I would like to see this article mention a few of the main theories on the cause of the vowel shift, and also mention how researchers were able to pinpoint the time at which it took place, since it was well before the invention of recording devices. -- Aaron W.

Could the Great Vowel Shift explain why native English speakers often find foreign languages difficult, in the sense that it knocked English vowels out of sync with the Continent?

Yes, that's what I thought reading this article : according to the examples, the original pronunciation was very close to the French or German one. SeeSchloss 21:26, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Comment moved from Vowel shift which redirects here

(An article on the Great Vowel Shift exists already. One on vowel shifts generally should appear here. Some specific examples could also be listed (e.g., what are the similarities and differences between the vowel shift that the Greek language underwent, and that experienced by English?).)

The link to lancaster is broken:

http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/chimp/101/vowels/shift.htm

it comes up saying I don't have permission. I recommend the link be deleted.

Hwarwick

Knowing nothing of phonetics, I couldn't make out much of the table of shifts. After a bit of searching I decided the symbols were SAMPA so I've said this. Am I right? Also, people who didn't learn Latin would find it useful to have approximate vowel sounds for before as well as after. Some, but only some, are given in the paragraph following the table. For example, I still can't make out what /o:/ is. Thincat 16:13, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The statement on vowel shift in German and Dutch, concerning the pronunciation of the word for "ice" ("Eis" and "ijs" respectively") is true only for German. "Eis" is pronounced as /ai/, but "ijs" in ABN (Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands, or General Civilized Dutch) is pronounced [ei], the modern pronunciation of the Dutch-Specific "Long IJ".

Really? I mean, I suppose I ought to take your work for it, since I don't speak Dutch; but the times I've heard Dutch spoken, the sound of "ij" has always seemed to me to have a low nucleus, much closer to [æi] than [ei]. AJD 01:39, 15 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Note: My vowel charts don't show up correctly in this note. This passage still has the answer that you all seek.

The social factors presented in this article only tell why the sound change became so popular. Naturally a large city such as London would have had extensive influence over neighboring dialects through trade and education.

The real cause of the Great Vowel Shift is a linguistic principle in which a language may only have six different vowels of a particular set. This is due to the fact that vowels seek to differentiate themselves from other vowels for sake of clarity in pronunciation. Diphthongs are their own set and a language may distinguish its pure vowels either quantitatively (by lenght) or qualitatively (by tenseness and laxness.)

First some notes on vowel systems. There are three different sorts of languages with regards to vowel systems:

-Those that distinguish long and short vowels (Middle English, Latin, German.) These languages may also have tense and lax vowels, however, for sake of the rule of six, only long and short sets of vowels are distinguished from one another. One might say the long and short distinction supercedes the tense and lax one. More on that below.

-Those that distinguish tense and lax vowels (English, French, Italian.) In most instances, inquiring individuals are apt to comment that English does have a distinction between long and short vowels as well. Those that are designated long and the others short are due purely to conventions established in Middle English. English does in fact have long and short vowels, however, they are in complementary distribution and thus subphonemic (i.e. linguistically insignificant.)

-Those that do neither (Spanish.) There is the technicality in the Spanish language that they do have the lax vowel /a/, however, this perception is mostly prevalent in European languages. In reality /a/ is not realized as either tense or lax cross-linguistically.

In Early Middle English the vowel system was as follows (capitals are used throughout to signify lax vowel for simplicity, also @ = schwa):

i:, I u:, U

e:, E:, E @ o:, O:, O

æ A

Old English æ: became E: and a: became O: in all instances.

If we look at this sytem, we can see from the above descriptions that it is based on a long and short vowel distinction. Thus the two sets of vowels are:

[i:, e:, E:, u:, o:, O:] and [I, E, æ, A, U, O] (@ is a reduced vowel only occuring in word final syllables.

As we can see the rule of six is not broken at this point. There are six long vowels, six short vowels, and one reduced vowel. So what pushed it over?

In the thirteenth century a sound change took place whereby a non high (i.e. not I or U) short vowel became long in disyllabic words when in the first syllable if that syllable were open (i.e. when, most typically, followed by a single consonant.) Thus:

nA-m@ 'name' became nA:-m@

E-t@n 'to eat' became E:-t@n

chO:-sen 'we/you all/they chose became chO:-s@n

At this point, the E and O in this position merged with the original E: and O: phonemically (i.e. they were now understood as the same sound.) A:, however, was not realized phonologically because it occured in complementary distribution with A. Thus, it occured only in the first syllable of disyllabic if that syllable were open and A occured elsewhere.

What caused the system to topple was this:

All Germanic languages are known for their strong word initial syllable stress. This is especially so in more northern Germanic languages, such as English. In prehistory, this strong word initial stress caused short vowels to disappear and long vowels and diphthongs to become short in word final (i.e. unstressed) syllables.

This trend continued in Middle English. Word final /n/ and /@/ disappear following the vowel changes described above. Because of this development A: and A are no longer in complementary distribution.

The A: in nA:m 'name' (<nA:-m@) occurs in the same phonetic environment as the A in nAm 'I took.' Due to this these two sounds became different phonemes and the Middle English vowel system now contained 7 long vowels and 6 short vowels.

Since the vowels could not properly distinguish themselves by the rule of six, i: and u: (both high vowels) "jumped ship" and became the diphthongs @j and @w. As the article states, the remaining vowels shifted upwards. The article erroneously mentions A: becoming fronted going to ej. Although it doesn't fit the classical model of vowel systems, the vowel A is in actuality a front vowel.

Classic View of Vowel Systems with Regards to the Position of the Tongue in one's Mouth

i, I u, U

e, E @ o, O

æ A a

Modern View of Vowel Systems with Relation to the Tongue's Position in the Mouth

i u

 I         U
e     @     o
 E          O
  æ
   A        a

The discrepency comes from more advanced technology better determining the position of one's tongue during the production of each vowel respectively.

Because each vowel can't shift into the position of the vowel above it one may construct a chronology of the vowel changes as follows.

Great Vowel Shift

Step one: i: and u: became @j and @w respectfully Step two: e: and o: became i: and u: Step three: E: and O: became e: and o: Step four: A: became æ: Step five: e (< E:) became i: Step six: æ: (< A:) became e: Step seven: e: and o: became ej and ow (British @w)

All long vowels eventually merged with short in length due to their qualitative distinction. Hope this helps!