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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.

This response may be way obsolete, but it's worth a try.

Theories of why sounds change in this or that way come under the umbrella term functionalism. None of the theories work (including, most pointedly, the one stated below; which see). The ones that work best are very vague, such as the observation, repeated below, that stress-timed languages, e.g. English and the other Germanic languages, seem to have very unstable vowel systems (not just the long ones), whereas as syllable-timed languages, e.g. Japanese, Malayalam, and Spanish, tend to have very stable ones. Now of course that only points to the really interesting question, which is why -- and for which there seems to be no good answer.

As for the dating, the evidence is complicated and sketchy, having to do with such things as the appearance of spelling confusions, and the treatment of loan-words (whose arrival in written records can be dated) such as the failure of /ī/ to diphthongize in borrowings like redeem (first attested 1425 but then not again for 110 years), esteem (first attested 1528), breeze (first attested in the late 16th cent.) (examples from Jespersen). Had these words been borrowed earlier, they would have undergone the vowel shift, as did say devise (first attested in English around 1300), derive (first attested 1483), and so on. It's a pity that we don't have orthoepic manuals from Chaucer's day, but the social developments that inspired their creation didn't arise until the late 16th cent. Indeed, in all probability regional variation in the expression of the Great Vowel Shift was a major stimulus. Alsihler 19:39, 16 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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)

I think we're confusing spelling and language. The phonemic values of the vowel symbols and digraphs (like ea, ee, and ou) in English are indeed mostly different from the usual continental values of the symbols, even when it doesn't appear so: the phonetics of, say, the vowel of wrote are quite remote from, say, the phonetics of German rot "red": the English vowel is actually [əw] (America), [εw] (Brit.) But I would say that learning new values for the vowel symbols is at best a bit of a nuisance at the very outset, like learning that <j w> in German stand for /y/, /v/. The far bigger problem in a monolingual English speaker learning just about any foreign language is the complex nature of our vowels. The details differ from region to region, but our long vowels, mostly the reflexes of Middle English long vowels, are full of raising offglides, many of the short vowels have more or less pronounced inglides (i.e., toward [ə]), especially in environments of prolongation, as in the words bed fell jazz; /æ/ before /g/ and /ŋ/ have a pronounced raising & fronting glide (the nucleus of bang bag is very different from the nucleus of bad ban -- in some dialects it's gone on to become [e:], with no glide). /æ/ and /ɔ/ (which don't occur in many languages anyhow) are in many varieties of English decidedly long, and have offglides toward schwa, with or without raising of the onset, that is [æə] to [eə] or even [ɪə] in a word like cat. (And of course once you get into r-less dialects, things get even weirder, with say bad, bared, beard being totally homophonous). By the way, the offglides typical of present-day English long vowels considerably postdate the Great Vowel Shift itself (always excepting /ay aw/ < /ī ū/, of course). It might be added, too, that offglide features are found in other languages. In Karo Batak, from Sumatra, the vowel system is basically a sort of Latin Five, but both mid-vowels have an appreciable (if variable) upglide in final position especially. Alsihler 21:15, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is a minor point, but FYI, <j> in German actually stands for /j/, not /y/. (/j/ is the sound of English <y>; /y/ is the sound of German <ü>.) —Ruakh_TALK 03:02, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think I can answer this with an unequivocal no. I am not a native English speaker, and I found the problems of dealing with differences in phonetics negligible compared to other problems involved in learning a different language. In fact, I think the problems of dealing with differences in the relation of spelling and pronunciation is worse for foreigners trying to learn English than for native English speakers trying to learn another language. I suspect that the main problem for native English speakers when learning continental languages is grammar. English being grammatically a very simple language, the English are quite unprepared for dealing with such complications as (formal) gender, declensions, conjugations, etc. Grotendeels Onschadelijk 02:16, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

English grammar is anything but simple. English is however, a great language to speak poorly. Jalwikip 07:40, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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)

Break and beak are also listed as one vowel sound in modern English. That's just not the case.

I don't think you read the passage carefully (unless it's been touched up since the complaint was made): to amplify the statement, earlier [ɛ:] (often spelled in late ME -ea-) raises to fall together with the outcome of [e:], namely [i:], as in beak. But that in some words, such as break, it remains a mid vowel. --All true, but in a discussion like this it strikes me as unwise to muddy the waters by bringing up "exceptions" (there are only three forms like break, the others being steak and great -- and Gay rimes great and cheat in The Beggars Opera). The problem is that in a "compromise dialect" like that of standard (south-midlands-based) English there are "exceptions" by the dozens to all these sound laws. It makes a bad impression on the non-linguist, but there's nothing the least bit remarkable about such raggedness in compromise dialects.

Oh, and [o:] (a long higher-mid back rounded vocoid) would be like the pronunciation of stone with an Irish accent (i.e. monophthongal and very peripheral), or the vowel of German Floh "flea" or French beau "handsome". Alsihler 18:30, 16 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I second the request for elucidation of the table, and for 'before' examples as well as 'after' ones in the par following—the phonetic symbols may as well be in Aramaic for any intelligibility they have for me, or the average reader. In fact, I don't even understand Alsihler's response to the points raised by Thincat—and would really like to.—Zoe Ocean 06:08, 4 November 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zoe Buchanan (talk • contribs)

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]

It is. Convention has it that it is pronounced [ɛi], but it's closer to [æi] I think. See also the Dutch phonology page, which is otherwise a bit of a mess, but the IPA charts are ok. Jalwikip 07:48, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In Standard Dutch, ij and ei are homophones. In regard to spelling: Dutch spelling was not standardised until the nineteenth century. Before that spelling was typically phonetic and would depend on the writers dialect. There are some exemptions, mainly in place names and surnames, but also a few words: in the word 'bijzonder' the ij is pronounced [i].

