How do I decide if an "i" is pronounced long or short?

Question

I am an English teacher who has never really learned the complex rules of teaching pronunciation. Many learners here in Spain have difficulties deciding whether an "i" in a word is long or short. Unfortunately, even the basic general rule of "it's a long 'i' if it's a short word with a silent 'e' at the end" doesn't work, as we came across "live" and "give"... and the multisyllable "practice/practise".

I can't seem to find a pattern (emphatise vs expertise, and sign vs signature and signal came up).

Can anyone point me in the direction of a relatively simple explanation?

Answer 1

There isn't a relatively simple explanation, I'm afraid. As you've pointed out, there are more exceptions-to-rules than than there are rules; however, there are some general guidelines that might help you:

• before double consonants

  before double consonants, 'i' is usually short regardless of its position in a word: as in bitten, hidden, miffed, bigger, piggy, ribbon, nibble, chill, pillow, immune, simmer, dinner, innocent, snippet, hippo, irregular, irrelevant, miss, bliss, issue etc (the only exception I can think of is 'dissect' which can be pronounced either with a short 'i' or long)

• in prefixes

  'i' in common prefixes such as in- (im-, il-, ir-), infra-, inter-, intra-, hemi-, dis- etc is pronounced short (exc. bi- and di-)

• before the suffix -tion

  before the suffix -tion (in simple words, ition words), it's almost always short as in competition, condition, inhibition, exhibition, recognition, transition, addition etc

• in ity and ible

  in ity and ible, it's usually short (either /ɪ/ or /ə/) as in ability, activity, elasticity, sexuality, visible, edible, eligible, tangible, divisible etc but there may be exceptions

• in the suffix -ise/-ize

  the 'i' in the suffix -ise/-ize is almost always long as in realise, actualise, mesmerise, hypnotise, formalise, italicise, memorise etc. Also, as @rjpond pointed out in a comment: "Expertise" is a relatively recent borrowing from French ("machine" is also from French) so the "i" is /i:/ (which isn't short, but isn't diphthongised either).

• in ic and ical words

  before ic and ical, 'i' is almost always short as in classic, lunatic, logic, ironic, fanatic, genetic, classical, historical, physical, mechanical, etc

• before digraphs

  a digraph is 'a combination of two letters representing one sound' (Lexico). For example, the ck in 'back' or the ph in 'physics' or the ng in 'ring'. Before consonant digraphs (and consonant trigraphs), 'i' is usually short as in stick, brick, ring, king, fish, lavish, ridge, bridge rich, sandwich, witch, pitch etc

• in -ing

  in the inflectional suffix -ing, 'i' is almost always short as in making, raining, killing, selling, feeling, hiding, watering, hitting, sitting, calling etc

• words ending in ign

  words ending in ign usually have the long 'i' sound as in sign, consign, malign, design, resign, align, assign, benign etc.

• before gh words

  before gh, 'i' is usually pronounced long 'i' as in sight, fight, might, high, sigh, height, slight, night, bright, right etc (ex. 'weight' which is pronounced with /eɪ/)

• before nd and ld

  before nd and ld, 'i' is sometimes long as in wind (v.), kind, blind, mind, mild, child, find etc (for w[ɪ]nd vs w[aɪ]nd, read this answer)

• before silent e

  words ending in iCe ('i' being letter 'i', 'C' another consonant, 'e' the silent e) are usually, not always, pronounced with a long 'i' as in hide, site, kite, white, wife, oblige, like, spike, bike, file, tile, while, time, prime, line, fine, pipe, gripe, size etc. Exceptions: recipe, clandestine, astatine and routine (long 'e': /iː/), urine (can also be pronounced with long 'i'), iodine (it can also be pronounced with long i), ive-words below etc

• words ending in ive

  ive words are tricky. Most words having the prefix -ive have short 'i': relative, conservative, fricative, figurative, active, argumentative etc. By contrast, live (adj), dive, drive, five, revive, alive etc are pronounced with a long 'i'

• CiC words

  words in which 'i' is flanked by two other consonants is usually pronounced short as in signal, signature, sit, fit, kit, hit, lit, spit etc (ex. title, vital)

There are also other exceptions such as:

• finite - infinite, migrant - immigrant, divine - divinity
• It's pronunciation varies when it occurs in combination with another vowel.
• Before rC (r + another consonant) it's usually /ɜː/ in British English and /ɝ/ in American English: bird, skirt, shirt, dirt, firm, irk, quirk etc

There are no hard and fast rules. Sorry.

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(Long 'i' is /aɪ/ as in bite, short 'i' is /ɪ/ as in bit.)

Answer 2

Grammar is music theory for language. Music doesn't sound good because it follows music theory, music theory is written about music that sounds good. There is no such thing as a "rule" for language, because languages are highly specific in unpredictable ways. Languages have evolved by people making sounds at each other until telepathy was achieved, because the language centres of our brains are hardwired to be able to generate and understand human languages. You can't write that down as "rules". Even if you could, none would ever be short enough to recall with the subconscious instancy required for native speed speech.

Teaching someone a formula for language will not help them acquire that language. I never learnt the grammar "rule" behind why one of the two phrases "the green big tree" and "the big green tree" is incorrect, I can just feel it. I know instantly by looking at them, and can't force myself to think otherwise.

The way for your students to acquire whether it's a short or long I is the exact same way they'll acquire anything else - comprehensible input. They need to listen to native level speakers more, and pay active attention to the things about which they're confused.

On a note more specific to this exact example, how a word is pronounced is based on accent. Think of the different ways a hillbilly and an East Londoner would pronounce "hill".

Answer 3

The spelling patterns of words can indicate to us whether a word is more likely to be pronounced /ɪ/ or /iː/, as listed by @Toby Speight above.

Some students can learn by memorising rules and to others it will make no difference. For students like this, they will need to actively practice /iː/ and /ɪ/ words separately in sentences. This will eventually build the capacity of your ear and tongue to tell the difference. The goal is to get used to the difference so that you intuitively know it.

It's the only way that works for students who can't remember or apply rules. I have made two audio practise lessons on this topic:

Learn /iː/ lesson: https://jadejoddle.com/english-accent-practice/

Learn /ɪ/ lesson: https://jadejoddle.com/english-accent-practice-audio/