The Great Vowel Shift is just the best-known vowel shift. A language never stops changing as long as it’s in active use by people who speak it as their first language. You’ve had your tongue for how long? And you may just be getting to know its ways better now.īut why would this happen? Does it seem too strange for words? Well, in fact, changes to pronunciation keep on happening, everywhere, all the time. Now try them in the order of bat, bet, bit bait, beet, bite.Ĭongratulations. You might find it clearer if you say just the vowels and leave off the and. Watch the zigzag your tongue makes as you say the vowels in bat, bait, bet, beet, bit, bite, in order. Meanwhile, the short vowels pretty much stayed put, resulting in these mismatched socks. What we call “long u” is another thing that happened to that vowel: the sound we used to say as in “booty” is the sound in beauty.ĭoes that seem stupid? Consider that in some versions of English (much Canadian English, for instance), the word stupid – which because of the vowel shift became like “styoopid” – is now back to a pre-shifted “stoopid.” But what we call “long o” is really the shifted version of a long version of the sound in bought. The word we used to say like “boat” is the word boot (hence the oo spelling) and the word we used to say like “boot” is the word bout. Meanwhile, things went even nuttier in the back. The word we used to say as “beet” is the word bite. The word we used to say as “bate” is the word beet. ![]() So the word we used to say as “baat” is the word bate. The vowels at the top couldn’t move any further up, so they became diphthongs starting lower in the mouth and moving up. The long vowels all moved up in the mouth while the short ones stayed put. But accents change over time, pronunciation of phonemes shifts, and there was a big change during the 15 th and 16 th centuries, a thing called the Great Vowel Shift. Then something changed.Įnglish “long” vowels actually were long versions of the short ones centuries ago. But if it were really a long version of “short a,” you would say that word like “faat.” You know what “long a” is: the sound in fate. There’s your long a: a long version of a short a. Pretend you’re at the doctor and say “ah.” Say it quickly first. “Long i” is not actually a long version of “short i,” nor is “long o” an extended version of “short o.” “Long a” doesn’t have any of the sound of “short a” in it at all. But not because they’re long versions of the short ones. And they’re even slightly shorter before voiceless stops than before voiced ones (the in mat is a bit shorter than the one in mad, for instance).Īnd the long ones are longer. ![]() There’s something you should know about long and short vowel pairs in English. Today: the sixth installment of my how-to guide for word tasting, A Word Taster’s Companion.
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