What is the Great Vowel Shift examples?
So the word ‘goose,’ for example, had two os to indicate a long /o/ sound, /o:/—a good phonetic spelling of the word. However, the vowel had shifted to /u/; thus goose, moose, food, and other similar words that we now spell with oo had mismatched spelling and pronunciation.
What is the Great Lakes vowel shift?
History of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift Speakers around the Great Lakes began to pronounce the short a sound, /æ/ as in TRAP, as more of a diphthong and with a higher starting point in the mouth, causing the same word to sound more like “tray-ap” or “tray-up”; Labov et al.
How did English spread through colonization?
Until the 19th century, the British were the major superpower, and their method of colonization included establishing schools which taught English language and Western culture to locals who needed to be “modernized.” Most former British colonies now use English as their official language (e.g. Ghana and South Africa).
What is the Great Vowel Shift and why is it important?
The causes of the shift are generally unknown, but its effects were vast. It is undeniable if the Great Vowel Shift hadn’t occurred, the spelling English would be a lot simpler, instead of the peculiar and distinctive spellings which we have today, which make the English language so unique.
What is vowel length?
Otto Jespersen- a Danish linguist who coined the term said Vowel length, of course, is the perceived duration or period of a vowel sound and the long vowels in the Middle English, prior to the Great Vowel Shift were: /i:/ /e:/ /a:/ /o:/ and /u:/. The essentials of the Great Vowel Shift are displayed in the diagram below:-
How did the long vowels change during the early modern period?
“By the early Modern English period all the long vowels had shifted: Middle English ē, as in sweete ‘sweet,’ had already acquired the value [i] that it currently has, and the others were well on their way to acquiring the values that they have in current English.
How did the GVs change the spelling of the English language?
Despite the exact dates of the GVS not being fully clear, we do know that the GVS had a profound impact on the phonology, and subsequently spelling, of the English language. What exactly happened then? This change documents a shift of long vowel sounds to shorter vowel sounds.