So-called “short” and “long” vowels

In English spelling each vowel letter has two main sounds. The so-called “short” vowel (or short sound of the vowel) is a monophthong and the so-called “long” vowel (or long sound of the vowel) is a diphthong (considering /iː/ as [ij] and /uː/ as [uw]).

When decoding written words we consider "a" as in bath and "o" as in cloth to be short sounds, or, more precisely, to have short vowel spelling, because /ɑː/ and /ɔː/ are long sounds. The table used for reading is as follows.

“Short” vowel spelling uses double consonants.

“Long” vowel spelling uses magic e.