In low-saxon, the ij is pronounced i. That is why kids in eastern Netherlands knew when to write ij or ei, whereas kids in western Netherlands often made mistakes. X10 05:56, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On another note: why is Icelandic named as having participated in a similar shift? As far as I know, they kept their í and ú pretty sraightforward. The only thing resembling the Great Vowel shift is ó being pronounced somewhat like [oU].

??Didn't /ā/ become [aw] in Icelandic? Alsihler 16:59, 15 December 2006 (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 occurred in complementary distribution with A. Thus, it occurred only in the first syllable of disyllabic if that syllable were open and A occurred 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!

User:24.16.166.16

If this is the case and this is not original research (see Wikipedia:No original research), why don't you give some citations for this theory, noting that it is one theory among others, and work it into the article instead of just adding this to the talk page? After all, you seem to be knowledgable in the subject, and Wikipedia would be happy to have your contributions. —Lowellian (reply) 07:47, September 2, 2005 (UTC)

That doesn't seem to me to be true — French, for example, has sixteen vowels (not counting the halfway-in-between vowels that often appear in unaccented syllables), and while some of these are in fairly complementary distribution, most are not (and I think it would be hard to argue that the fairly complementary ones are simply allophones). How would you divide up /i/ (y), /e/ (et), /ɛ/ (est), /ɛⁿ/ (hein), /a/ (a), /ɑ/ (as), /ɑⁿ/ (en), /u/ (ou), /o/ (au), /ɔ/ (as in homme), /ɔⁿ/ (on), /y/ (eu), /ø/ (eux), /œ/ (as in heure), /œⁿ/ (un), and /ə/ (as in je)? — Ruakh_TALK 23:16, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't work for me, either and I am just as happy that this is NOT worked into the main article. It's very mystifying. I'm unaware of any "linguistic principle" limiting the number of vowels to six (by "particular set" I'm guessing that you mean any group of syllabics distinguished by the same cavity features, e.g. all short oral vowels. It's not clear whether front rounded vowels would belong to the same "set" as "the Latin Five"). English, or rather my English, has seven short vowels: pit pet pat pot put putt bought, and dialects of English have an eighth in a distinction between the syllabics of four, hoarse vs fore and horse. French has eight short vowels of the ordinary kind, by my count, plus a reduced vowel and three front rounded ones, for a total of ten full short vowels (though to be sure the contrast between /a/ and /ɑ/ seems to be on the run; and at least in some environments, the contrast between /e/ and /ɛ/). A seven-vowel system seems to be the industry standard for sub-Saharan languages (two high vowels, four mid ones, and /a/).

Besides, the theory in question does not in fact have any obvious bearing on why all the vowels shifted. An overcrowded vowel-space would be simply dealt with by merging two or more vowels (as happened earlier, with the loss of three front rounded vowels and later when two products of the Shift, /ī/ and /ē/, merged as /ī/) and anyway, after all that commotion, there were still seven long vowels (which to be sure shrank to six before long, perhaps validating the Rule of Six, but I doubt it). What a lot of trouble to go to for nothing!

Another problem is that the Great Vowel Shift isn't an it, it's a they. The details differ quite a bit in the north. In Scottish, for example, /ū/ did not diphthongize. This did not bottle up /ō/, however; it didn't merge with /ū/, as it might have, instead it fronted, first presumably to [ö:] and then, because all phonologies with only one front rounded vowel have only a high one, to modern /ü/, usually written as bluid, duir for "blood, door". And I also have the impression that in the north, OE ā (from Proto-Germanic *ay) did not in fact raise and round, as in the south, but fell together with the outcome of lengthened ă (as in name). Hence pronunciations like hame, stane, gait for southern home, stone, goat, etc. This may be something else entirely: conventional wisdom takes such forms to be Scandinavian loans, reflecting the Scandinavian treatment of *ay. I'm not at all convinced that this is the case. There's too much of it, it seems to me, and it's too heavily concentrated in words with one particular vowel. But if the falling-together interpretation is correct, there goes the "trigger" envisioned for the shift. Alsihler 20:15, 16 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Swedish has eighteen distinct vowel phonemes, set on the long-short axis: a, o (/ou/), u (deep /u/), å (roughly a middle rounded /o/), e, i, y, ä, ö - long and short varieties of each and these are not in complementary distribution. Plus, tonal stress accent may alter the meaning of a word which is spelled and (apart from the accent) pronounced the same way (though in practice this affects only a limited number of words), e.g. anden - with a rise on the second syllable it means "the spirit", with a quick rise-drop in the first syllable and no rise later on it's "the duck"! So the "maximum six vowels" rule makes no sense in terms of general linguistics. /Strausszek (talk) 05:44, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I think the GVS article needs to mention that it's a chain shift. It would also be nice to mention the debate on whether it's a push chain or a pull chain. --KJ 04:08, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The evidence is conflicting. Or rather, different scholars have identified contradictory "triggers", i.e., some indicate the movement started low, some indicate an early diphthonization of the high vowels. Even the outcomes are conflicting. In northern dialects, /ū/ failed to shift (so Scots "wee hoose" and the like) but /ō/ was on the move anyway, failed to merge with /ū/ (which it might have) and fronts instead, to /ȫ/ in conservative dialects, /ǖ/ later. That certainly looks like a (frustrated) push-chain, but lo: in those same dialects, Old English /ā/ does NOT become /ō/ as it did to the south, but original /ā/ (as in gát "goat", hám "home") merges with the outcome of lengthened ă (as in name < OE năma): thus the Scots forms for home, goat spelled hame, gait or gate. So, if the behavior of /ō/ points to push-chain, what was pushing it? And if truth be known, in most shifts of any kind it's rather hard to tell whether pushing or pulling is involved. One begins to suspect that the neat division of shifts into the two types doesn't have much to do with the realities on the ground. And the practical consequences aren't obvious, either. In Australian English, /iy/ (as in bee) has become [ɰi:]; the sequence /ir/ as in beer has lost all phonetic trace of the /r/ and is now [bi:] with a very high front totally monophthongal vowel. Now: did the vowel of bee jump, or was it pushed? And what difference does it make? Alsihler 21:33, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fortunately, whoever named this phenomenon chose not to call it a Big Vowel Movement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.20.192.87 (talk • contribs)

