![]() ea in particular did not take the step to in several words, such as great, break, steak, swear, and bear. By contrast, the names of F, L, M, N and S (/ɛf, ɛl, ɛm, ɛn, ɛs/) remain the same in both languages, because "short" vowels were largely unaffected by the Shift.ĩ Exceptions Not all words underwent certain phases of the Great Vowel Shift. A, B, C and D are pronounced /eɪ, biː, siː, diː/ in today's English, but in contemporary French they are /a, be, se, de/.Ĩ The French names (from which the English names are derived) preserve the English vowels from before the Great Vowel Shift. The effect of the Great Vowel Shift may be seen very clearly in the English names of many of the letters of the alphabet. In Scotland, Scots differed in its input to the Great Vowel Shift, the long vowels, and shifted to, and by the Middle Scots period, had shifted to in Early Scots and remained unaffected. ![]() 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.ħ In Northern English, the long back vowels remained unaffected, the long front vowels having undergone an earlier shift. ![]() Before labial consonants, this shift did not occur, and remains as in soup and room (Middle English spelling was roum).Ħ This means that the vowel in the English word same was in Middle English pronounced (similar to modern psalm) the vowel in feet was (similar to modern fate) the vowel in wipe was (similar to modern weep) the vowel in boot was (similar to modern boat) and the vowel in mouse was (similar to modern moose). Middle English was diphthongised in most environments to , and this was followed by, and then Modern English (as in mouse) in the eighteenth century. Middle English raised to Modern English (as in boot). Middle English raised to , and in the eighteenth century this became Modern English or (as in boat). Middle English diphthongised to , which was most likely followed by and finally Modern English (as in mice). Middle English raised to Modern English (as in feet). )ĥ Middle English raised to and then to modern English (as in beak). (The in the Middle English words in question had arisen earlier from lengthening of short a in open syllables and from French loan words, rather than from original Old English ā, because the latter had in the meantime been raised to Middle English. Middle English (ā) fronted to and then raised to, and in many dialects diphthongised in Modern English to (as in make). However, during the Great Vowel Shift, the two highest long vowels became diphthongs, and the other five underwent an increase in tongue height with one of them coming to the front.Ĥ 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 in orthography. Before the Great Vowel Shift, these vowels had "continental" values much like those remaining in Italian and liturgical Latin. Because English spelling was becoming standardised in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Great Vowel Shift is responsible for many of the peculiarities of English spelling.ģ Effect The values of the long vowels form the main difference between the pronunciation of Middle English and Modern English, and the Great Vowel Shift is one of the historical events marking the separation of Middle and Modern English. The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto Jespersen (1860–1943), a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term. 2 Introduction The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in England between 13.
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