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Great Vowel Shift
The Great Vowel Shift was a major series of changes in the pronunciation of the English language that took place,
beginning in southern England, primarily between 1350 and the 1600s and 1700s,[1][2] today influencing effectively all
dialects of English. Through this vowel shift, all Middle English long vowels changed their pronunciation. In addition,
some consonant sounds changed as well, particularly those that became silent; the term Great  Vowel  Shift is
sometimes used to include these consonant changes as well.

English spelling was first becoming standardized in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the Great Vowel Shift is
responsible for the fact that English spellings now often strongly deviate in their representation of English
pronunciations.[3] The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto Jespersen (1860–1943), a Danish linguist and
Anglicist, who coined the term.[4]

Contents
Causes
Overall changes
Details
Middle English vowel system
Changes
First phase
Second phase
Later mergers
Northern English and Scots
Exceptions
Related consonant changes
Spelling
See also
Notes
Sources
References
Bibliography
External links

Causes
The causes of the Great Vowel Shift have been a source of intense scholarly debate and as yet there is no firm
consensus. The greatest changes occurred during the 15th and 16th centuries. Some scholars have argued that the rapid
migration of peoples from northern England to the southeast following the Black Death caused a mixing of accents that
forced a change in the standard London vernacular. Others argue that the influx of French loanwords was a major
factor in the shift.[5] 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 hypercorrection may have started a shift that unintentionally resulted in vowel pronunciations that were less
like French instead of more.[6] An opposing theory states that the wars with France and general anti-French sentiments
caused hypercorrection in order to deliberately make English sound less like French.[7]
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Overall changes
The main difference between the pronunciation of Middle English in the year 1400 and Modern English (Received
Pronunciation) is in the value of the long vowels. Long vowels in Middle English had "continental" values, much like
those in Italian and Standard German, but in standard Modern English, they have entirely different pronunciations.
The change in pronunciation is known as the Great Vowel Shift.[8]

Vowel pronunciation
Word Late Middle English Modern English
before the GVS after the GVS
bite /iː/ /aɪ/
meet /eɪ/
/iː/
meat /ɛː/
mate /ɑː/ /eɪ/
out /uː/ /aʊ/
boot /oʊ/ /uː/
boat /ɔː/ /oʊ/

This timeline shows the main vowel changes that occurred between late Middle English in the year 1400 and Received
Pronunciation in the mid-20th century by using representative words. The Great Vowel Shift occurred in the lower half
of the table, between 1400 and 1600. The changes that happened after 1600 are not usually considered part of the
Great Vowel Shift proper. Pronunciation is given in the International Phonetic Alphabet:[9]

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Details

Middle English vowel system


Before the Great Vowel Shift, Middle English in Southern England had seven long vowels, /iː eː ɛː aː ɔː oː uː/. The
vowels occurred in the words bite, meet, meat, mate, boat, boot and out.

Southern Middle English


vowel system
front back
close /iː/: bite /uː/: out
close-mid /eː/: meet /oː/: boot
open-mid /ɛː/: meat /ɔː/: boat
open /aː/: mate —

The words had very different pronunciations in Middle English from their pronunciations in Modern English. Long i in
bite was pronounced as /iː/ so Middle English bite sounded like Modern English beet /biːt/; long e in meet was
pronounced as /eː/ so Middle English meet sounded similar to Modern English mate /meɪt/; long a in mate was

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pronounced as /aː/, with a vowel like Scottish English ah in father [faːðər] or General American short o in cot /kät/;
and long o in boot was pronounced as /oː/, similar to modern oa in General American boat /oʊ/. In addition, Middle
English had a long /ɛː/ in beat, like modern short e in bed but pronounced longer, and a long /ɔː/ in boat.

Changes
After around 1300, the long vowels of Middle English began changing in pronunciation. The two close vowels, /iː uː/,
became diphthongs (vowel breaking), and the other five, /eː ɛː aː ɔː oː/, underwent an increase in tongue height
(raising).