Haha, that would be bad. -Aknorals 11:30, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Saying "(as in mouse)" does no good because it's only half of the shift pair, if you're going to give recognizable examples make sure they are unambiguous and that you do so for both sides. --belg4mit 18.124.2.224 18:43, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not very knowledgable about the GVS, but I would love to improve the article. What would the other half be? Could you tell me how it could be ambiguous, please? --Kjoonlee 18:51, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As someone unfamiliar with the phonetic symbolism and jargon employed in this article, I gained nothing from it. As users of modern english, typical readers such as myself know the sound of "a" in day or make. Please indicate the sound of both the middle english and modern pronunciations in modern words that we know. In that regard, the current article only gives us examples of sounds that we already know by telling us that "a" is now pronounced like the "a" in cake, without telling us how it was pronounced in middle english.

Well, you already know the "a" in "ah", "e" in "bet", "i" in "bit", "u" in "book". Just lengthen those sounds and you'll be pretty close. I'll see what I can do to make that a bit more obvious.. --Kjoonlee 17:21, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is unhelpful to someone not trained in linguistics. I don't understand what it means to "lengthen" a sound. Examples corresponding to pronunciations both before and after the shift would drastically improve the accessibility of this article. Please note that only a tiny fraction of the people who can't decode IPA will actually bother to edit the talk page; I'm sure that many people simply give up without understanding the article.Btwied (talk) 15:57, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, the article is almost useless because [e:] style notation is, for most readers, a meaningless foreign language accessible only to linguists who probably already know this stuff. The entire article needs to be rewritten using unambiguous examples, and all of the bracketed notation needs to be relegated to parentheticals for the few cognoscenti in the audience who desire the professional precision that can only be delivered by impenetrable jargon. Jeffryfisher (talk) 00:09, 28 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There's much talk about why the shift occured, but none on how we today became aware of it. Was it by studying rhyme schemes of old poems? Staecker 12:53, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For one thing the spelling didn't change, so words like "wine" or "house" are still spelled with the old vowels, but pronounced differently. This can easily be confirmed by looking at other languages related to English which mostly still have the old vowels. --Chlämens 10:43, 8 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the OP: the article seems to take on faith that this Great Vowel Shift happened. How do we know? Shouldn't there be at least one sentence explaining how we know it happened?50.49.134.141 (talk) 17:14, 9 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

German, Icelandic, and Dutch also experienced sound changes resembling the first stage of the Great Vowel Shift Icelandic? Although I'm not a linguist, I dont think so. It can be seen using the very examples in this page. In German and Dutch, "ice" is Eis and ijs, with /ai/. But in Icelandic is ís, with long i. "House" in German and Dutch is haus and huis with the diphthong. In Icelandic is hús, with long u. Something is wrong. Ciacchi 19:40, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the statement "Icelandic also experienced sound changes resembling the first stage of the Great Vowel Shift" is true in that some long vowels were diphthongised, so [a:] → [au], [e:] → [ie], [o:] → [ou] (not very accurate IPA here, I'm afraid). For [i] and [u], the short variants had already drifted towards the centre, so the long variants remained in place. After this shift, the length of the vowels became determined by the surrounding consonants. This also explains the use of the acute accent in Icelandic orthography. So the first sentence applies to Icelandic but the following explanation concerning [i:] does not. Stefán Ingi 14:02, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Perharps we should give some examples that show it better. The problem is, which examples? The article says nothing about the English diphthong [ɪə], as in here ([hɪə]. Where does it come from? Could it be compared to Icelandic hér (/hjɛr/) and German hier ([hɪɐ])? Is there any relation? How come Icelandic had it's á lengthened to /au/ and other Germanic languages didn't? For example, Icelandic has já pronounced as /jau/. German, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish have ja pronounced as /ja/. Perharps the modifications in Icelandic had another origin? Icelandic had vowel changings, but they didn't match the vowel changings of other Germanic languages. Ciacchi 17:07, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I found something about it: Modern English [ɪə] came from Middle English [e:] before r. But I don't believe there's a relation to Icelandic. Ciacchi 21:26, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Icelandic já vs Mainland Scandinavian ja doesn't say much here since it's a special case, an exception. All scandinavian dialects have experienced a Great Vowel Shift, and often the result has been a diphthong. Let's take Dalecarlian (Dal.) as an example. Old Norse (ON) á [ɑː] first shifted into [ɔː]. (This happened in all scandinavian languages and is responsible for the invention of the special Mainland Scandinavian letter å.) This made ON ó [oː] getting shifted to [ʊː], pushing ON ú [uː] to [ʉː] and pulling ON á to [oː]. Later, ó became diphthongized to [uoː]. Simultaneously, ON ú turned into [əʊː] and then [ɑʊː]. It also happened that ON é [eː] became [iː], ON í [iː] became [aɪː], ON ý [yː] became [øː] > [ɶʏː] > [ɔʏː], ON œ [øː] became [ʏœː]. Furthermore, ON primary diphtong ei [ɛiː] became the monophthong [eː] which got diphthongized to [ɪeː]. Let us summarise by looking at specific examples: ON ár [ɑːr] 'year' > Dal. [oːr], ON kné [kneː] 'knee' > Dal. [kniː], ON bíta [biːta] 'to bite' > Dal. [baɪːta], ON sól [soːl] 'sun' > Dal. [suoːɽ], ON hús [huːs] 'house' > Dal. [ɑʊːs], ON hýsa [hyːsa] 'to house' > Dal. [ɔʏːsa], ON mœta [møːta] 'to meet' > Dal. [mʏœːta], ON stein [stɛiːn] 'stone' > Early Modern Dal. [eː] > Dal. [ɪeː]. Also e.g. Gutnish had a similar extensive diphthong system as a result of the vowel shift process. To some extent, also Central Swedish (on which Standard Swedish is based) had diphthongs as a result. For example, ON á [ɑː] is today a "subtle" diphthong [oɔː] in Central Swedish (CS). Similarly, ON ú [uː] > CS [ʉɵː], ON ó [oː] > CS [uʊː] etc. All ON long vowels are "subtle" diphthongs in the most dominant pronunciation standard for Modern Swedish. // Jens Persson (130.242.128.85 02:06, 4 September 2006 (UTC))[reply]

