Jul 19, 2019 · But the English alphabet had no letters for the open-mid vowels! Since those were always long, in the Later Middle English/Early Modern English period, they started being written with digraphs ea and oa. So e_e or ee meant /eː/, as in breed (sometimes written brede), and ea meant /ɛː/, as in bread.

May 28, 2018 · By the time of Middle English, short "ea" had merged with short "æ" and short "a" to become some single low vowel phoneme like /a/, typically written "a" (Middle English sound changes would lead to the development of a distinct lengthened phoneme /aː/), and long "ea" had merged with long "æ" to become a single front mid-low vowel phoneme ...

Mar 29, 2023 · In IPA, the written e of these words, for example: bee, be, tea is: i: There are various pronunciations for e's. As in your example: e is ɛ and it is also i:. You are going about this the wrong way. First, you need to learn the 44 phonemes of English. The graphemes for i: are e, ee, ea, y, ey, oe, ie, i, ei, eo, ay.

Oct 22, 2017 · The short answer is that English spelling is largely arbitrary, and does not represent English pronunciation; there are always exceptions, like this, to any spelling rule. In the case of bear and pear, a look at the etymologies in a good dictionary should explain where they came from, if not why they're spelled that way. The important thing is ...

Interesting question. The spelling <ee> is just a doubled e. It does occur in Middle English (Chaucer uses it for example) although it can represent either /eː/ or /ɛː/. I'd assume the spelling <ea> arose simply because /ɛː/ is halfway between /a/ and /e/ in vowel quality. It seems parallel to <oo> and <oa>. –

In fact I don't even know whether my English "short e" is /e/ vs /ɛ/. I seem to recall it varies by English variety, even for IPA use (I always use /e/ for English IPA). In my idiolect there may even be some kind of merger. "Head" is /hEd/ and "haired" is /hEːd/ where E could be either e or ɛ - I'm not sure. So now I'm in Korea trying to ...

May 10, 2018 · In Standard German, there is no distinction between short e and ä, they are usually pronounced /ɛ/ In Standard German, there is a distinction between long e and ä, the former is pronounced /eː/ and the latter /ɛː/ Those two prescriptions are also in effect for gemäßigte Hochlautung; Pronuncing long ä as /eː/ is non-standard

Noștrii doesn't exist in Romanian. It is never written like that.. The false impression that it could be otherwise comes from the influence of the form of the definite article for plural masculine nouns (-i: ”câini”=dogs, ”câinii”=the dogs): one might imagine adding the definite article to existing noștri (possessive pronoun, plural, masculine,"ours"): but the articulated form is ...

Nov 14, 2022 · In many varieties of English, a short /i/ barely exists, and people think of it as inherently long (it's nearly always written with a digraph, such as 'ee' or 'ea', or sometimes 'i-e' as in "machine"). But a short /i/ does exist in, for example, some Scottish accents, and is common in many language other than English.

May 20, 2017 · many English dictionaries write /ɛ/ as /e/ due to "tradition", which means for no good reason, really (also /ʌ/ for what's more of an [ɐ], and /ɒ/ for an [ɔ]—this kinda thing confused the hell out of me when I was learning English). /ɛː/ vs. /ɛə/ sounds like dialectal variation to me, or different analyses; while 'ea' is probably a lazy way of typing /ɛɐ/, which I think I can hear ...