What Are Long And Short Vowels. English speakers use long and short vowel sounds to distinguish between otherwise similar words. Sometimes w substitutes for silent 'e' rule:
When a vowel sounds like its name, this is called a long sound.
When a vowel and consonant are followed by an 'e', the 'e' is almost always silent, but it causes the preceding vowel to be long. Next, diphthongs are vowel phonemes that begin as one vowel sound and slide into another, but still only make up one syllable. What are long vowel sounds? When we compare american, british, australian, or other varieties of english, we see that vowels differ much.
