The Great Vowel Shift

Written by: Lucia Lasić (FFOS)

Issue 2 (April 2018)

Language production is one of the most important human features and, as its users, it evolves and undergoes many changes. Such changes are visible in the English language which nowadays sounds quite different compared to how it used to, especially in the pronunciation of vowels. This is due to the Great Vowel Shift, a radical change in pronunciation (of both vowels and consonants) which occurred in the14th century and lasted until the1700s, culminating in the15th and 16th century. Its causes are still not fully known, but it is believed that it occurred due to the influence of Romanic languages, especially French.

As already stated, the most prominent changes were those in pronunciation of vowels. Long vowels became higher and sounds were produced further forward in the mouth, whereas short vowels remained largely unchanged. Before the shift, long vowels in English were pronounced similarly to vowels in languages derived from Latin but lost their “pure” vowel features. For instance, in Chaucer’s time the word “life” was “lyf”, sounding closely to “leef”, and later, in Shakespeare’s time, it sounded more like “lafe”, and it eventually changed to the modern way of pronunciation that we use today. Similar examples are the word “house” being pronounced as “hoose”, “out” as “oot”, and “mine” as “meen”. This is why older English poets might confuse a modern reader who expects certain rhyming patterns, for instance in sonnets. One would assume that Shakespeare wrote the following lines sloppily or opted for visual rhyme[1];

From fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

But as the riper should by time decease,

His tender heir might bear his memory[2].

However, that is not the case and the seemingly failed attempt at rhyming can be explained by the Great Vowel Shift which caused our modern pronunciation to be different from that of Shakespeare, which is why these lines merely appear to be unfitting in the rhyming pattern.

The name of the Great Vowel Shift might be slightly misleading, since many changes occurred in consonants and spelling as well as the vowels, although, not so prominently. For example, some consonants ceased to exist (e.g. voiceless velar fricative pronounced as “ch” in “loch”) or are no longer pronounced (“l” in “walk”, “k” in “kneeling”, “r” after a vowel like “terror”, and so on).

English pronunciation represents a puzzling (if not problematic) topic to many, but to have a full grasp of why it differentiates from many other European languages, one has to observe its diachronic development and historical circumstances.

[1]Visual rhyme (also eye rhyme, sight rhyme) – a type of rhyme in which two words are spelled similarly, but pronounced differently

[2] W. Shakespeare, Sonnet 1