A survey of the grammatical works that appeared in the Middle Hungarian period shows that length was intuitively recognized as a feature of the vowel system of the language but its incorporation into descriptions of the vocal domain of the language was tentative and gradual. The treatment of length fits into the slow recognition of the different types or classes of vowels generally in the European grammatical tradition – as opposed to the major classes of consonants, a system whose broad outlines were inherited from antiquity. The question of vowel length is furthermore intricately interwoven with issues of graphic marking in typography as well as of length alternations in the morphophonology.