The Great Vowel Shift

Change. It can mean a number of different things and will mean different things to different

people. However, in this article, I will be discussing one of the largest yet one of the most

overlooked changes in our history. The Great Vowel Shift (GVS).

An important note before I begin is that I will be using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

symbols for all phonetic spellings used in this article. In the table I have created below, you can

see all of the IPA symbols and their English equivalents for the symbols used in the article:

IPA ENGLISH

: Indicates to hold a certain vowel sound for a longer period of time.

ɾ “r” as in regicide

i “ee” as in free

u “oo” as in boot

ɛ “e” as in bed

ɔ “o” as in not

o “aw” as in yawn

a “a” as in bra

Haven’t you ever noticed how many vowel sounds are inconsistent compared to the word’s

spelling in English? An example of this is how “ea” is pronounced differently in great and meat.

Well, what if I told you that if you go far enough back in history, you will find that these

inconsistencies did not exist. Meat was pronounced mɛːt, and great as gɾɛːt. So if this is the

case, why have these pronunciations become inconsistent now? That can be explained by the

GVS.

The GVS is an example of a chained vowel shift. Subconsciously, as humans, we try and make all

vowel sounds as distinct from each other as possible, to avoid confusion. This naturally leads

vowels to space themselves out from other vowels as much as possible. This means, however,

that if one vowel’s pronunciation naturally shifts to become lower or higher, the other vowels

will accordingly adjust themselves. The exact causes of the initial vowel changing its

pronunciation are unknown in the case of the GVS. Another cause of chained vowel shifts is the

merging of two sounds. In cases where two vowels couldn’t keep themselves distinct enough in

spoken language, they merge. This means that there is automatically more space for places of

articulation between the vowels leading to them spacing out more to make themselves more

distinct.

If you didn’t fully understand this concept, here is an example. Consider the chart on the right,

which pictographically captures the distinctness or distance of different vowels (the further

away two vowels are, the more distinct). Imagine a made up language, of vowels a, i and o with

no length distinction. Suppose that the speakers of

this made up language shifted their “a” to a more closed mouth position “ɛ”. Since this change

makes “a” less distinct than “i” (they are now closer on the chart), the “i” may shift further back

in the mouth, to “ɨ”. This change then makes “i” less distinc from “o”, so “o” may shift to “ɔ”.

This completes the very simple example of a three vowel chain shift. This same concept can be

applied to more complex languages, like English, with about 15-20 vowels depending on dialect.

The GVS occurred from the 1400s to the 1600s. This particular chained vowel shift isn’t known

as great because it changed things drastically, but rather because it is the only chained vowel

shift in English history to affect all dialects, due to when it occurred in history. The GVS mainly

only impacted long vowels in early English, like i:, e: and a:. Quite surprisingly, much of our

knowledge of the GVS comes from poetry. For instance, many 15 th Century poets rhymed “life”

with “death”. This led us to realise that these words used to be pronounced “li:f” and “di:f”.

Now, onto the actual changes in the GVS. It is important to note the GVS did not merge any

vowels. The GVS occurred in two phases: the first and second. The first stage affected solely the

close-mid vowels and saw the vowels i: and u: separated into the diphthongs (two vowels

spoken in the same syllable) of ɛi and ɔu. The space created led to e: shifting to i:, and o:

shifting to u:. In the second stage, ɛː shifted to e:, and, correspondingly, ɔ: shifted to o:. This

caused a: to shift to ɛː. Whilst there weren’t any mergers in the GVS, the new articulation of

vowels led to more mergers down the line, most notably the meet-meat mergers, but these will

not be discussed since they are not part of the GVS itself.

In conclusion, I hope you found this article interesting and you learned something new. I also

hope you gained a newfound appreciation for our vowel system and the centuries it took for it

to get to where it is today. I would like to end by asking you a question many linguists have

tried to answer before: how will English sound in 500 years?

By Afraz Khan