I doubt that most Scandinavian languages experienced a great vowel shift. Using standard Central Swedish and Norwegian Bokmål for comparision instead of the mre distinct Dalecarlian, I'd say the vowel shift was relatively minor (except for perhaps Danish). 惑乱 分からん 09:08, 6 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, secondary dipthongs were formed in many dialects in Sweden, it's just that Standard Swedish has only adopted the subtle Central Swedish version of it. In any case, all Scandinavian dialects - including those that have defined Standard Swedish and "Standard Norwegian" - experienced some kind of major major vowel shift. It's supposed to have been triggered in the west by á [ɑ:] becoming rounded and closed to [ɔ:]. // JP (81.226.216.250 (talk) 18:42, 7 June 2009 (UTC))[reply]

That's my point – Scandinavian languages suffered a different Vowel Shift. Not a Great one, like English. Probably it was a different process that was further developed in English. I mean, it affected Scandinavian languages to a certain extent and finished it's work in German and English. --Ciacchi 17:38, 5 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

When I learned about this particular vowel shift, my source referred to is as the Tudor Vowel Shift. What's the history of this term, anyone?

One the paragraphs is rubbish (the one beginning, "The effects of the shift were..."), perhaps there should be a theories section of some sorts... needs proper editing by someone who can write better than me...

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.109.114.102 (talk • contribs) .

Totally agree the article needs a few paragraphs discussing theories. This is one of the most dramatic sets of pronunciation changes in historical times, and it's not enough to say that "it happened because of social mobility after the Black Death" as if people just started talking in new ways out of the blue. Functional changes within the phonetic system of English seem likely and have been discussed a good deal among linguists, for examnple in terms of chain shift - one vowel becoming unstable, moving ad then triggering a series of changes in the rest.

Another useful point is that during the 13th-14th centuries some final phonemes like e in rhyme and shoe and w in know went silent, at least in the south. Already by 1400, English had become one of the most mono-/disyllabic European languages and this increased the need for powerful, distinct vowel sounds that didn't go too close to each other. But since English is a stress-based langauge it may have seemed hard to keep up long, tonally distinct vowels everywhere - we all know English tends to crowd vowels to the centre. So diphtongization became a way to give the vowels more edge and profile within a stressed scheme. /Strausszek (talk) 04:20, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Jespersen hardly "discovered" the English Vowel Shift; his 1909 A Modern English Grammar (Vol. I) quotes Luick (Untersuchungen zur englischen Lautgeschichte "investigations into the history of English sounds", 1896) in his discussion of theories of what happened first in a chain of events. And there had been elaborate histories of English pronunciation reaching back to the middle of the 19th cent., including Henry Sweet's [he who was supposedly the model for Shaw's Henry Higgins in "Pygmalion"] 1888 History of English Sounds. But Jespersen seems to have been the first to dub it "great'. I may adjust the language in the article Alsihler 15:15, 16 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Somebody please ad a few more clear example words for those of us who are not familiar with the phonetic symbols. One key change that is not clear is when the a in "cat", and "hat" was invented, how those words were pronounced before. ted@tedhuntington.com

That is not part of the great vowel shift, see Phonological history of the English language#Up to the American/British split (c. AD 1600–1725) Stefán 18:45, 29 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. The I page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I says that the short /I/ as in "bill" happened in the Great Vowel Shift, but what about the name Imhotep? Doesn't that use the short /I/ sound?

No that page says the long [i:] changed to [ai] during the Great Vowel Shift. The short vowel in bill may have been an [ɪ] for a very long time for all I know. (It is very close to [i] in any case.) Stefán 21:55, 29 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting I guess there is no info on when the short i in "bill" evolved. TedHuntington 22:19, 29 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Stefán's point is that the short i in bill hasn't evolved very much. It's been approximately the same sound probably since proto-Germanic times at least. Today, however, it's undergoing some severe backing in New Zealand English. AJD 22:54, 29 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have moved this question to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:I since I am interested in the evolution of the short i sound in words such as dill. thanks all! TedHuntington 23:19, 29 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Could someone please make up a table containing something along the lines of;

