Several laboratories have reported that the order of items within repeating vowel sequences cannot be identified at item durations below 100 ms. This is puzzling, since phonemic sequences in speech consist of items that are considerably briefer. The present study demonstrates that listeners can, without feedback or knowledge of results, readily learn to name phonemic orders at item durations even briefer than those of normal speech. The listeners first identified different orders of components in repeating three‐item vowel sequences at a few hundred ms per item (an easy task), and were then required to identify orders of these sequences at regularly decreasing item durations. By a series of successive generalizations to ever shorter items, order was named down to about two glottal pulses/vowel (the shortest duration used). Within the durational range of vowels in speech, our listeners distinguished different arrangements by their resemblances to particular words. Below this range, listeners employed qualitative differences of a nonverbal nature. Implications for theories of speech perception will be discussed. [Work supported by NIH.]