Pronunciation for PTE and life: long and short vowel sounds on ‘re’ words

May 6, 2025

re /riː/ or re /rɛ/ …. long or short vowel ?

The English language is full of delightful quirks, and one of them is the pronunciation of the prefix “re-.” You’ve probably noticed that sometimes it sounds like /riː/ with a long vowel, while other times it’s /rɛ/ with a short vowel. But what determines the difference? Is it simply a matter of preference, or are there phonetic rules at play?

In this blog, we’ll focus on “re-” pronunciations, and provide practical examples to help you understand when and why we use each variation. In the PTE test getting the long and short vowel sounds is essential for a high score but these exercise are really useful for any ESL learner looking understand and polish their speaking.

the basics

/riː/ → as in reuse (/riːˈjuːz/)

/rɛ/ → as in recognition (/ˌrɛkəɡˈnɪʃən/)

/riː/ (long) is used for prefixes. ie. when we add ‘re’ to a word to mean ‘again’.

redo, remake, rewrite…..

/rɛ/ (short) is the unstressed vowel when the ‘re’ is part of the standalone word.

reserve, repeat, recognise

Common long ‘re’ sounds usually are prefixes meaning ‘again’

Listen to these examples of the long vowel in ‘re’.

restart -start again

rewrite -write again

recharge – charge again

reproduction – reproduce – produce/ production again

Short re as part of the actual standalone word

Listen to these examples of short vowels.

recognition- recognise (cognition is a word but it has a different meaning in modern English)

repetition – repeat

Reservation – reserve (serve is a word but it has a different meaning in modern English)

There is always an exception, right!

A handful of words with two meaning

‘recreation‘ with a short vowel sound means leisure or hobby time.

‘recreation‘ with a long vowels means create again.

‘This is the recreation room where guests can paint recreations of their favourite artworks.’

Practice: write from dictation

Now, grab a pen and paper. Listen to these sentence and write from dictation what you hear?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Now make a list of all the words from the write from dictation exercise and any other ‘re’ words you know and put them into groups of long vowel, short vowel or it depends.