TIL of the Great Vowel Shift, a period of time between 1400-1600 where the pronunciation of many English words changed. This explains why poets like Chaucer were able to rhyme words like food, good and blood. sites.fas.harvard.edu/~ch…
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πŸ‘€︎ u/griefofwant
πŸ“…︎ Oct 01 2020
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I will never forgive the Great Vowel Shift for ruining symmetry
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πŸ‘€︎ u/SavvyBlonk
πŸ“…︎ Mar 15 2020
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Examples great vowel shift

So I was wondering what are some examples of things changing in the great vowel shift?

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πŸ‘€︎ u/rakorako404
πŸ“…︎ Dec 09 2020
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Did Scots experience something similar to the Great Vowel Shift in English?

If so, when did it happen? And how did it affect the pronunciation of vowels?

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πŸ‘€︎ u/PageTurner627
πŸ“…︎ Nov 27 2020
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TIL English is difficult to spell because of the printing press and the great vowel shift. Between 1350 and 1700, the great vowel shift occurred, while the printing press was introduced in 1476 to England. This caused spelling to standardize before pronunciation. study.com/academy/lesson/…
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πŸ‘€︎ u/DrSpoe
πŸ“…︎ Mar 26 2019
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TIL that the English language went through a period where the sound of long vowels changed dramatically, it is known as the Great Vowel Shift and it happened ca. 1350 to 1600. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gre…
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πŸ‘€︎ u/Pelusteriano
πŸ“…︎ Jan 27 2017
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English sounds completely ridiculous due to the vowel change (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift)

Just why??

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πŸ‘€︎ u/ROG1ER
πŸ“…︎ Oct 29 2020
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What are the most likely causes of the Great Vowel Shift, and what were its actual changes?
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πŸ‘€︎ u/Glorious_Eenee
πŸ“…︎ Aug 03 2020
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Should we modernise English spelling? English was standardised during the Great Vowel Shift and was never updated in order to match the change in phonology. Do you think we should change the old English spelling of words which can be centuries out of date to match the modern pronunciations?
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πŸ‘€︎ u/Cheeseleaf
πŸ“…︎ Sep 07 2019
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The Great Vowel Shift and the History of Britain. youtube.com/watch?v=VOOAb…
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πŸ‘€︎ u/LordJim11
πŸ“…︎ Jun 20 2020
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How are english speakers taught about the Great Vowel Shift in school?
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πŸ‘€︎ u/stygger
πŸ“…︎ Apr 28 2019
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The Great Vowel Shift and the History of Britain youtu.be/VOOAb7erAmE
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πŸ‘€︎ u/VikingTeddy
πŸ“…︎ Jan 29 2020
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How did the Great Vowel Shift affect /Ι›/ /Ιͺ/ /ʊ/ and /Ι”Ιͺ/?

Every chart I've seen describing the shift seems to omit the origins of the modern pronunciations of these phonemes, why is this? Were these phones completely unaffected by the shift, or are there current pronunciations explained other different sound changes, if so what were those changes?

More charts:

chart 1

chart 2

chart 3

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πŸ‘€︎ u/READERmii
πŸ“…︎ Mar 02 2018
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The Great Vowel Shift and the History of Britain. [15:42] youtu.be/VOOAb7erAmE
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πŸ‘€︎ u/oneofthenatives
πŸ“…︎ Feb 17 2020
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Are there any first-hand accounts of changes in English during the great vowel shift?

After rewatching a bunch of videos on OP and the changes in English for the upteenth time, I got to wondering like I usually do about said question. Thanks!

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πŸ‘€︎ u/adum_korvic
πŸ“…︎ Aug 22 2018
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The Great Vowel Shift and the History of Britain. (15 mins) youtube.com/watch?v=VOOAb…
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πŸ‘€︎ u/Warden_de_Dios
πŸ“…︎ Jan 28 2020
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The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in England between 1350 and 1600. The Shift is responsible for many of the peculiarities of English spelling. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gre…
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πŸ“…︎ Oct 19 2016
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What's so great about the Great Vowel Shift?

