short-long-sounds

Notice

Now we compare the words for fish and man both for the plural and the singular form. Listen to the pronunciation. The sound remains short. Notice also that the last letter of the singular form is doubled. This in fact is the reason that the short-a and short-i remains short.

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a - aa

Now we listen to the Dutch word 'maan' with a so-called long-a and the Dutch word 'man' with a short-a. Listen to the plural forms. The Dutch word 'maan' becomes 'manen' so with a single a but still we hear a long-a! Notice the difference in writing between 'mannen' and 'manen'. With 'mannen', we see the letter 'm' twice, whereas with 'manen', there is only one 'm'. This shows that

if a single short-a is written before only one n, the sound remains long.

The same is true for other short-sounds like, for instance, 'boot-boten' (vessel-vessels).

o - oo

As we said before, the same holds for the letter o. If we deal with a long-o like in the Dutch word "poot" (or instance leg of a dog), the plural form becomes "poten" and we still hear a long-o, whereas with potten (2 t's) the sound remains short.