How to pronounce the Long E sound /iː/
/iː/ is a long vowel made with the tongue front, high. Spread your lips into a smile and hold it. Push the front of your tongue high and forward until you feel the sides touch your top teeth.
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How to make it
- 1Spread your lips into a smile and hold it.
- 2Push the front of your tongue high and forward until you feel the sides touch your top teeth.
- 3Turn the voice on and hold the sound — it is long and tense, not a quick flick.
- 4Keep the shape steady; if the tongue relaxes at all, you get the short I of 'ship'.
- Lips
- Spread wide, as in a small smile.
- Tongue
- Front pushed high and forward, almost touching the sides of the palate.
- Jaw
- Nearly closed.
Feel it
Put a hand flat on your throat and say the sound. It should buzz under your fingers from the very start — if the buzz only arrives with the vowel, you are making the voiceless version.Where the sound appears
Keeping it through a whole line
Please keep these three easy pieces in the freezer.
She needs to see the green field each evening.
Minimal pairs to drill
Each of these is two words separated by exactly one sound. If a listener hears the wrong one, the problem is the contrast, not the effort.
If your first language is…
Nothing here is about ability. Every one of these is a sound system doing exactly what it was built to do, applied to a language that asks for something else.
- HindiUrdu
Hindi and Urdu do have a long and a short i, which helps, but the short one is closer to the English long one, so 'ship' can still come out as 'sheep'.
- Tamil
Tamil has long and short i, so the contrast exists; the English short I is more relaxed and lower than the Tamil short i.
- Mandarin
Mandarin has one high front vowel, always tense, so English 'sit' tends to be produced as 'seat'.
- Japanese
Japanese distinguishes i by length but not by tension, so the English short I sounds like a shortened long E rather than a different vowel.
- Korean
Korean has a single high front vowel, so 'bit' and 'beat' merge unless the tongue is deliberately relaxed for the short one.
- Vietnamese
Vietnamese has both a long and a short high front vowel, which helps, though the English short I is more central than either.
- Spanish
Spanish has five vowels and only one i, so 'ship' and 'sheep' fall together; English needs both a long tense one and a short lax one.
- French
French has one i and no length contrast, so 'sit' and 'seat' are hard to keep apart.
- Italian
Italian also has a single i, so the length and tension that separate 'live' from 'leave' have to be added.
- Russian
Russian has one i, whose quality changes after hard consonants, so the English pair is heard as one vowel in two settings.
- Arabic
Arabic has long and short i, so the length is familiar; the English short I is lower and laxer than the Arabic short i.
- Turkish
Turkish has i and a separate high back unrounded vowel, but no lax front i, so English 'fit' drifts to 'feet'.
Straight answers
Is /iː/ voiced or voiceless?
It is voiced. Put a hand on your throat and say it: you should feel a buzz the whole time. All English vowels are voiced, so the question only really separates the consonants.
What words start with the Long E sound?
Common ones include eat, easy, even. In the middle of a word you get sheep, keep, please, and at the end see, key, free. Every one of those links to its own pronunciation page here.
How is /iː/ spelled in English?
It is written "ee", "ea", "e", "ie", "ei", "y", "ey", "i". English spelling and English sound came apart centuries ago, so the same sound turns up under several spellings and the same spelling carries several sounds — which is why the sound, not the letter, is the thing to learn.
Why do Hindi & Urdu speakers find /iː/ hard?
Hindi and Urdu do have a long and a short i, which helps, but the short one is closer to the English long one, so 'ship' can still come out as 'sheep'.
Record the Long E sound and see if it landed
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