I get that it was a major event changing the pronunciation of the whole vowel system, but surely it is not the only event that affected the pronunciation of vowels in British English? Language is in a constant state of change so I would expect there to be many more shifts in vowel pronunciations, so really, what exactly is so great about GVS? Why not just name it something like 'the first vowel shift'?

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πŸ‘€︎ u/Brit_in_Lux
πŸ“…︎ Feb 20 2019
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History of spoken Chinese - were there equivalents to things like "great vowel shift"?

I know a bit about the history of english and how it changed from Old English to Middle to Modern English. That got me thinking about Chinese and it's reliance on tones, and was wondering if there were similar events that changed the pronunciations used in Chinese. Thanks.

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πŸ‘€︎ u/engti
πŸ“…︎ May 20 2015
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Which dialect/accent of English was least affected by the great vowel shift and consonant changes?

I'm looking for a dialect of English which wasn't that affected by the Great Vowel Shift. This includes consonant changes that happened during that era.

In theory, if you take a modern speaker of that dialect, and put him in the 1500s (same region), he would be able to have a semi-normal conversation with them

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πŸ‘€︎ u/vkb123
πŸ“…︎ Sep 02 2018
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How do we know the English Great Vowel Shift happened?

I'm presuming it's through surviving written pre-GVS sources that don't make sense with English's current vowels, but the spelling becomes phonetic when using pre-GVS vowels?

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πŸ‘€︎ u/Diestormlie
πŸ“…︎ Oct 25 2019
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Why did the Great Vowel Shift happen, and was it consistent enough that we can say what vowels became what?

Could we say that Γ¦ used to be a:, or ʊ used to be Ε“, or was it much more random than that?

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πŸ‘€︎ u/The_Manchurian
πŸ“…︎ Apr 02 2019
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A vowel shift is a systematic sound change in the pronunciation of the vowel sounds of a language. The best-known example in the English language is the Great Vowel Shift, which began in the 15th century. The Greek language also underwent a vowel shift near the beginning of the Common Era en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vow…
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πŸ‘€︎ u/VerGuy
πŸ“…︎ May 27 2018
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What sparked the great vowel shift?

I recently watched a video on how far back in time could we go and still be able to understand the English speaking population and something called the "Great Vowel Shift" was brought up. I know it's basically the change from Middle English to modern English and that it took course over 200 years, but I was wondering if historians had any clue as to what sparked the change?

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πŸ‘€︎ u/EggCouncilCreeper
πŸ“…︎ Apr 12 2017
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Northern Cities Vowel Shift: How Americans in the Great Lakes region are revolutionizing English. - Slate Magazine slate.com/articles/life/t…
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πŸ‘€︎ u/christophers80
πŸ“…︎ Aug 22 2012
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How are we positive that the Great Vowel Shift happened?

I mean it is commonly accepted as a part of the development of the English language, but we do not have any recordings.

I am sure there are methods to how linguists have come to this conclusion, I am curious as to what they are

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πŸ‘€︎ u/shenry1313
πŸ“…︎ May 21 2015
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The Great Vowel Shift en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gre…
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πŸ‘€︎ u/HobbeScotch
πŸ“…︎ Sep 09 2011
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Could the Introduction of Utensils Have Given Rise to the Great Vowel Shift?

We all know from skeletal records that the introduction of utensils in the west changed people's jawlines and created the slight overbite common now. Is there a chance that this could have affected pronunciation such that the vowel shift occured?

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πŸ‘€︎ u/zeppelinonnpr
πŸ“…︎ Dec 03 2018
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American Accent Undergoing Great Vowel Shift npr.org/templates/story/s…
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πŸ‘€︎ u/KosherNazi
πŸ“…︎ Apr 19 2013
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I'm sure you get this a lot but...the great vowel shift: how do you know?

