In English, particularly American English, the construction of vowel-consonant-vowel (VCV) somewhere after the first letter of a word generally makes the first vowel long. Contrast that to vowel-consonant-consonant, in which the vowel is short, regardless of whether the second consonant is followed by a vowel, although, beware of digraphs (see below).
You remember short versus long vowels from elementary-school English classes. Right?
The 'i' in 'dime' is long, the 'i' in 'dim' is short. Any vowel sound that does not say the letter's name is not long. While it might not be short, it is NOT long (although the long 'u' is usually 'ooh,' not 'you' or 'yew').
Yes, this is English I'm discussing, and many of its 'rules' have gobs of exceptions, but it's a good rule to know, as it helps solve a lot of spelling conundra. In fact, I'm betting most English speakers have little or no idea why there are so many short English words that end with 'e.' In fact, the entire reason that words like 'bite' and 'dame' have an ending 'e' is specifically so that the previous vowel is 'forced' to be long, otherwise, they're too readily confused with 'bit' and 'dam.' It's, of course, not all that surprising that the 'i' in 'hypocrite' is NOT long. [eye roll]
In 'general,' a word with two VCV constructions, none of the vowels are long. However, in general, the VCV pronunciation paradigm is a useful indicator of how words are spelled.
One of the (many) problems with VCV involves the 'gh' construction in words that acts as another forcing agent to make the vowel before it long, a feature true of all these:
bight, fight, light, might, night, right, sight, tight,
wight.
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This is below: Digraphs are two consonants that, together, form a distinct sound different from either component consonant, such as the ending 'ph' in 'digraph.' In fact, I've always been disappointed that the word 'diphthong' describes two vowels combining to form a sound different from either component of the diphthong, despite that 'diphthong' has THREE digraphs in it! Poor planning!