Great Vowel Shift - Effect

Effect

For a pronunciation key for IPA symbols, see Wikipedia:IPA for English.

The main difference between the pronunciation of Middle English and Modern English is in the value of the long vowels, described as the Great Vowel Shift. Vowels of Middle English had "continental" values much like those remaining in Italian and liturgical Latin. 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.

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:

• Middle English (ā) fronted to and then raised to, and in many dialects diphthongised in Modern English to (as in make). (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 raised to and then to modern English (as in beak).
• Middle English raised to Modern English (as in feet).
• Middle English diphthongised to, which was most likely followed by and finally Modern English (as in mice).
• Middle English raised to, and in the eighteenth century this became Modern English or (as in boat).
• Middle English raised to Modern English (as in boot).
• Middle English was diphthongised in most environments to, and this was followed by, and then Modern English (as in mouse) in the eighteenth century. Before labial consonants, this shift did not occur, and remains as in soup and room (its Middle English spelling was roum).

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).

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. In Northern English, the long back vowels remained unaffected, the long front vowels having undergone an earlier shift. 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 effect of the Great Vowel Shift may be seen very clearly in the English names of many of the letters of the alphabet. 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/. The French names (from which the English names are derived) preserve the English vowels from before the Great Vowel Shift. 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.