They occurred over several centuries and can be divided into two phases. The first phase affected the close vowels /iː
uː/ and the close-mid vowels /eː oː/: /eː oː/ were raised to /iː uː/, and /iː uː/ became the diphthongs /ei ou/ or /əi
əu/.[10] The second phase affected the open vowel /aː/ and the open-mid vowels /ɛː ɔː/: /aː ɛː ɔː/ were raised, in most
cases changing to /eː iː oː/.[11]

The Great Vowel Shift changed vowels without merger so Middle English before the vowel shift had the same number
of vowel phonemes as Early Modern English after the vowel shift. After the Great Vowel Shift, some vowel phonemes
began merging. Immediately after the Great Vowel Shift, the vowels of meet and meat were different, but they are
merged in Modern English, and both words are pronounced as /miːt/. However, during the 16th and the 17th
centuries, there were many different mergers, and some mergers can be seen in individual Modern English words like
great, which is pronounced with the vowel /eɪ/ as in mate rather than the vowel /iː/ as in meat.[12]

This is a simplified picture of the changes that happened between late Middle English and today's English.
Pronunciations in 1400, 1500, 1600, and 1900 are shown.[8] To hear recordings of the sounds, click the phonetic
symbols.

Vowel pronunciation
Word late ME EModE ModE Soundfile
1400 1500 1600 1900

bite  /iː/ /ei/ /ɛi/  /aɪ/ 0:00 MENU


meet  /eː/  /iː/ /iː/ 0:00 MENU
meat  /ɛː/  /eː/  /iː/ 0:00 MENU
mate  /aː/ /æː/  /ɛː/  /eɪ/ 0:00 MENU
out  /uː/ /ou/ /ɔu/  /aʊ/ 0:00 MENU
boot  /oː/  /uː/ /uː/ 0:00 MENU
boat  /ɔː/  /oː/  /oʊ/ 0:00 MENU

Before labial consonants and also after /j/,[13] /uː/ did not shift, and /uː/ remains as in soup and room (its Middle
English spelling was roum).

First phase
The first phase of the Great Vowel Shift affected the Middle English close-mid vowels /eː oː/, as in beet and boot, and
the close vowels /iː uː/, as in bite and out. The close-mid vowels /eː oː/ became close /iː uː/, and the close vowels /iː
uː/ became diphthongs. The first phase was complete in 1500, meaning that by that time, words like beet and boot had
lost their Middle English pronunciation, and were pronounced with the same vowels as in Modern English. The words
bite and out were pronounced with diphthongs, but not the same diphthongs as in Modern English.[10]

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First phase of the Great Vowel


Shift
Vowel pronunciation
Word
1400 1550
bite /iː/ /ɛi/
meet /eː/ /iː/
out /uː/ /ɔu/
boot /oː/ /uː/

Scholars agree that the Middle English close vowels /iː uː/ became diphthongs around the year 1500, but disagree
about what diphthongs they changed to. According to Lass, the words bite and out after diphthongization were
pronounced as /beit/ and /out/, similar to American English bait /beɪt/ and oat /oʊt/. Later, the diphthongs /ei ou/
shifted to /ɛi ɔu/, then /əi əu/, and finally to Modern English /aɪ aʊ/.[10] This sequence of events is supported by the
testimony of orthoepists before Hodges in 1644.

However, many scholars such as Dobson (1968), Kökeritz (1953), and Cercignani (1981) argue for theoretical reasons
that, contrary to what 16th-century witnesses report, the vowels /iː uː/ were actually immediately centralized and
lowered to /əi əu/.[nb 1]

Evidence from northern English and Scots (see below) suggests that the close-mid vowels /eː oː/ were the first to shift.
As the Middle English vowels /eː oː/ were raised towards /iː uː/, they forced the original Middle English /iː uː/ out of
place and caused them to become diphthongs /ei ou/. This type of sound change, in which one vowel's pronunciation
shifts so that it is pronounced like a second vowel, and the second vowel is forced to change its pronunciation, is called
a push chain.[14]

However, according to professor Jürgen Handke, for some time, there was a phonetic split between words with the
vowel /iː/ and the diphthong /əi/, in words where the Middle English /iː/ shifted to the Modern English /aɪ/. For an
example, high was pronounced with the vowel /iː/, and like and my were pronounced with the diphthong /əi/.[15]
Therefore, for logical reasons, the close vowels /iː uː/ could have diphthongized before the close-mid vowels /eː oː/
raised. Otherwise, high would probably rhyme with thee rather than my. This type of chain is called a drag chain.