Word - Pronunciation Before - Pronunciation After

Done for each shift and with layman's phonetic descriptions instead of IPA (or whichever standard is being used here). It'd be much appreciated! tactik 08:04, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it would be much appreciated! It HASN'T been done. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 211.225.34.187 (talk) 12:02, 10 May 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Let me also add my request that this be done. I find this subject to be really interesting, but I can't understand examples using IPA. Using IPA as a standard, or expecting the layman to grasp information using IPA is like the Roman Catholic mass being said in Latin, with the priest facing the altar. Only the initiates, the priestly caste can really understand what is being said. The congregation is mytified. JGC1010 (talk) 02:37, 2 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We should certainly try to make things easy for people. But no layman's approximation is ever really good. They are vague, they are ambiguous, and they privilege the speakers of some dialects over others. They are very logical if you come from the same background as the writer, and totally misleading if you don't. My favourite example: when I started learning German I was confused that a textbook told me that Liebe ('love') should be prononced leeber. What was the -r doing on the end? Years later I discovered that for the English, a terminal -r is silent, so when they see one it signals that the preceding -e- has a schwa sound which approximates to German terminal -e. But I am Scots. When I see a terminl -r it tells me I have to say /r/. The IPA is easy to learn, it is precise and scientific, if we use it wisely (i.e. don't attempt a narrow transcription when a broad one will do) it is mostly not so very much different from normal writing, and it is definately the way to go. --Doric Loon (talk) 16:34, 2 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I also strongly suggest this is added. It can't be very hard to do for anyone who understands the symbols. As for the problem of dialect, it should surely be assumed that vowels follow current recieved pronunciation? This article is presumably about the English language in the UK, so anyone reading will no doubt be familiar with English recieved pronunciation? Grand Dizzy (talk) 20:33, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have to agree with Doric Loon above. Yes, it is a nuisance to have to familiarize yourself with the IPA symbols first, and all too often phoneticians forget how to make things understandable to the vast majority of people out there, but there really is no alternative to using the IPA. Only a tiny fraction of speakers of English use RP, and the majority are probably entirely unfamiliar with it; if we're gonna expect readers to learn Received Pronounciation to understand the article then we might as well expect them to learn the IPA (which is probably easier!). After all, we also expect people to be familiar with basic units of measurement when writing about other topics; we would say that something is a kilo rather than saying that it's about the same weight as a bag of sugar. --Chlämens (talk) 06:25, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The terrible irony in all of this is that if such great vowel shifts hadn't occurred, monolingual speakers of English wouldn't be whining about using IPA. Finnish (phonemic orthography) and Russian are my native tongues and IPA is easy as hell and I only had to learn a few extra symbols. It's not really THAT important whether it's ɔ or o, the whole point in the vowel shift is that it changed vowels into diphthongs.. don't tell me you can't tell the difference between [u:] and [aʊ]? --nlitement ^[talk] 13:46, 11 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please yes! Not every, and I suspect most, users of Wikipedia are not aware of the sounds associated with the IPA symbols. I certainly am not. Having to refer back and forth to another page (the IPA page) makes the use of this page awkward and more difficult. I found the time/sound graph, a format I would normally have found very illuminating, to be next to worthless because I don't know which sounds to associate with which symbols. The examples that follow are also hobbled by this. They show what the Modern English words are (and so I can "hear" how they sound, at least in my own dialect of English) but there are no examples of the former sound so I have no idea what the current sound evolved from. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.50.6.38 (talk) 00:57, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I can understand English speakers being confused by IPA when they pronounce A as [eː], E as [iː] and I as [aː] in some accents – with seemingly randomly shuffled vowels – but really, it's exactly the Great Vowel Shift why IPA is so confusing to Anglophones. Understanding basic IPA is no big deal to continental Europeans. We have WP:RESPELL but there's no way to render [oː] as in Middle English boote in a respelling system geared to Modern English, where the vowel simply does not exist in most common accents, nor even a reasonably close approximation. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 07:02, 18 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

IPA is not difficult, folks. Aside from that nineties edition of the Oxford English dictionary that I constantly looked at in my youth, I had no knowledge of IPA before I became a part of Wikipedia many years ago. Nevertheless, I found it quite easy to learn, and it is far superior to any English respelling system, because it is trans-dialectal and trans-lingual in nature. Furthermore, analogues to the IPA's method of transcription can still be found in English, even now, after the Great Vowel Shift.

The words "eight", "freight", "neigh", "great", "yea", "fey" etc. all have the vowel /e:/ (or, more accurately in most dialects, /eɪ/), and they look like they have that vowel too. The words "ha", "father", "ya", "pasta" (in most dialects), "ma", "pa", "mirage" etc. all have the vowel /ɑ/, and they look like they have that vowel too. The words "mi", "ti" "happiness" etc. all have the vowel /i/, and they look like they have that vowel too.

As such, I find any whinge that "IPA is too hard" to be ridiculous. Just spend five minutes to learn it, please. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 15:40, 18 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

True. I blame US dictionaries for cementing idiosyncratic understandings of ā, ē, ī etc. even in pronunciation guides in the minds of millions of Americans. I think it is telling that above, a user calls IPA "[e:] style notation".

Anyway, since there are now audio files linked in the text, I expect the complaints to stop. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:24, 21 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I just turned 'Vocoids' in the last paragraph into a link. I hope it is helpfull.Vijeth 14:36, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Arabic speaking people pronounce the word Bayt (house), the origin of the letter B all the way back to Akkadian, as the /eI/, what I would type as "BAT" (rhymes with mate) in my phonetic alphabet. So as an aside, I think the /eI/ in ape was in use long before this vowel shift. Maybe this is irrelevent, as it probably was not used by English speakers unless they had to say "beta", for example those who may have read Greek. TedHuntington 15:54, 14 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That is indeed irrelevant; this article is about a change in English phonology. It's not claiming that human vocal tracts suddenly changed to create new vowels that were previously impossible. :-) —Ruakh_TALK 16:57, 14 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think 1) the 'in other languages' section is written in a poor non-encyclopedic style, 2) is unclear, as Icelandic is mentioned but not in the examples (see also other discussions about it) and has other failures, 3) is about vowel shifts partially comparable to the Great Vowel Shift, but has actually very little to do with it. So I propose we just remove the entire section, or move it to some other page (didn't check if there's a general vowel shift page). Jalwikip 07:51, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The statements on Dutch can certainly be improved. I don't think there has been much vowel shift in Dutch. X10 06:05, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I like the idea of having a diagram like that. However, it appears to be a strange mish-mash of IPA and... some sort of other representation scheme. I'd remake the table in IPA, but I don't think I'd be able to sort out what characters go where. Any takers? Strad 04:30, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed it is - it is the diagram I got in my student days, and it it should be brought into the modern phonetical alphabet. Problem is: I teach literature of that period (that is why I put it there, so that my students find it where they will look for it...) yet I am not a linguist who will do the job properly. I'd be happy if someone updated the thing using some sort picture publisher to replace the letters. --Olaf Simons 07:45, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Could one have more examples of actual soundings shown through surviving texts? I don't have Iona and Peter Opie's writings before me, but they claim the rhyme from this couplet dates it as prior to the vowel shift. "She went to the joiner's to buy him a coffin;/ When she got back, the dog was a-laughing." (I'm copying this verse from your article, "Old Mother Hubbard.") I imagine there are other poor souls like me, to whom charts and the international phonetic alphabet mean nothing. Pittsburgh Poet 00:52, 5 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Several centuries ago there was significant variation in the area of "low vowels" in English. At least some of this variation must have been due to different developments in different dialect-areas. That is naturally to be expected -- language is always changing, and if two "strains" or traditions are out of contact with each other, there's no reason why they should experience the same changes. For us modern-day folks, the important thing is that words tend to get borrowed sometimes from one dialect area to another. This can result in doublets, for example we have the noun "tan" but the adjective "tawny" -- both derived from the same Middle English origin. - If you look at the personal correspondence written by the Paston family, you will find a lot of variation such as "dance" being written sometimes as "dance", other times as "daunce". Even in modern English we have "stanch" and then "staunch" pronounced either with the vowel of "father" or with the vowel of "law" (my sympathies to those readers who, due to their dialect, do not know the difference!)- all three pronunciations meaning the same, as in "staunch the wound". - The rime between "coffin" and "laughin'" (centuries ago few people said -ing) may be due to both being pronounced with the vowel of "law" (after all, the "au" in "laugh" must have represented something other than its present "short A" (as in taffy") or "lengthened A" (as in "father")). Or they both may have had the British "short-O" (as in "Tom") pronunciation -- or they may have just been close, not really an exact rime.To read more about this, I recommend books such as Strang's "A History of English", Wyld's "A History of Modern Colloquial English" and Dobson's "English Pronunciation 1500-1700".

