japanese is another language in which vowel length is distinctive. for example, "biru" is a foreign loan word (clipped from a longer form) that means "building" whereas "bīru" is a foreign loan word for "beer". using a notion intuitive to a speaker of japanese, it could be said that more than anything, what differentiates "bīru" from "biru" is an extra mora (or minimal vowel syllable) in the speech rhythm that signifies a lengthening of the vowel . however, upon observation one might also note a rise in pitch and intensity of the longer vowel. it could be said, also, that vowel lengthening—chronemic contrasts—nearly doubles japanese's rather small inventory of vowel phonemes (though the occurrence of diphthongs also augments vowel counts). due to native literacy practices, japanese long vowels are often thought of as sequences of two vowels of the same quality (rather than one vowel of a greater quantity or length) since that is how they are sometimes written.