3) Describe the possible origins of the Great Vowel Shift and its effect on the English

language

The Great Vowel Shift

The Great Vowel Shift was a massive sound change affecting the long vowels of English during
the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. Basically, the long vowels shifted upwards; that is, a vowel
that used to be pronounced in one place in the mouth would be pronounced in a different place,
higher up in the mouth. The Great Vowel Shift has had long-term implications for, among other
things, orthography, the teaching of reading, and the understanding of any English-language text
written before or during the Shift.

At any given time, people of different ages and from different regions would have different
pronunciations of the same word. Older, more conservative speakers would retain one
pronunciation while younger, more advanced speakers were moving to a new one; some people
would be able to pronounce the same word two or more different ways. The same thing happens
today, of course.

The surprising speed and the exact cause of the shift are continuing mysteries
in linguistics and cultural history, but some theories attach the cause to the mass migration to the
southeast part of England after the Black Death, where the difference in accents led to certain
groups modifying their speech to allow for a standard pronunciation of vowel sounds. The
different dialects and the rise of a standardized middle class in London led to changes in
pronunciation, which continued to spread out from that city.

The sudden social mobility after the Black Death may have caused the shift, with people from
lower levels in society moving to higher levels. Another explanation highlights the language of
the ruling class: the medieval aristocracy had spoken French but by the early fifteenth century
they were using English. This may have caused a change to the "prestige accent" of English,
either by making pronunciation more French in style or by changing it in some other way,
perhaps by hypercorrection to something thought to be "more English". Another influence may
have been the great political and social upheavals of the fifteenth century, which were largely
contemporaneous with the Great Vowel Shift.

The principal changes are roughly as follows. However, exceptions occur, the transitions were
not always complete, and there were sometimes accompanying changes in orthography:

 Middle English (ME) a is pronounced as the a in father. Early modern English (EME)
pronounces the long a as in gate.
 ME pronounces the long e as the long a in gate. EME pronounces the long e as the e in
tweet.
 ME pronounces the long i as the e in tweet. EME pronounces the long i as the i in light.
 ME pronounces the long o as the o in tool. EME pronounces the long o as the o in goal.

ME scholars suggest that no higher long u pronunciation exists. The ou as in current day, would
have given the “ow” sound, as in the word louse. EME pronounces the u as long o in ME. Long
u pronunciation in EME is as the long o of tool or the long u of lute.

As we saw The Great Vowel Shift influenced English language very much, but as far as the
reasons that caused this shift remains unknown.

Mahir Kevric