Is Slovakian unique in having "long/short consonantal vowels"

A number of Slavonic languages, and maybe some others, treat the letters R and/or L as vowelar - though also as consonants, like Y in English. Thus crn is the Croatian word for black (adjective). And vlk is the word for a wolf in both Slovakian and Czech.

Now in Czech and Slovakian, there is distinction between long and short vowels, the long vowels being marked with an acute accent. In Czech this applies only to a, e, i, o, u, y. But in Slovakian you can mark an L or an R with an acute accent to get a long vowelar L or R. Indeed quite appropriately the very word for that acute accent mark in Slovakian is dĺžeň with a long L. (But čárka in Czech.)

Now I've come across geminate consonants in some languages, which sound longer than single consonants, they have them in Italian and Arabic among others, but this seems to be a different phenomenon. Or is it? And is it unique to Slovakian?

"in Czech and Slovakian, there is distinction between long and short vowels"

It's similar in Polish although to a lesser degree, and the vowels have no accents.

"Now I've come across geminate consonants in some languages, which sound longer than single consonants"

There're some good examples in Polish with "nn", "kk", "ss".
In words like Anna, wanna (bath tub), panna (unmarried woman), lekki (light - weight), miękki (soft) you clearly hear the long geminate consonants.

There's also something that's quite unique in Polish, namely geminate consonants at the beginning of a word:
ssać (verb) - to suck, ssanie (noun) - suction
zsunąć (verb) - to push down. Here "zs" is pronounced as "ss"
zzuć (verb) - to take of (shoes)
dżdżysty (adj.) - misty-rainy. "dż" is pronounced almost like English "j" in Jerry.
Actually, I don't know if there are similar examples with geminate consonants starting a word in Slovak or Czech.

I'd also add that in Polish words with geminate consonants the pronunciation is essential, ie. that the two consonants are pronounced clearly. If not, in some cases, they'd have a different meaning.
Examples:
"panna" - unmarried woman vs. "pana" - man (mr, sir) in dative, accusative
"lekki" - light (weight) vs. "leki" - medicine (pills)
"ssanie" - suction vs. "sanie" - sled

Do you mean long vowels as in Japanese, like the O in Osaka, and long consonants as in Japanese, like the TT in kitte?

I think he said what he meant. But I'll try again.

In Czech and Slovakian, and I think in Serbian, r and l can function as vowels. You get words like Krk and Srb.

Apparently in Slovakian, some of those vocalic L's are R's are long and some are short.

OP is asking whether Slovakian is the only language in which vocalc consonants can be distinguished as long and short.

Well, in Japanese the city Osaka is properly pronounced in four beats, with two beats on the O, because it's a long O. Is that what we're discussing?

The confusion -- as should be obvious -- arises because "long" and "short" vowels have a completely different meaning in English, signifying the difference between mope and mop, for example.

No, that's not what we're discussing.

"Now I've come across geminate consonants in some languages, which sound longer than single consonants, they have them in Italian and Arabic among others, but this seems to be a different phenomenon. Or is it? And is it unique to Slovakian?"

But that discussion right here in this thread seems to precisely describe the long consonants in Japanese words like kippu and kitte. Does it not?

Yes, but as OP says, "this" = the subject under discussion, long and short vocalic consonants, in particular r and l, seems to be a different phenomenon.

Do you think it is a different phenomenon? I do.

I don't know if it's unique to Slovakian.

Many thanks to you Vinny for attempting to clarify my point so accurately. The long consonants in Japanese words like kippu are precisely the geminate consonants I was asking if they were really the same. Vinny thinks not.

On Tonieja's side point, you can't have a geminate consonant at the start of a word in Czech, as far as I can see - they seem always to insert an e to prevent it happening where otherwise you might think it could. But I believe there are other languages where you can have them. For example if you read Alexander McCall-Smith's No 1 Ladies Detective Agency, set in Botswana, where the main language is Setswana, we are led to believe a polite address to a woman is Mma, and to a man, Rra. And having seen a TV adaptation, these doubled consonants seemed to be pronounced geminately, rather than being a curious digraph. Not a brilliant source, but it's late.

It seems to me that Serbian has at least one consonant that functions as described above. In Serbian:

Serbian is српски
Croation is хрватски

Russian puts a vowel before each of those r's.

Pronouncing things over to myself, I'm not sure English doesn't have vocalic consonants, in cases like the middle syllable of cummerbund and bubblegum. We don't spell them without letters for vowels, but I would want to look at (and be able to read) a spectrograph before saying that there was a pure vowel before the r or the l as the words are normally pronounced.

NA, the question wasn't whether other languages have vocalic consonants, it was whether any of those languages distinguishes long and short vocalic consonants as does Slovakian.

cummerbund and bubblegum

The first one doesn't work in a non-rhotic accent. But certainly in my accent bubblegum works. And indeed bubble and best of all bubbled. Now you point it out, I don't really see why as a matter of pronunciation they are materially different from the same kind of sound as they have in vlk. So probably this is just a matter of orthography - the Slovak orthography is unusual, but in reality doesn't reflect sounds that are that unusual.

What about Bulgarian? They use the hard sign ъ as in България

The usual English example is the kk in bookkeeper. Contrast with bookcase.

English doesn't have long and short vocalic consonants, though, iviehoff.

English doesn't have long and short vocalic consonants, though, iviehoff.

Certainly not orthographically. But I find that the L is longer in bottled than in bottle when I say it. So if we take it as matter of pronunciation rather than orthography, I wonder if maybe I have found the same thing. But I'm not sure. What do you think?

If I understand correctly, the distinction in Slovakian is phonemic, that is, there could be a difference in meaning between two words that were identical except that a vocalic l or r was long in one and short in the other.

To the extent there is a difference in length between the last syllable of bottled and bottle, it depends on the environment, that is, a following consonant makes the l longer. So there is no phonemic difference. If you pronounce "bubbled" with the second vowel having exactly the length it has in "bubble", everyone will understand you to be saying "bubbled" (although perhaps a little oddly). But if I understand correctly about Slovakian, that wouldn't be true in the case of a pair of words that differed only in the length of the vocalic consonant; pronounce the one with the long consonant shortly (so to speak), and you will be understood to have said the other one.

There's no phonological reason for English not to have this distinction. Imagine that a small bottle can be called a "bottle-ling". This would not sound the same as "bottling".
Perhaps somebody can come up with a less contrived example.

I think English would very soon reduce bottle-ling to bottling. In any case I think I would analyze the le-l bit of bottle-ling as a vocalic l followed by a consonantal l, not as a long vocalic l.

I seem to have switched from "bottled" to "bubbled" in #17 without meaning to. Either one would do but I should have stuck to one or the other.