Great Vowel Shift

The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took
place in England between 1350 and 1700. The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto
Jespersen (18601943), a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term.
Because English spelling was becoming standardized in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Great Vowel
Shift is responsible for many of the peculiarities of English spelling.

Effect

The main difference between the pronunciation of Middle English and Modern English is in the value of
the long vowels, described as the Great Vowel Shift. Vowels of Middle English had "continental" values
much like those remaining in Spanish and liturgical Latin. However, during the Great Vowel Shift, the
two highest long vowels became diphthongs, and the other five underwent an increase in tongue
height.
 The principal changes (with the vowels shown in IPA) are roughly as follows. However, exceptions
occur, the transitions were not always complete, and there were sometimes accompanying changes
inorthography:

Changes to the long front vowels Changes to the long back vowels

Middle English [a] (helpinfo) fronted to

[] (helpinfo) and then raised to
Old English [] (helpinfo) was rounded and raised to
[] (helpinfo), [e] (helpinfo) and in many
early Middle English [] (helpinfo). This Middle
dialects diphthongized in Modern English to
English [] then raised to [o] (helpinfo), and in the
[e] (helpinfo) (as in make). The [a] in the
18th century this became Modern English
Middle English words in question had arisen
[o] (helpinfo) or [] (helpinfo) (as in boat).
earlier from lengthening of short a in open
syllables and from French loan words.

Middle English [] (helpinfo) raised to

[e] (helpinfo) and then to modern English [i] (as
in beak).
Middle English [o] (helpinfo) raised to Modern
English [u] (helpinfo) (as in boot).

Middle English [e] (helpinfo) raised to

Modern English [i] (helpinfo) (as in feet).

Middle English [u] (helpinfo) was diphthongized in

most environments to [u], and this was followed by
Middle English [i] (helpinfo) diphthongized
[] (helpinfo), and then Modern English
to [i], which was most likely followed by [] and
[a] (helpinfo) (as in mouse) in the 18th century.
finally Modern English [a] (helpinfo) (as
Beforelabial consonants, this shift did not occur,
in mice).
and [u] remains as in soup and room (its Middle
English spelling was roum).

This means that the vowel in the English word same was in Middle English pronounced [a] (similar to
modern psalm); the vowel in feet was [e] (similar to modern fate); the vowel in wipe was [i] (similar to
modern weep); the vowel in boot was [o] (similar to modern boat); and the vowel
in mouse was [u] (similar to modern moose).
The effects of the shift were not entirely uniform, and differences in degree of vowel shifting can
sometimes be detected in regional dialects both in written and in spoken English. In Northern English,
the longback vowels remained unaffected, the long front vowels having undergone an earlier
shift. In Scotland, Scots differed in its input to the Great Vowel Shift, the long
vowels [i], [e] and [a] shifted to [ei], [i] and [e]by the Middle Scots period, [o] had shifted
to [] in Early Scots and [u] remained unaffected.
The effect of the Great Vowel Shift may be seen very clearly in the English names of many of the
letters of the alphabet. A, B, C and D are pronounced /e, bi, si, di/ in today's English, but in
contemporary French they are /a, be, se, de/. The French names (from which the English names are
derived) preserve the qualities of the English vowels from before the Great Vowel Shift. By contrast, the
names of F, L, M, N and S (/f, l, m, n, s/) remain the same in both languages, because "short"
vowels were largely unaffected by the Shift.
Exceptions
Not all words underwent certain phases of the Great Vowel Shift. ea in particular did not take the step
to [i] in several words, such as great, break, steak, swear, and bear. The vowels mentioned in words
likebreak or steak underwent shortening, possibly due to the plosives following the vowels, and then
diphthongization. The presence of [r] in swear and bear caused the vowel quality to be retained, though
not in all cases. Other examples are father, which failed to become [], and broad, which failed to
become [o]. The word room, which was spelled as roum in Middle English, retains its Middle English
pronunciation, so it is an exception to the shifting of [u] to [a]. This is because it is followed by m,
a labial consonant.
Shortening of long vowels at various stages produced further complications. ea is again a good
example, shortening commonly before coronal consonants such as d and th,
thus: dead, head, threat, wealth etc. (This is known as the bredbread merger.) oo was shortened
from [u] to [] in many cases before k, d and less commonly t, thus book, foot, good etc. Some cases
occurred before the change of [] to []: blood,flood. Similar, yet older shortening occurred for some
instances of ou: could.
Note that some loanwords, such as souffl and Umlaut, have retained a spelling from their origin
language that may seem similar to the previous examples; but, since they were not a part of English at
the time of the Great Vowel Shift, they are not actually exceptions to the shift.
Possible causes

Experts in linguistics and cultural history continue to debate possible reasons for the vowel shift.[8]

Some theories emphasise the mass migration after the Black Death in the mid-14th century to
southeast England, where differences in accents led to some groups modifying their speech to allow
for a standard pronunciation of vowel sounds.
Another theory foregrounds a sudden social mobility after the Black Death, with people from lower
levels in society moving to higher levels (the pandemic also having hit the aristocracy).

