# Long vowels



## Tamar

A friend of mine read in one phonology book that it does have long vowels and in another that there aren't (or maybe this issue wasn't talked about) so we're quite confused. 
Are there long vowels in Tagalog? And if there are, what are they?

Thanks!


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## niernier

I'm quite sure there are no long vowels in Tagalog. But you can contradict that by giving us an example of a word mentioned in a book that is pronounced with a long vowel. By the way, kids tend to pronounce words with long vowels, like for instance, I remember when I was still a student, we greet visitors coming into classroom with Maaa-bu-hay! Mabuhay means long-live. But our teacher corrected us and said it should be pronounced as Ma-bu-hay. No long vowels.


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## amoy_ube

Thinking about it and comparing it to present usage, it seems we don't have long vowels but when I get to thinking about balagtasan and old filipino movies I think that there might be some words pronounced with long vowels. Or I maybe wrong.

How about:
natatangi
ilalim

Or maybe it's just because old Tagalog is more lyrical, or perhaps the other variety of Tagalog which is not Manila Tagalog, could have long vowels.


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