p.s. The words "coffin" and "laugh" have, historically speaking, short vowels, thus they were not directly affected by the Great Vowel Shift.Jakob37 (talk) 05:17, 29 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It would be very valuable if someone who really knows this would write up a section on Scotland. The brief remark that the effects in Scotland were different is not enough. --Doric Loon (talk) 08:16, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See my bibliographical suggestions below ("modern theories").Jakob37 (talk) 08:23, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Like others who have posted above, I can't understand the table on this page. (And that's a shame beacuse I find the subject fascinating.)

This problem would be easily solved with a link (just above the table) to a list of all the vowel symbols, showing how to pronounce them. But where is such a list? I've searched Wikipedia and the only thing I could find was this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language (under the 'Vowels' section) However, that list seems quite different to the vowel sounds used in the table here, with many symbols not listed.

Clearly, the symbols used in one of these two pages is either wrong, or incomplete. Someone needs to fix it!

Grand Dizzy (talk) 20:33, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The table looks OK to me (and is extremely helpful, well done to whoever put it up). Everything in it is IPA, but many of the symbols are inevitably not in the English language article, as they are historic rather than present-day English sounds. The reader will need to look at the full IPA article to understand the symbols, but I think that's preferable to giving a dumbed-down version which only gives vague approximations.

My only criticism is that the typeface for the symbols is too small (and can't be adjusted) for it to be clear what exactly is underneath the eː in 1500 and the oː in 1700 and 1750. I assume it's the "lowered" diacritic (shaped like a T), but can't tell for sure. Vilĉjo (talk) 16:08, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am a rank amateur in phonetics. Please consider this example from the summary above the main chart:

Middle English [ɛː] raised to [eː] and then to modern English [iː] (as in beak).

I can find no reference to the Middle English [ɛː] symbol in any Wiki-supplied SAMPA or IPA chart. Yet the OED guide to pronunciation has precisely this symbol which it describes as pronounced like the 'are' in 'square'. To have to go to the main IPA article in Wikipedia and find out that the colon-like symbol following the epsilon-like symbol makes the preceding sound 'long' is not a clue that helps me lengthen the 'e' in 'bed' which is how the IPA indicates the epsilon-like IPA symbol is pronounced. It would have been helpful if each stage was followed by a word in modern English that sounds like the Middle English. Given that the article provides a phonetic combo of symbols for which the OED finds perfectly easily a modern examplar, couldn't the article be modified to do the same?

The article needs to have EVERY phonetic symbol it displays provided with a modern English example or a brief explanation of what modern English sound(s) approximate it.

This is a fascinating subject that an amateur ought to be able to work out from the article w/o spending days excavating sources to find information.

I have no complaints about the article other than this one, which is kind of central - how the heck did the actual sounds change?

What about having little sound-bytes for each sound at each stage of the GVS? Ken M Quirici 16:43, 26 December 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kquirici (talk • contribs)

How do we know how English words were pronounced hundreds of years ago? I think this article would benefit from a short explanation of this question. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.152.168.247 (talk) 00:28, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We know it

• thanks to rhyme
• thanks to orthography used in former times according to European conventions as transcriptions of what one heard
• thanks to the pattern of European languages which all developed according to rules - it's Appel [uppel] in lower (i.e. north-) German dialects, Apfel [upfel] in high German, it was appel [uppel] in middle English accordingly - otherwise the whole system of transformations will break... --Olaf Simons (talk) 10:46, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That would be more like [appl], [apfl] and [appl] – I assume you tried to use IPA, as you used square brackets?

