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 (1860–1943), a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term.

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.

Read more about Great Vowel Shift:  Effect, Causes, Effect On Spelling, Other Languages

Famous quotes containing the words vowel and/or shift:

    Brute animals have the vowel sounds; man only can utter consonants.
    Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)

    The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed children’s adaptive capacity.
    David Elkind (20th century)