typically, when people talk about "long" and "short" vowels they are referring to a combination of duration and pronunciation (e.g. English "bat" vs. "bate"), and that appears to be the case here as well.

Finnish vowels and most Hungarian vowels come in short-long pairs that

  - only their lengths differ, their pronunciations do not (meaning: IPA denotes them with the same letter but with or without a colon)
  - their lengths are *phonemic*, that is they are *said to be* different phonemes, they are *perceived as* different phonemes, and there are example words that differ only at them

You can observe this property in the table I've linked for i, o, ö, u, ü [0]. You can find minimal pairs for them at [1]. (Note that [1] groups these vowel pairs as "Vowels with length difference: I – Í | O – Ó | Ö – Ő | U – Ú | Ü – Ű" which does not include A - Á and E - É.)

A-á and e-é are not such pairs. They differ in pronunciation (see the IPA in [0]), and their lengths, while are somewhat defined, never contrast (no minimal pairs for them). Also you can pronounce any of these four with arbitrary length, it will stay the same phoneme.

[0] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_phonology#Vowel_exam...

[1] : https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Hungarian_minimal_pa...

edit: I find your previous quote 'misleading'. I would say 'wrong', but it avoids to say anything factual. At least in out of context--the rest of the wiki page clarifies everything.

[borroka]

This is an important sign when someone who is not Italian speaks Italian. The double consonant, for example in the word bello/a, indicates a longer “l” sound, but English speakers in particular do not hear the longer sound and therefore pronounce it as belo/a. Or, when they are told about the longer sound, they pronounce it in a caricatured way as bellllo/a.

[volemo]

Sure does! “Beach” and “bitch” differ only in vowel length in some accents, IME.

[rootbear]

Vowel length is generally not semantically significant in English. Vowels are lengthened before voiced consonants, for example, and we don’t even think about it. Compare “cab” and “cap”. As noted here, some Hungarian vowels, such as ’a’ and ‘e’ do change sound when lengthened, but some don’t. Those are the ones that are harder to distinguish for speakers of languages like English.

[messe]

Only some dialects of English have contrastive vowel length.