Middle English vowel system Before the Great Vowel Shift, Middle English in Southern England had seven long vowels, . The vowels occurred in, for example, the words
mite,
meet,
meat,
mate,
boat,
boot, and
bout, respectively. The words had very different pronunciations in Middle English from those in Modern English: • '
Long i'''
in mite
was pronounced as , so Middle English mite
sounded similar to Modern English meet''. • '
Long e'''
in meet
was pronounced as , so Middle English meet
sounded similar to modern Australian English met'' but pronounced longer. • '
Long a'''
in mate
was pronounced as , with a vowel similar to the broad a
of ma''. • '
Long o'''
in boot
was pronounced as , so Middle English boot
sounded similar to modern Southern England, Australian and New Zealand English bought''. In addition, Middle English had: •
Long in
meat, like Received Pronunciation
air, or modern short
e in
met but pronounced longer. •
Long in
boat, with a vowel similar to
aw in modern Northern England English
law, or like modern Southern England, Australian and New Zealand English
bot but pronounced longer. •
Long in
bout, similar to Modern English
boot.
Changes After around 1300, the long vowels of Middle English began changing in pronunciation as follows: •
Diphthongisation – The two close vowels, , became
diphthongs (
vowel breaking). •
Vowel raising – The other five, , underwent an increase in
tongue height (
raising). These changes occurred over several centuries and can be divided into two phases. The first phase affected the close vowels and the close-mid vowels : were raised to , and became the diphthongs or . The second phase affected the open vowel and the open-mid vowels : were raised, in most cases changing to . The Great Vowel Shift changed vowels without
merger, so Middle English before the vowel shift had the same number of vowel
phonemes as early modern English after the vowel shift. After the Great Vowel Shift, some vowel phonemes began merging. Immediately after the Great Vowel Shift, the vowels of
meet and
meat were different, but they are merged in Modern English, and both words are pronounced as . However, during the 16th and the 17th centuries, there were many different mergers, and some mergers can be seen in individual Modern English words like
great, which is pronounced with the vowel as in
mate rather than the vowel as in
meat. This is a simplified picture of the changes that happened between late Middle English (late ME),
Early Modern English (EModE), and today's English (ModE). Pronunciations in 1400, 1500, 1600, and 1900 are shown. To hear recordings of the sounds, click the phonetic symbols. Before
labial consonants and also after , did not shift, and remains as in
soup.
First phase The first phase of the Great Vowel Shift affected the Middle English close-mid vowels , as in
beet and
boot, and the close vowels , as in
bite and
out. The close vowels became diphthongs and the close-mid vowels became close . The first phase was completed in 1500, meaning that by that time, words like
beet and
boot had lost their Middle English pronunciation and were pronounced with the same vowels as in Modern English. The words
bite and
out were pronounced with diphthongs, but not the same diphthongs as in Modern English. Scholars agree that the Middle English close vowels became diphthongs around 1500, but disagree about what diphthongs they changed to. According to Lass, the words
bite and
out after diphthongisation were pronounced as and , similar to American English
bait and
oat . Later, the diphthongs shifted to , then , and finally to Modern English . This sequence of events is supported by the testimony of
orthoepists before Richard Hodges in 1644. However, many scholars such as , , and argue for theoretical reasons that, contrary to what 16th-century witnesses report, the vowels were immediately centralised and lowered to . Evidence from Northern English and Scots (
see below) suggests that the close-mid vowels were the first to shift. As the Middle English vowels were raised towards , they forced the original Middle English out of place and caused them to become diphthongs . This type of sound change, in which one vowel's pronunciation shifts so that it is pronounced like a second vowel, and the second vowel is forced to change its pronunciation, is called a
push chain. However, according to professor
Jürgen Handke, for some time, there was a phonetic split between words with the vowel and the diphthong , in words where the Middle English shifted to the Modern English . For an example,
high was pronounced with the vowel , and
like and
my were pronounced with the diphthong . Therefore, for logical reasons, the close vowels could have diphthongised before the close-mid vowels raised. Otherwise,
high would probably rhyme with
thee rather than
my. This type of chain is called a
drag chain.
Second phase The second phase of the Great Vowel Shift affected the Middle English open vowel , as in
mate, and the Middle English open-mid vowels , as in
meat and
boat. Around 1550, Middle English was raised to . Then, after 1600, the new was raised to , with the Middle English open-mid vowels raised to close-mid .
Later mergers During the first and the second phases of the Great Vowel Shift, long vowels were shifted without merging with other vowels, but after the second phase, several vowels merged. The later changes also involved the Middle English diphthong , as in
day, which often (but not always, see the
pane-pain merger) monophthongised to , and merged with Middle English as in
mate or as in
meat. During the 16th and 17th centuries, several different pronunciation variants existed among different parts of the population for words like
meet,
meat,
mate, and
day. Different pairs or trios of words were merged in pronunciation in each pronunciation variant. Four different pronunciation variants are shown in the table below. The fourth pronunciation variant gave rise to Modern English pronunciation. In Modern English,
meet and
meat are merged in pronunciation and both have the vowel , and
mate and
day are merged with the diphthong , which developed from the 16th-century long vowel . Modern English typically has the
meet–meat merger: both
meet and
meat are pronounced with the vowel . Words like
great and
steak, however, have merged with
mate and are pronounced with the vowel , which developed from the shown in the table above. Before historic some of these vowels merged with , , , ==Northern English and Scots==