Second phase
The second phase of the Great Vowel Shift affected the Middle English open vowel /aː/, as in mate, and the Middle
English open-mid vowels /ɛː ɔː/, as in meat and boat. Around 1550, Middle English /aː/ was raised to /æː/. Then,
after 1600, the new /æː/ was raised to /ɛː/, with the Middle English open-mid vowels /ɛː ɔː/ raised to close-mid /eː
oː/. [11]

Second phase of the Great Vowel


Shift
Vowel pronunciation
Word
1400 1550 1640
meat /ɛː/ /ɛː/ /eː/
mate /aː/ /aː/, /æː/ /ɛː/
boat /ɔː/ /ɔː/ /oː/

Later mergers

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During the first and the second phases of the Great Vowel Shift, long vowels were shifted without merging with other
vowels, but after the second phase, several vowels merged. The later changes also involved the Middle English
diphthong /ai/, as in day, which had monophthongised to /ɛː/, and merged with Middle English /aː/ as in mate or /
ɛː/ as in meat.[12]
During the 16th and 17th centuries, several different pronunciation variants existed among different parts of the
population for words like meet, meat, mate, and day. In each pronunciation variant, different pairs or trios of words
were merged in pronunciation. Four different pronunciation variants are shown in the table below. The fourth
pronunciation variant gave rise to Modern English pronunciation. In Modern English, meet and meat are merged in
pronunciation and both have the vowel /iː/, and mate and day are merged with the diphthong /eɪ/, which developed
from the 16th-century long vowel /eː/.[12]

Second phase of the Great Vowel Shift

Middle 16th century pronunciation variants


Word
English 1 2 3 4
meet /eː/ /iː/ /iː/ /iː/
/iː/
meat /ɛː/ /eː/
/ɛː/
day /ai/ /eː/
/ɛː/ /eː/
mate /aː/ /æː/

Modern English typically has the meet–meat merger: both meet and meat are pronounced with the vowel /iː/. Words
like great and steak, however, have merged with mate and are pronounced with the vowel /eɪ/, which developed from
the /eː/ shown in the table above.

Northern English and Scots
The Great Vowel Shift affected other dialects as well as the standard English of southern England but in different ways.
In Northern England, the long back vowels remained unaffected because the long mid back vowel had undergone an
earlier shift.[16] Similarly, the Scots language in Scotland had a different vowel system before the Great Vowel Shift, as
/oː/ had shifted to /øː/ in Early Scots. In the Scots equivalent of the Great Vowel Shift, the long vowels /iː/, /eː/ and
/aː/ shifted to /ei/, /iː/ and /eː/ by the Middle Scots period and /uː/ remained unaffected.[17]

The first step in the Great Vowel Shift in Northern and Southern English is shown in the table below. The Northern
English developments of Middle English /iː, eː/ and /oː, uː/ were different from Southern English. In particular, the
Northern English vowels /iː/ in bite, /eː/ in feet, and /oː/ in boot shifted, while the vowel /uː/ in house did not:

Vowel
Word
Middle English Northern Southern
bite /iː/ /ɛi/ /ai/
feet /eː/ /iː/ /iː/
house /uː/ /uː/ /au/
boot /oː/ /iː/ /uː/

The vowel systems of Northern and Southern Middle English immediately before the Great Vowel Shift were different
in one way. In Northern Middle English, the back close-mid vowel /oː/ in boot had already shifted to front /øː/ (a
sound change known as fronting), like the long ö in German hören [ˈhøːʁən] (  listen) "hear". Thus, Southern English
had a back close-mid vowel /oː/, but Northern English did not:[14]

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Southern Middle English Northern Middle English
vowel system vowel system
front back front back
close iː uː close iː uː
close-mid eː oː close-mid eː, øː —
open-mid ɛː ɔː open-mid ɛː ɔː
open aː — open aː —

In both Northern and Southern English, the first step of the Great Vowel Shift raised the close-mid vowels to become
close. Northern Middle English had two close-mid vowels – /eː/ in feet and /øː/ in boot – which were raised to /iː/
and /yː/. Later on, Northern English /yː/ changed to /iː/, so that boot has the same vowel as feet. Southern Middle
English had two close-mid vowels – /eː/ in feet and /oː/ in boot – which were raised to /iː/ and /uː/.

