Since we are talking about pronunciation, we also have to mention the concept of phonemes or units of pronunciation. Unfortunately, the lateral moving doesn’t stop there. Over the course of a few generations, great-grandparents would not have been able to understand their great-grandchildren as easily as we could have communicated with ours due to the vowel shifts. These changes often happened at lightning speeds (linguistically at least). ![]() Contrary to the simplicity of ‘vowel A becomes vowel B’ in the first sentence of this paragraph, the reality is that the vowel shifts often went through a few intermediate sounds rather than from pronunciation A to pronunciation B. The second phase saw the other, more open vowels /a: ɛː ɔː/ become /eː iː oː/, which are more closed respectively. Phase Two of the Great Vowel Shift – open vowels This means the placement of the tongue is higher in the mouth than it was before, becoming new, closed vowels /iː uː/. This sounds like /ei ou/ or /əi əu/, while the mid-close vowels (not as close as closed) /eː oː/ underwent a raising process. During the first phase, the closed vowels /iː uː/ became dipthongs this is where two vowels are pronounced by sliding to one another, rather than pronouncing them separately. Quick note: a closed vowel means that during pronunciation, the tongue is very close to the rough of the mouth. The Great Vowel Shift can be split into three parts or phases. Phase One of the Great Vowel Shift – closed vowels If you are familiar with IPA or have read the guide on phonetics, you will see immediately that Middle English vowels sounded quite different from their modern-day counterparts. /oː/ does not exist in Modern English, but somewhere between n orth and c ot.In fact, here are how the vowels actually sounded: Middle English had the following long vowels: /iː eː ɛː aː ɔː oː uː/ These aren’t the modern equivalents that are used in IPA today. A quick(ish) guide can be found here and may help with the forthcoming explanation. To explain this next section, readers need to have basic knowledge of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), or how to write down things as they are pronounced in a standard, international way. What happened? Did we lose a vowel and did the others go for a holiday, pick up the local dialect and come back? None of them sounds similar to their Middle English ancestors. Middle English had 7 long vowels while Modern Received Pronunciation has 6 vowels. Between about 13, when the first changes started to take place, the mixing of French and Old English was already history and Middle English reigned with linguistic supremacy in England. ![]() ![]() To explain all of these, we need to go back several centuries and talk about how English was before the Great Vowel Shift. So what is this Great Vowel Shift? When did it happen? Why is it so significant? Have you ever wondered why English pronunciation is so difficult? Why are words written one way but pronounced in another? In addition to English’s bastard origins, there was a great event over a couple of centuries of extreme linguistic and phonological importance called the Great Vowel Shift.
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