system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Without the context of the English language/alphabet, is there any meaningful distinction between "short vowels" and "long vowels" phonologically?

If so, what is it? And if not, how did English vowel letters end up working the way they do now?
gpt
There is a linguistic concept called vowel length, which refers to vowels as being long and short, that has to do with duration of the vowel sound (or, really, the perception of the duration), but that concept is entirely different from the English gradeschool concept of long and short vowels.

In English, long and short vowels are really just two distinct sounds that happen to be represented by the same letters. There are rules (often broken) that imply which sound a letter makes in that context, but the terms "long" and "short" themselves don't seem to have any particular basis.