Anyway, I wanted to mention that for the 17th and 18th centuries, there are direct descriptions as well, books which describe the "proper" standard pronunciation, which is already mentioned in the article, but only in the section "Other languages". --Florian Blaschke (talk) 03:29, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is quite interesting and really should be put into the article, no the talk section. Can one of the editors please take this response and integrate it into the main article as a section (or perhaps another article). Thanks kindly! 12:56, 5 December 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimlear (talk • contribs)

This article AND its talk page are surprisingly lacking in discussions about developments within the last ten or fifteen years. For example, Jeremy Smith's "An Historical Study of English" p.98-108 not only has some useful charts on the northern vowel shifts (Scottish etc.) but also an extensive discussion of competing vowel systems in southern England and the social and phonological interactions between Londoners and "Easterners" and "the Mopsae" --- these interactions being offered as a possible driving force toward initiating the Great Vowel Shift. As for the North, A.J.Aitken's "Older Scottish Vowels" (or other spin-offs by Caroline Macafee) would be the place to find details.Jakob37 (talk) 05:40, 29 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In all materials I've been able to find, great attention has been paid to the development of ea [ɛː] (meat) and ee [eː] (meet), but long e (mete) has been completely neglected from mention, and I don't know whether long e sounded like ea [ɛː] or ee [eː]. This ambiguity does not exist per se for long o and oa, which were both [ɔː]. Unlike ea [ɛː] and ee [eː], the pronunciations of oa [ɔː] and oo [oː] haven't merged and the value of long o was clearly [ɔː]. - Gilgamesh (talk) 07:33, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Good question. At least alternate spellings like compleat or lede suggest [ɛː]... --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 11:14, 24 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. If verifiable, that's helpful. - Gilgamesh (talk) 03:53, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In British English in Southern England#London, it is mentioned that there is a further phonetical diphthongisation in that accent:

diphthongal realization of /iː/ and /uː/, for example beat [ˈbɪit], boot [ˈbʊʉt]

and in Cockney#Typical features, similar diphthongisations are mentioned (among other vowel shifts) that go even further (for example /iː/ → [əi~ɐi] and /uː/ → [əʉ]). These happen to be strongly reminiscent of the early stages of the Great Vowel Shift, and I cannot think of other contemporary Germanic languages with such a diphthongal pronunciation of the long high vowels /iː/ and /uː/ currently.

Perhaps it would be instructive for the reader to point this out, as it shows that vowel shifts are ongoing and it is not inconceivable that something similar to the Great Vowel Shift could happen again in English (even despite the forces of standardisation). At least in the south of England, there seems to be a strong tendency towards the formation of diphthongs, especially towards closing, falling diphthongs. Florian Blaschke (talk) 03:46, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Happen again? I've had the distinct impression that the Great Vowel Shift never stopped. - Gilgamesh (talk) 10:47, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Although there are a dozen references listed in the "References" section, there are only three notes in the "Notes" section. Only the opening paragraph and the "Effects" section have any citations at all, and the "Effects" section has only one. Shouldn't just about every sentence (except those restating well-known facts) have at least one citation? For example: The "History" section talks about how the Black Death may have indirectly caused the Great Vowel Shift. It does not provide citations of two secondary sources that support that theory. Wouldn't we want the titles of two sources and the names of two authors? And, preferably, the publication dates? --Eldin raigmore (talk) 19:30, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know, most specialists would say that "father" still had a short vowel at the time of the Great Vowel Shift, so "failed to become [ɛː] " is not really appropriate. The mystery remains as to why it lengthened later. Also, the examples in the following paragraph such as "book, good" etc. show "irregular" developments that only happened AFTER the GVS, so they are also not exceptions to the GVS.Jakob37 (talk) 08:22, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In words such as key, receive, weird, etc. It would be tempting to assume that this spelling was [ei] pre-Shift, and that it merged along with [eː] (pre-Shift ee) to [iː]. But is this true? And if so, how long ago did this diphthong change to [iː]? Did it merge with [eː] first before they merged to [iː] together? Are there attested time periods these shifts may have taken place? Is there research on the subject? - Gilgamesh (talk) 04:56, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This page currently states: "The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in Southern England between 1450 and 1750.[1] The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto Jespersen (1860–1943), a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term.[2]"

The Geoffrey Chaucer page at Harvard states: "Beginning in the twelfth century and continuing until the eighteenth century (but with its main effects in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries) the sounds of the long stressed vowels in English changed their places of articulation (i.e., how the sounds are made)." [1]

Reference.com states: "The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in the south of England between 1200 and 1600. The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto Jespersen ( 1860– 1943), a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term." [2]

Melinda Menzer of Furman University states "The Great Vowel Shift was a massive sound change affecting the long vowels of English during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries" [3]

All the sites agree on the author of the term, but none agree on the dates. Of them all, Wikipedia presumes the greatest precision (3 significant figures of precision), and does not present the breadth of disagreement on the subject. Facing this latitude of disagreement among experts, Wikipedia should be more circumspect. After I did the research, I felt that I had been misinformed by the Wiki. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.46.146.229 (talk) 07:16, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The dates and rate of these changes are still under lively discussion in the linguistic scholarly community. See for instance Roger Lass, Historical Linguistics and Language Change, Cambridge University press 1997, p.36-40 and 289-90, On Explaining Language Change also by Lass, 1980, and articles by Lass and R.P. Stockwell & D. Minkova in Kastovsky & Bauer, ed., Luick Revisited (1988: a volume of conference proceedings from a 1985 colloquy on historical linguistics - full ref. in Lass 1997). Stock well and Minkova argue an early date for the shift downwards of i and u ( bit, put) from long, often stressed vowels to centralized, weak and very short, beginning already before 1300, and this is the old-school dating of that particular change, according to Lass, so it has numerous proponents but has never ruled unchallenged. Lass on the other hand, who is also eminently recognized in this field, says those changes would have begun no earlier than the mid-seventeenth century, so the difference here is more than 350 years.

