The languages that distinguish between different lengths have usually long and short sounds.
The Mixe languages are widely considered to have three distinctive levels of vowel length,[1] as do Estonian, some Low German varieties in the vicinity of Hamburg[2] and some Moselle Franconian[3] and Ripuarian Franconian varieties.
In certain languages, however, there are pairs of phonemes that are traditionally considered to be long-short pairs even though they differ not only in length, but also in quality, for instance English "long e" which is /iː/ (as in feet /fiːt/) vs. "short i" which is /ɪ/ (as in fit /fɪt/) or German "long e" which is /eː/ (as in Beet /beːt/ 'garden bed') vs. "short e" which is /ɛ/ (as in Bett /bɛt/ 'sleeping bed').
For example, in some non-rhotic varieties of English the /t/ of the word party may be nearly elided, with just some breathy-voice remaining, in which case it may be transcribed [ˈpɑː̤ɪ].
A morpheme may be reduced to length plus nasalization, in which case a word might be transcribed [saː̃].