In Southern English, the close vowels /iː/ in bite and /uː/ in house shifted to become diphthongs, but in Northern
English, /iː/ in bite shifted but /uː/ in house did not.

If the difference between the Northern and Southern vowel shifts is caused by the vowel systems at the time of the
Great Vowel Shift, /uː/ did not shift because there was no back mid vowel /oː/ in Northern English. In Southern
English, shifting of /oː/ to /uː/ could have caused diphthongisation of original /uː/, but because Northern English had
no back close-mid vowel /oː/ to shift, the back close vowel /uː/ did not diphthongise.

Exceptions
Not all words underwent certain phases of the Great Vowel Shift. Examples are father, which failed to become /ɛː/,
and broad, which failed to become /oʊ/. The word room, which was spelled as roum in Middle English, retains its
Middle English pronunciation. It is an exception to the shifting of /uː/ to /aʊ/ because it is followed by m, a labial
consonant.

The class ea did not take the step to /iː/ in several words. The presence of /r/ in swear and bear caused the vowel
quality to be retained but not in the cases of hear and near. Shortening of long vowels at various stages produced
further complications: ea is again a good example by shortening commonly before coronal consonants such as d and
th, thus: dead, head, threat, wealth etc. (That is known as the bred–bread merger.) The oo was shortened from /uː/ to
/ʊ/, in many cases before k, d and less commonly t: book, foot, good, etc. Some words subsequently changed from /ʊ/
to /ʌ/: blood, flood. Similar but older shortening occurred for some instances of ou: could.

Some loanwords, such as soufflé and umlaut, have retained a spelling from their origin language that may seem similar
to the previous examples; but, since they were not a part of English at the time of the Great Vowel Shift, they are not
actually exceptions to the shift.

Related consonant changes
During this same period, there were a number of consonant changes, particularly changes that were in combination
with the vowel changes, or cases of silencing of consonants. An often-cited example is the word knight, which in
Middle English was pronounced /kni:xt/. The k and the gh were silenced, but additionally the i changed its value to
/aɪ/. This vowel shift, of course, was not independent of the consonant shift as it was the combined sound /ix/ that
actually made the transition to /aɪ/.

The following are examples of some of the most common consonant-related shifts that occurred:

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Vowel pronunciation
Word Middle English Modern English
before the GVS after the GVS
knight /kni:xt/ /naɪt/
enough
/ɪˈnoːx/ /ɪˈnʌf/
(originally ynough)
gnaw /gnɑu̯/ /nɔ:/

Spelling
The printing press was introduced to England in the 1470s by William Caxton and later Richard Pynson.[18] The
adoption and use of the printing press accelerated the process of standardization of English spelling, which continued
into the 16th century. The standard spellings were those of Middle English pronunciation, and spelling conventions
continued from Old English. However, the Middle English spellings were retained into Modern English while the Great
Vowel Shift was taking place, which caused some of the peculiarities of Modern English spelling in relation to vowels.

See also
Canaanite Shift
Chain shift
Vowel shift
Consonant mutation
History of the English language
International Phonetic Alphabet
Phonological history of English vowels
"The Chaos"

Notes
1. Centralizing to /ɨi ɨu/ and then lowering to /əi əu/ argued by Stockwell (1961).