Moreover, Stockwell and Minkova argue that the Great Vowel Shift should not be discussed as a unity; it wasn't a unified phenomenon at all (Lass 1997, p.40). Lass thinks it was essentially unified, though it didn't necessarily have a single or single-direction cause (and goes for moderately functionalist explanations). On the whole he lands in the lower half of the range of differing time-spans: he locates it mostly in the 15th to early 18th century, about the same span as Menzer. I don't think these people. or their pupils, have got much closer in the last ten years. There are issues in all sciences where no definite consensus exists and I think Wikipedia should reflect this, but in a reasonable way, not by presenting every theory that's been introduced by at least one scholar as equally true but by showing the most important ones and trying to explain how these theories differ.Strausszek (talk) 23:19, 17 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For people like me, who know nothing of linguistics, this article is not particularly helpful. Maybe you could include some practical examples. Since I do not know the subject I am at a loss as to how to improve the entry, but I can say that this entry has not helped improved my understanding of the subject. Perhaps the authors should write for people who go to an online encyclopedias for a basic understanding of the subject rather than for each other. To be specific: Suppose I am a 17 year-old assigned the Canterbury Tales in school. This has sparked my interest in the evolution of the English language. On Wiki I read "[aː] (ā) fronted to [æː] and then raised to [ɛː], [eː] and in many dialects diphthongised in Modern English to [eɪ] (as in make). " This means nothing to me. I literally do not have any idea what you are talking about. You have not contributed to my knowledge in any way. As an encyclopedia, this entry has totally failed except as a sandbox pissing contest among experts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.148.84.35 (talk) 16:56, 16 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. This article is an incomprehensible waste of space on some server somewhere. The only people who can make head or tale of it are people who already know it. I know the IPA symbols used in modern dictionaries, so am disappointed I have to look up more to understand this twaddle... This kind of elitist rubbish should be deleted. 111.68.120.158 (talk) 08:21, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This sort of recurring completely unconstructive criticism also seems like a waste of server space FWIW.

It is difficult to tell what exactly is the problem. The phonetic transcription? The subject cannot be explained in detail without a notation more fine-grained than what is required for transcribing pronuciation in dictionaries. This is not a bug, it's a feature.

In particular, I suspect that a confused understanding of the concept of vowel length may be a key difficulty?, but again, hard to tell form this kind of comments. The concept of vowel height is another prerequisite. Hence, both are linked right from the 3rd paragraph.

What would be helpful is knowing what people actually expect of this article. To somehow explain the history of vowels in English to people who do not understand what vowels actually are and how they work in general? --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 22:57, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have changed the link above the chart to a page that has all the symbols used, with built-in sound files. This means the confused readership can hear the different vowel sounds. I hope this addresses the various complaints on this talk page. Davidelit (Talk) 08:02, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The article seems to take on faith that this Great Vowel Shift happened. How do we know? Shouldn't there be at least one sentence explaining how we know it happened? 50.49.134.141 (talk) 17:19, 9 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Samuel Johnson in his grammar appendix to his 1755 dictionary clearly distinguishes the meet and meat vowels: "Ea sound like e long, as mean; or like ee, as dear, clear, near. Ei is sounded like e long, as seize, perceiving."[4]

"E long" is apparently /eː/ while ee is /iː/. With this evidence, the meet-meat merger didn't reach its full extent until the late 18th century at the earliest. 75.132.149.255 (talk) 21:39, 15 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Quoting: "the vowel in feet was [eː] (similar to modern fate)" -- wasn't it supposed to be "fat" given as example? The modern feet has the vowel [i:], not [e:]. -- Tiberiu C. Turbureanu

I think you're reading it backwards. The vowel in "feet" was indeed [eː], but is now [i:]. "fate" has [eɪ], which is close to the vowel that "feet" used to have. CodeCat (talk) 23:25, 4 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"In German [...] long [iː] had changed to [aɪ], (as in Eis, 'ice') and long [uː] to [aʊ] (as in Haus, 'house')"

That sounds like there was a German word written "Haus" (written) and pronounced "Hus" (spoken) which than became Haus (written & spoken).
So, was there really a word "Haus" (written) which pronounced "Hus" (spoken) or was the word also written "Hus" or back than "hus" (written) and pronounced that way? en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hus#Old_High_German implies that there was a German word written as "hus".
So, didn't in Germany the writing system evolved, too, like "hus" (written & spoken) becoming "haus/Haus" (spoken) and then "Haus" (written & spoken)?
- IP, 21:49, 20 May 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.196.250.81 (talk)

Yes, that's a bit awkwardly worded. Indeed you are right: Unlike in English, the German diphthongisation is also reflected in the spelling. It also started considerably earlier, already in the late Old High German period (and that is in fact apparently the reason why it is shown in spelling, as the spelling tradition gradually petrified and ceased reflecting new changes in the course of the high medieval period in several languages, as people throughout Europe began to write more frequently in the vernacular), though it was only deep in the Middle High German period that it began to be written more consistently – in those dialects that had it, of course. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 05:54, 18 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Based on Roger Lass's treatment in the Cambridge History of English, the Great Vowel Shift was a much more complex set of changes. Most cases of Middle English /iː uː/ change to diphthongs, and /eː oː ɛː ɔː/ were raised, but the changes that /ɛː ɔː/ underwent were more complex: sometimes they changed to /iː uː/ and sometimes to /eː oː/. Or so I gather. I'm still slightly confused by Lass's portrait because of its complexity, and need to reread it. — Eru·tuon 01:30, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is meant to be written by and for both experts and nonexperts alike. One of the big issues that we seem to be having with these subjects is that non-linguists are unable to understand what is being said. Now, I personally believe everyone should at least learn IPA if nothing else related to linguistics, but it seems that even with said understanding, a lot of editors are still very confused.

You do not know how many times I encounter people on talk pages complaining about this.

As such, I frankly think that the current image is sufficient for the purposes that it is being used for. If readers wish for further detail, they can research the subject elsewhere (or perhaps we can make a reference in the notes to further information). Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 01:56, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the current image should be kept, but it would be valuable to describe the complexities of EME pronunciation somewhere. The fact that /ɛː/ split into /eː/ and /iː/, combined with later changes, for instance, explains why ea is pronounced in three different ways, as seen in break, bread, east. And the complexity in EME pronunciation of ai explains rhymes in EME poetry. And so on. However, it is best to describe these complexities in such a way that the overall picture of the GVS is not blurred. — Eru·tuon 02:14, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 03:29, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]