I've been dabbling in linguistics, Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, and the history of the English language. I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, but how do you know the great vowel shift took place if all you have is written texts? I mean, it's not like you can ask Alfred how he pronounced stuff.

And how do you know how to pronounce texts written in the era when the great vowel shift took place? If they're written in the era of the shift, would they be of mixed pronunciation? Or...I don't even know. I'm confused.

It makes perfect sense to me that a vowel shift could and did take place at the time. I'm just wondering how we know it did, and what evidence made us realize it.

Perhaps this is an easy question. Or perhaps my question covers too broad a spectrum of study for an easy answer. Sorry.

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πŸ‘€︎ u/SoManyShades
πŸ“…︎ Nov 24 2013
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Typical claim that 'Today's American English is actually closer to 18th-century British English in pronunciation than current-day British English is', yet when talking about the Great Vowel Shift, we get told that 'Northern English dialects [e.g. Geordie] were less affected'. vox.com/2015/3/3/8053521/…
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πŸ‘€︎ u/Xaethon
πŸ“…︎ May 30 2015
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Hearing the Great Vowel Shift - A bit of dialogue spoken in the English of various centuries. By Melinda Menzer at Furman University. web.archive.org/web/20060…
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πŸ‘€︎ u/agumonkey
πŸ“…︎ Mar 20 2014
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How did English vowels sound before the Great Vowel Shift?

I was reading this thread asking if Modern and Early English speakers would be able to understand each other, and also read the section about the evolution of languages in the FAQ, and it got me wondering, what did English sound like before the great vowel shift, or indeed, how did Early and Middle English sound compared to Modern English? And how can we know what they sounded like, without recordings?

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πŸ‘€︎ u/AskIfImATree
πŸ“…︎ Mar 25 2014
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The Great Vowel Shift: why English spelling is so hard en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gre…
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πŸ‘€︎ u/bprogramming
πŸ“…︎ Apr 06 2018
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Did people comment on the Great Vowel Shift while it was happening? Did any language purists try to stop it? (xpost /r/askhistorians)

I originally asked this on /r/AskHistorians, but perhaps this is a more logical place.

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πŸ‘€︎ u/kingarto
πŸ“…︎ Feb 13 2015
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How mutually intelligible were English and German before the Great Vowel Shift?

How mutually intelligible were English and German before the Great Vowel Shift? Given that prior to the GVS English still had the consonant /x/ in the digraph <gh> as in "light" it would have been pronounced much closer to the even the modern German "Licht" pronounced /lΙͺΓ§t/ and "knight" would have been pronounced /knΙ›xt/ being much closer to the German word for servant "knecht" pronounced /knΙ›Γ§t/. This leads me to believe that there would also be far more cognates between the two at the time which may possibly result in somewhat conversational mutual intelligibility.

How true is this thought? To what degree did the changes that took place to both vowels and consonants during the GVS degrade the mutual intelligibility of English and German prior to the Great vowel shift, and what was the magnitude of intelligibility between Middle English and the corresponding German ancestor the time?

How similar were the vocabularies and grammar of the languages before GVS? Did German undergo an similar shift at any time?

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πŸ‘€︎ u/READERmii
πŸ“…︎ Jan 18 2018
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What caused the great vowel shift?
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πŸ‘€︎ u/Polypana
πŸ“…︎ Sep 23 2019
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Are there any first-hand accounts about changes in English pronunciation during the great vowel shift?
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πŸ‘€︎ u/adum_korvic
πŸ“…︎ Jul 11 2018
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How do we know the Great Vowel Shift happened? And what are the theories as to why?
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πŸ‘€︎ u/The_Manchurian
πŸ“…︎ May 24 2018
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Are there any explanations for the Great Vowel Shift?

Or does it continue to be a mystery?

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πŸ‘€︎ u/aroogu
πŸ“…︎ Jun 15 2011
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