while old english had vowel lengthening, most modern dialects of english do not. for example, the words "god" and "good" used to have the same vowel sound, but the vowel in "good ("/go:d/), which was a long vowel, was said longer than it was in "god" ("/"god"/)", which was a short vowel. although the vowel sounds in modern english are very different than in old english, readers can often get an idea of how vowels used to sound like based on an english word's spelling, which often shows words' historical roots rather than their current pronunciation. long vowels in old english could be written with a bar on top of the vowel like in "gōd" (good)"." later, during the days of middle english, spellings used to spell long vowels included spelling with two vowels together like in "book" or "break" and putting a silent "e" at the end of the word like in "hate". these vowels were all long vowels until the great vowel shift in english, in which the vowel sounds in english changed to sound very differently from before.