The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in England between 1350 and 1500. The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto Jespersen (1860–1943), a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term. Of vowels, known as the Great Vowel Shift, affected all of Geoffrey Chaucer’s seven long vowels, and for centuries spelling remained untidy. If the meaning of the message was clear, the spelling of individual words seemed unimportant. In the 17th century compositors began to adopt fixed spellings for practical reasons, Read More.
English is arguably the single most important and influential language in today’s world. It does however contain many vagaries and annoying inconsistencies. One of which is the variations of how vowel combinations should be pronounced. For example, the ‘ea’ in ‘bread’ is pronounced the same as the ‘e’ in ‘bred,’ and not the same as the ‘ea’ in ‘break.’
Old English
(Anglo-Saxon)
c500 – c1100
Normans
French
Early Modern English
c1500 – c1800
Industrial Revolution
Colonialism
English Today
Vowel Shift Meaning
Present day
These inconsistencies weren’t always there and there was only one way to pronounce each vowel so that before approximately 1300 English pronunciation was much more consistent. The problem arose from something linguistic scholars call ‘The Great Vowel Shift’. Something curious happened in the 14th and 15th centuries when, in little over 200 years, the way we spoke English changed very rapidly indeed. But what could have possibly caused this ?
Vowel Shift In Modern English
Before we look at what could have possibly happened to so alter the way vowels were pronounced lets put this in context to what we know of the development of the English language to date.
The history of the English language has been neatly divded, by modern scholars, into about 5 distinct periods. Of course the language itself has ever been evolving and would have transformed gradually over time so we shouldn’t regard these periods as absolute but see the English language as a spectrum of change, morphing gradually over time.
The main phases identified by scholars are : Old English; Middle English; Early Modern English; Late Modern English and English Today.
The great vowel shift was a water shed event , so much so that it is the reason that why most modern day English speakers would struggle to speak with people from the late 14th & 15th Century.
The ‘vowel shift’ relates to the sound of long vowels. For example, a word like “goose” would have been pronounced “goas” (oa as in boat) in the 15th century and it would not be pronounced “goos” until sometime in the 16th century. “mice” would have been pronounced “mees”, “house” –“hoos”; “name” — “nahm”, “feet” — “fayt” (ay as in “pay”), etc. The language was in a radical shift during the 15th century and into at least the middle of the 16th century.
| Today’s Word | Pronunciation before the Great Vowel Shift |
|---|---|
| Goose | “goas” (oa as in boat) |
| Mine | “meen” |
| Mice | “mees” |
| Shire | “sheer” |
| Sheep | “shape” |
| House | “hoos” |
| Life | “leef” |
| Flour | “floor” |
| Boot | “boat” |
| Mate | “maat” |
| Name | “nahm” |
| Feet | “fayt” (ay as in “pay”) |
Rather disappointingly we have to say up front that no one is entirely sure what the actual causes of the vowel shift were. However several very plausible theories exist that attempt to explain it and as with most things in life the real answer is probably a combination of all of them to varying degrees.
Redistribution of Populations
Virulent outbreaks of plague, also know as the ‘Black Death’, in the late 14th and early 15th century saw vast swathes of the population perish and as a consequence a redistribution of populations when people from many different regions emigrated to the southeast of England, where it’s thought that their accents were combined to create new pronunciations based on the standard London vernacular of the time.
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).
Vowel Shift Map
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, English 'long e' in 'met' had the value of Latin 'e' (and sounded like Modern English 'mate' [/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.)Vowel Shift Midwest
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:
FRONT VOWELS: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.'HIGH /i/ ---> /ai/CENTRAL VOWEL
MID (CLOSED) /e/ ---> /i/
LOW (OPEN) /æ/ ---> e (later --> /i/LOW /a/ ---> /e/BACK VOWELSHIGH /u/ ---> /au/
MID (CLOSED) /o/ ---> /u/
LOW (OPEN) 'au' ---> /o/
The change is not as neat as is shown; /æ/ ('open e,' as it is called in most discussions) did not complete the movement from /æ/ to /e/ to /i/ (contrast Mod. Eng. 'break' and 'beak'). Moreover, knowing when Middle English 'e' represents /æ/ and when 'ou' (spelled o) is the open vowel depends on knowing the eymology 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 sound.
There are other, more exact but more complex, ways of representing the change. Nevertheless the following chart will provide a guide to the pronunciation of Chaucer's 'long vowels':
See any history of the English Language (e.g., A.C. Baugh, rev. Thomas Cable, A History of the English Language, [PE 1075 .B3]) for further details.