Sources

References
1. Stockwell, Robert (2002). "How much shifting actually occurred in the historical English vowel shift?" (http://www.li
ng.ohio-state.edu/~ddurian/AWAC/Stockwell%202002.pdf) (PDF). In Minkova, Donka; Stockwell, Robert. Studies
in the History of the English Language: A Millennial Perspective. Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-017368-9.
2. Wyld, H. C. (1957) [1914], A Short History of English
3. Denham, Kristin; Lobeck, Anne (2009), Linguistics for Everyone: An Introduction (https://books.google.com/book
s?id=n0KVSvqvZKYC&pg=PA89), Cengage Learning, p. 89
4. Labov, William (1994). Principles of Linguistic Change. Blackwell Publishing. p. 145. ISBN 0-631-17914-3.
5. Millward, C.M.; Hayes, Mary (2011). A Biography of the English Language (https://books.google.com/books?id=nC
4_1z292jUC) (3rd ed.). Wadsworth Publishing. p. 250. ISBN 978-0495906414.
6. Nevalainen, Terttu; Traugott, Elizabeth Closs, eds. (2012). The Oxford Handbook of the History of English (https://
books.google.com/books?id=v92EdN2fLWkC). Oxford University Press. p. 794. ASIN B009UU4P66 (https://www.a
mazon.com/dp/B009UU4P66).
7. Asya Pereltsvaig (Aug 3, 2010). "Great Vowel Shift — part 3" (http://www.languagesoftheworld.info/historical-lingui
stics/great-vowel-shift-part-3.html). Languages of the World.

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8. Lass 2000, p. 72.


9. Wheeler, L Kip. "Middle English consonant sounds" (http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/ME_Pronunciation.pd
f) (PDF).
10. Lass 2000, pp. 80–83.
11. Lass 2000, pp. 83–85.
12. Görlach 1991, pp. 68–69.
13. Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (2006). The Atlas of North American English (https://books.google.c
om/books?id=qa4-dFqi6iMC&pg=PA14). Berlin: Mouton-de Gruyter. p. 14. ISBN 3-11-016746-8.
14. Lass 2000, pp. 74–77.
15. Jürgen Handke (Dec 7, 2012). "PHY117 – The Great Vowel Shift" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyhZ8NQO
Zeo). YouTube. The Virtual Linguistics Campus.
16. Wales, K (2006). Northern English: a cultural and social history. Cambridge: Cambridge University. p. 48.
17. Macafee, Caroline; Aitken, A. J., A History of Scots to 1700 (http://www.dsl.ac.uk/about-scots/history-of-scots/),
DOST, 12, pp. lvi–lix
18. Olague, Susana Llamas. "Printers, Orthoepists, and Standardized English" (http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~cper
cy/courses/6362Olague1.htm). CHASS. Retrieved December 30, 2017.

Bibliography
Baugh, Alfred C.; Cable, Thomas (1993). A History of the English Language (4 ed.). Englewood
Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Cable, Thomas (1983). A Companion to Baugh & Cable's History of the English Language.
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Cercignani, Fausto (1981). Shakespeare's Works and Elizabethan Pronunciation. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Dillon, George L., "American English vowels" (http://faculty.washington.edu/dillon/PhonResources/
newstart.html), Studying Phonetics on the Net (http://faculty.washington.edu/dillon/PhonRes
ources/PhonResources.html)
Dobson, E. J. (1968). English Pronunciation 1500–1700 (2 vols) (2 ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
(See vol. 2, 594–713 for discussion of long stressed vowels)
Freeborn, Dennis (1992). From Old English to Standard English: A Course Book in Language
Variation Across Time. Ottawa, Canada: University of Ottawa Press.
Görlach, Manfred (1991). Introduction to Early Modern English. Cambridge University Press.
Kökeritz, Helge (1953). Shakespeare's Pronunciation. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Lass, Roger (2000). "Chapter 3: Phonology and Morphology". In Lass, Roger. The Cambridge
History of the English Language, Volume III: 1476–1776. Cambridge University Press.
pp. 56–186.
Millward, Celia (1996). A Biography of the English Language (2 ed.). Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace.
Pyles, Thomas; Algeo, John (1993). The Origins and Development of the English Language (4
ed.). Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Co.
Rogers, William 'Bill', A Simplified History of the Phonemes of English (https://web.archive.org/we
b/20020803010924/http://www.furman.edu/~wrogers/phonemes/), Furman, archived from
the original (http://www.furman.edu/~wrogers/phonemes) on 2002-08-03

External links
Great Vowel Shift Video lecture (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyhZ8NQOZeo)
Menzer, M., "What is the Great Vowel Shift?" (http://www.furman.edu/~mmenzer/gvs/what.htm), Great Vowel Shift
(http://www.furman.edu/~mmenzer/gvs/), Furman University
"The Great Vowel Shift" (http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/vowels.html), Geoffrey Chaucer, Harvard
University

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