What is considered a long VOT?

A long Voice Onset Time (VOT) is characterized by a duration greater than 30 milliseconds. VOT measures the time interval between the release of a stop consonant and the onset of vocal fold vibration for the following vowel. A longer VOT is often associated with voiceless consonants, such as in the case of the difference between "p" and "b" in English, where the voiceless version tends to have a more delayed onset of vocal fold vibration.

In phonetics, a VOT that exceeds 30 ms typically signals a distinction between voiced and voiceless sounds, particularly in languages that utilize this parameter to differentiate between phonemes. This information can be crucial when analyzing speech sounds and understanding how different languages and dialects may utilize VOT differently in their phonetic inventories. Hence, recognizing a VOT as greater than 30 ms aligns with phonetic categorization for long VOT measurements.