Another explanation highlights the language of the ruling class: the medieval aristocracy had spoken
French, but by the early 15th century they had come to use English. This may have caused a change
to the "prestige accent" of English, either by making pronunciation more French in style or by changing
it in some other way, perhaps by hypercorrection to something thought as "more English" (England
being at war with France for much of this period). But there is just as much evidence of
the hypercorrection to be "more English" as there is for it to be "more French" (with French still the
slightly favored language of the upper class).

Another possible influence, the great political and social upheavals of the 15th century, were largely
contemporaneous with the vowel shift.
 Effect on spelling

Main article: English orthography

The printing press was introduced to England in the 1470s by William Caxton and later Richard
Pynson. The adoption and use of the printing press accelerated the process of standardization
of English spellingwhich continued into the 16th century. The standard spellings were those of Middle
English pronunciation, as well as spelling conventions continued from Old English. However, the
Middle English spellings were retained into Modern English while the Great Vowel Shift was taking
place, resulting in some of the peculiarities of Modern English spelling in relation to vowels.

Other Germanic languages

German and Dutch also experienced sound changes resembling the first stage of the Great Vowel
Shift. In German, by the 15th or 16th centuries, long [i] had changed to [a], (as in Eis, 'ice') and
long [u] to [a](as in Haus, 'house'), though some dialects resist those changes to this day
(Alemannic, Limburgish, Ripuarian and most varieties of Lower German). In Dutch, the former
became [i] (ijs), and the latter had earlier become [y], which then became [y] (huis). In German,
there also was a separate [y], which became [], via an intermediate similar to the Dutch. In
the Polder Dutch pronunciation, the shift has actually been carried further than in Standard Dutch, with
a very similar result as in German and English.
Dutch and German have, like English, also shifted common Germanic *[o] to [u] (German)
or [u] (Dutch), as in Proto-Germanic *ft- 'foot' > German Fu, Dutch voet (as well as the rare
secondary *[e] to [i] in German and [i] in Dutch). However, this similarity turns out to be superficial on
closer inspection. Given the huge differences between the structures of Old English vowel phonology
on one side, and that of Old Dutch and Old High German on the other, this is hardly surprising. While
there is no indication that English long vowels other than [a] did anything but move up in tongue-body
position, Dutch [u] and German [u]appear to have come about through a process of diphthongization.
In the very earliest longer, connected Old High German and Old Dutch texts (9th century), the
vowel [o] is already largely written -uo-. That is, it had broken into a nucleus with a centering glide.
This complex nucleus smoothed in Middle High German and Middle Dutch, becoming the [u] of
Modern German and the [u] of Modern Dutch around the same time as the long high vowels began to
diphthongize.
The [o] of Modern German has a variety of sources, the oldest of which is Proto-Germanic *aw, which
smoothed before /t d r x/ (so rot 'red', Ohr 'ear', Floh 'flea', etc.) Elsewhere the sound was written -ou-
in OHG. In Old Dutch, this sound had become -o- everywhere, explaining the difference in words such
as Dutch boom and German Baum.
While English has, to a large extent, kept its orthography from before the vowel shift, German and
Dutch have adapted their orthographies to the changes. Therefore, pronunciation of German and
Dutch words is largely predictable from the written form still today, unlike English words. Unpredictable
pairs, such as "wind" vs. "find", or "meat" vs. "great" vs. "threat" do not occur in either of the two
languages.
Norwegian and Swedish also experienced something similar to the Great Vowel Shift in their back
vowels, although the results were different. As in early modern English, [] (spelled , and the cognate
of English oa as in "boat") shifted to [o], while the long o had chain-shifted to [u] (cf. English "oo"). But
 instead of diphthongizing, the older [u] was fronted to []. Danish has not undergone these changes in
the back vowels, but instead the front vowels have been affected. As in early modern English,
long a, [a], shifted to [] (short a is now [], like in standard English), while long e, [e], has moved
toward [i], clashing with long i.

What is the Great Vowel Shift?

The Great Vowel Shift was a massive sound change affecting the long vowels of English during the fifteenth
to eighteenth centuries. Basically, the long vowels shifted upwards; that is, a vowel that used to be
pronounced in one place in the mouth would be pronounced in a different place, higher up in the mouth.
The Great Vowel Shift has had long-term implications for, among other things, orthography, the teaching of
reading, and the understanding of any English-language text written before or during the Shift. Any standard
history of the English language textbook (see our sources) will have a discussion of the GVS.
When we talk about the GVS, we usually talk about it happening in eight steps. It is very
important to remember, however, that each step did not happen overnight. At any given time,
people of different ages and from different regions would have different pronunciations of the
same word. Older, more conservative speakers would retain one pronunciation while younger,
more advanced speakers were moving to a new one; some people would be able to pronounce
the same word two or more different ways. The same thing happens today, of course: I can
pronounce the word "route" to rhyme with "boot" or with "out" and may switch from one
pronunciation to another in the midst of a conversation.
 The Great Vowel Shift

The main difference between Chaucer's language and our own is in the pronunciation of the
"long" vowels. The consonants remain generally the same, though Chaucer rolled his r's,
sometimes dropped his aitches, and pronounced both elements of consonant combinations, such
as "kn," that were later simplified. And the short vowels are very similar in Middle and Modern
English. But the "long" vowels are regularly and strikingly different. This is due to what is called
The Great Vowel Shift.

