During
the GVS the long vowels underwent a series of changes. The long
vowels can be heard today in the Received Pronunciation of words
like seat (as opposed to the short vowel of sit) and
lose (vs. loss). In Middle English, there were seven
such vowels, and their values are shown in the table below, along
with an approximate equivalent in modern Received Pronunciation.
|
Word |
Vowel quality in c. 1400 |
Nearest Modern English (RP) vowel |
|
time |
/i:/ |
teem
/i:/ |
|
see |
/e:/ |
first part of say /ei/ |
|
sea |
/ε:/ |
first part of Sarah
/εə/ |
|
fame |
/a:/ |
farm
/α:/ |
|
so |
/ɔ:/ |
saw
/ɔ:/ |
|
do |
/o:/ |
first part of doe /ou/ |
|
now |
/u:/ |
new
/u:/ |
Around
1400, some of these vowels began to change their values, and by
around 1600 all of them had done so. We can tell when a shift was
taking place because of the way the spellings changed: if we see a
word like blod 'blood', which was traditionally spelled with
an o, beginning to be spelled with a u, as in
bloud
or
blud,
it suggests that some sort of pronunciation change in the direction
of /u:/ is taking place. Taking into account these changes, and
those that took place after 1600 also, we end up with the modern
system, again illustrated here from Received Pronunciation.
|
Vowel quality in c. 1400 |
Vowel quality today |
Modern English word (RP) |
|
/i:/ > |
/ai/ |
time |
|
/e:/ > |
/i:/ |
see |
|
/ε:/ > |
/i:/ |
heath |
|
/a:/ > |
/ei/ |
fame |
|
/ɔ:/
> |
/əʊ/ |
so |
|
/o:/ > |
/u:/ |
do |
|
/u:/ > |
/αʊ/ |
now |
The
cumulative difference is striking. A sentence such as
We do make
time to go now
would
have roughly sounded, in Chaucerian pronunciation, as
Way doe
mahk teem to gaw noo.
It only
took a few generations before the changes formed a real
comprehension barrier. Today, if we hear Chaucer read in a Middle
English pronunciation, it can be very difficult to understand him.
It would have been difficult for Shakespeare, too.
The
phenomenon is traditionally called the 'Great Vowel Shift', but the
label is misleading in its suggestion that it was a single shift
operating at a standard rate. The evidence of spellings, rhymes, and
commentaries by contemporary language pundits suggests that it
operated in more than one stage, affected vowels at different rates
in different parts of the country, and took over 200 years to
complete. Nor did it apply in the same way everywhere. The /u:/
value became a diphthong in most parts of England, as we hear in
modern now and house, but this change did not happen
in the north-east, or in Scotland, where the 1400 value may still be
heard, as can be seen in such Scots spellings as noo and
hoose.
Nobody
has been able to establish why the change began – the causes of a
sound-change are never easy to determine – and studies plotting its
spread are still ongoing. Some parts of the country seem to have
been more involved at the outset than others. One analysis has
suggested that the low vowels, such as /a:/, began to change first
in the North, specifically in the Yorkshire area, and the high
vowels (such as /i:/) in the North Midlands and the South-West. A
varied dialect pattern is very likely: we know that the speakers of
some dialects are more conservative than others, and take more time
to assimilate a change.
The
first of these changes was well under way when Caxton was born, and
by the time he set up his press in London several words would have
had competing pronunciations in the speech of those around him. Many
people from the Midlands would have brought the change with them.
Doubtless older people were more conservative, younger ones more
innovative. Perhaps women were more ready to be innovative than men,
as they are often known to be today.
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