Great Vowel Shift

The Great Vowel Shift was a series of changes in the pronunciation of the English language that took place primarily between 1400 and 1700, beginning in southern England and today having influenced effectively all dialects of English. Through this vowel shift, the pronunciation of all Middle English long vowels were changed. Some consonant sounds also changed, particularly those that became silent; the term Great Vowel Shift is sometimes used to include these consonantal changes.^[1]^[2]

The standardization of English spelling began in the 15th and 16th centuries; the Great Vowel Shift is the major reason English spellings now often deviate considerably from how they represent pronunciations.^[3] The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto Jespersen (1860–1943), a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term.^[4]

Population migration: This is the most accepted theory; some scholars have argued that the rapid migration of peoples to the southeast of England from the east and central Midlands of England following the Black Death produced a clash of dialects that made Londoners distinguish their speech from the immigrants who came from other English cities by changing their vowel system.^[7]

[6]

French loan words: Others argue that the influx of loanwords was a major factor in the shift.^[8]

French

Middle-class hypercorrection: Yet others assert that because of the increasing prestige of French pronunciations among the middle classes (perhaps related to the English aristocracy's switching from French to English around this time), a process of may have started a shift that unintentionally resulted in vowel pronunciations that are inaccurate imitations of French pronunciations.^[9]

hypercorrection

War with France: An opposing theory states that the and general anti-French sentiments caused hypercorrection deliberately to make English sound less like French.^[10]

wars with France

The causes of the Great Vowel Shift are unknown^[5]^: 68 and have been a source of intense scholarly debate; as yet, there is no firm consensus. The greatest changes occurred during the 15th and 16th centuries, and their origins are at least partly phonetic.

Long i in mite was pronounced as /iː/, so Middle English mite sounded similar to Modern English meet.

Long e in meet was pronounced as /eː/, so Middle English meet sounded similar to modern Australian English met but pronounced longer.

Long a in mate was pronounced as /aː/, with a vowel similar to the broad a of ma.

Long o in boot was pronounced as /oː/, so Middle English boot sounded similar to modern Southern England, Australian and New Zealand English bought.

Canaanite Shift

Chain shift

""—a poem using the irregularity of English spelling and pronunciation

The Chaos

Grimm's law

High German consonant shift

History of English

Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law

Phonological history of English vowels

Slavic palatalisation

Vowel shift

Great Vowel Shift Video lecture

Menzer, M. . Great Vowel Shift. Furman University. Archived from the original on 2002-08-10. Retrieved 2010-09-07.

"What is the Great Vowel Shift?"

. The Geoffrey Chaucer Page. Harvard University. Archived from the original on 2013-04-01. Retrieved 2007-05-17.