Beginning in the twelfth century and continuing until the eighteenth century (but with its main
effects in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries) the sounds of the long stressed vowels in
English changed their places of articulation (i.e., how the sounds are made).

Old and Middle English were written in the Latin alphabet and the vowels were represented by
the letters assigned to the sounds in Latin. For example, Middle English "long e" in Chaucer's
"sheep" had the value of Latin "e" (and sounded like Modern English "shape" [/e/] in the
International Phonetic Alphabet [IPA]). It had much the same value as written long e has in most
modern European languages. Consequently, one can read Chaucer's long vowels with the same
values as in Latin or any continental European language and come pretty close to the Middle
English values.

The Great Vowels Shift changed all that; by the end of the sixteenth century the "e" in "sheep"
sounded like that in Modern English "sheep" or "meet" [IPA /i/]. To many it seemed that the
pronunciation of English had moved so far from its visual representation that a new alphabet was
needed, and in the sixteenth century we have the first attempts to "reform" English spellings, a
movement still active today. In 1569 John Hart (in his Orthographie) went so far as to devise a
new phonetic alphabet to remedy what he considered a fatal flaw in our system of language. (His
alphabet and the work of other language reformers provides us with our best evidence for the
pronunciation of English in his time).

To understand how English changed (not why; no one knows) one must first note that vowels are
articulated in particular parts of the mouth; we make the sound in Modern English "deep" [/dip/]
with our tongue forward and high in the mouthr, and the sound in Modern English "boat" [/bot/]
with our tongue lowered and drawn toward the back of the mouth and the jaw relatively low
(open). Say "ee" (or "beet") and "o" (or "boat") in succession and you may be able to feel the
movement of your tongue from front to back.

This chart roughly represents the places where the "long vowels" are articulated:

FRONT CENTER BACK

HIGH /i:/ [Modern "beet"] . /u:/ [Modern "boot"]

MID /e:/ [Modern "bait"] . /o:/ [Modern "boat"]

LOW /:/ [Modern "bag"] /a:/ [Modern "father"] "au" [Modern "bought"]

[The "au" representing the low back vowel above is there because I cannot find a way to print a
backward c, the usual means of representing this sound.]
The Great Vowel shift invloved a regular movement of the places of articulation: The front vowels
each moved up a notch, except for /i:/, which formed a dipthong. Likewise the back vowels
moved up, except for /u:/, which formed another dipthong:

Position . Middle English Modern English

FRONT VOWELS HIGH /i:/ ---> /ai/

. MID (CLOSED) /e:/ ---> /i:/

. LOW (OPEN) /:/ ---> /e:/ (later --> /i:/)

CENTRAL VOWEL LOW /a:/ ---> /e:/

BACK VOWELS HIGH /u:/ ---> /au/

. MID (CLOSED) /o:/ ---> /u:/

. LOW (OPEN) "au" ---> /o:/

Note that the change affects only long, stressed vowels. The "y" in Middle Enghlish "my" was
affected because it has primary stress, and we say /mai/; the "y" in a word like "only" was not
affected (the primary stress is on the first syllable and -ly lacks stress, so we say /li:/, making the
-ly of "only" rime with "see."

The change is not as neat as is shown; /:/ ("open e," as it is called in most discussions) did not
complete the movement from /:/ to /e:/ to /i:/ (contrast Mod. Eng. "break" and "beak").
Moreover, when Middle English "e" represents /:/ and when the spelling "o" or "oo" represents
the open vowel often can be determined only by the etymology of the words. Modern spellings
offer a clue: as a general rule, where modern English uses "ea" (as in "read") or "oa" (as in loaf),
the Middle English equivalent was the open vowel sound. ("Open" and "close" or "closed" refer to
the jaw -- lowered for "open" and raised for "close" vowels.)

There are other, more exact but more complex, ways of representing the change. Moreover, our
best attempts at recovering Chaucer's pronunciation can be only approximations. Nevertheless the
following chart will provide a guide to the pronunciation of Chaucer's "long vowels":

Middle English Sounds like Modern

y,i "myne, sight" "meet"

e, ee "me, meet, mete" (close e) "mate"

e "begge, rede" (open e) "bag"

a, aa "mate, maat" "father"

u, ou "hus, hous" "boot"

o, oo "bote, boot" (close o) "oak"

o "lof, ok" (open o) "bought"