This ruined English spelling
Summary
TLDRThe video explains why English spelling is so inconsistent, focusing on the Great Vowel Shift, a centuries-long change in pronunciation starting in the 15th century. This shift altered long vowels, making words like 'meat' and 'meet' sound the same, while other words developed multiple pronunciations for the same spelling. Factors such as the Black Death, migration, fashion, and the printing press contributed to these changes. The video highlights how these historical shifts in language still impact English today, making it a fascinating look into the evolution of English spelling and pronunciation.
Takeaways
- đ The Great Vowel Shift (GVS) was a centuries-long process that significantly changed the pronunciation of long vowels in English.
- đ The GVS played a huge role in making English spelling and pronunciation inconsistent, as vowels shifted in predictable patterns over time.
- đ The GVS took place between the 15th and 18th centuries, covering the transition from Middle English (Chaucer's era) to Early Modern English (Shakespeare's era).
- đ Vowel sounds moved higher in the mouth and sometimes further forward, resulting in changes like 'meat' once sounding like 'mate' before settling on its modern pronunciation.
- đ The GVS caused the pronunciation of certain words to converge, like 'meet' and 'meat,' creating confusion in spelling and pronunciation.
- đ The shift didn't happen uniformly, with northern English dialects being less affected. This led to modern regional variations in pronunciation.
- đŤđˇ External factors, like migration, the influence of French, and even social changes like the Black Death, likely contributed to the vowel shift.
- đ¨ď¸ The arrival of the printing press during the GVS helped standardize English spelling, but this occurred mid-change, freezing inconsistent pronunciations into written form.
- đ The evolution of spelling didn't just involve vowels; consonants also shifted, with many letters becoming silent (e.g., the 'gh' in 'through' and the 'k' in 'knight').
- âď¸ The GVS is considered a chain reaction, where one vowel change led to another, making English spelling today a snapshot of historical pronunciation.
Q & A
What is the Great Vowel Shift, and why is it significant?
-The Great Vowel Shift was a centuries-long process, from the 15th to the 18th century, during which the pronunciation of long vowels in English changed dramatically. It is significant because it explains why many words that are spelled similarly today are pronounced differently, causing inconsistencies in English spelling and pronunciation.
How did the Great Vowel Shift affect the pronunciation of words like 'meat' and 'meet'?
-During the Great Vowel Shift, 'meat' was pronounced as 'mairt' in Middle English, but later shifted to 'mate' and eventually became 'meat' as we pronounce it today. 'Meet' also changed during this period, resulting in the convergence of their pronunciations, even though they are spelled differently.
Why do words like 'beat', 'bear', 'break', and 'bread' all have different pronunciations despite similar spellings?
-The varying pronunciations of 'EA' in words like 'beat', 'bear', 'break', and 'bread' are partly due to the influence of the sounds that follow the vowel pair. For example, 'break' and 'steak' rhyme because of the 'k' sound after the 'EA', while 'bear', 'wear', and 'tear' rhyme due to the 'r' sound following the vowel.
How did the Black Death contribute to the Great Vowel Shift?
-The Black Death caused large population movements, as people migrated to cities like London to take advantage of higher wages due to labor shortages. These migrations brought together people with different dialects, influencing one another's speech patterns, which may have contributed to the changes in vowel pronunciation during the Great Vowel Shift.
What role did the printing press play in the Great Vowel Shift?
-The printing press led to the standardization of English spelling at a time when pronunciation was still changing. As a result, many spellings were fixed before the Great Vowel Shift was complete, causing a mismatch between how words are spelled and how they are pronounced today.
Why do Northern English dialects differ from Southern English dialects in their vowel pronunciation?
-The Great Vowel Shift primarily affected the area around London and the English Midlands, which became the dominant form of British English. However, Northern English dialects were less affected by the shift. For example, Northern dialects retain the pronunciation of 'but' as 'butt,' while Southern English changed it to 'but.'
Why does American English differ from British English in certain vowel pronunciations?
-American English developed during a period when Southern British English was still undergoing further changes after the Great Vowel Shift. As a result, American English retains some older pronunciations, such as the short 'a' sound in words like 'bath' and 'grass,' while British English developed a longer vowel sound.
How did silent letters, such as the 'gh' in 'through' and the 'k' in 'knight,' become part of English spelling?
-During the transition from Middle to Early Modern English, certain consonant sounds, like the 'gh' and 'k,' were either dropped or became silent. These letters were often retained in spelling to reflect their historical presence, even though they are no longer pronounced.
What is the impact of fashion and prestige on language change during the Great Vowel Shift?
-It is possible that people changed their ways of speaking to sound more prestigious or fashionable, consciously adopting new pronunciations to reflect social status. This may have contributed to the vowel changes seen during the Great Vowel Shift.
How did English spelling become inconsistent due to the Great Vowel Shift?
-English spelling became inconsistent because the pronunciation of words changed while their spellings were being standardized. As vowels shifted and consonants became silent, the written forms of words often no longer matched how they were pronounced, leading to the many irregularities in English spelling today.
Outlines
đ¤ The Confusion of English Pronunciation
The paragraph introduces the perplexing nature of English spelling and pronunciation, particularly how identical letter clusters can produce different sounds. The primary reason for this is attributed to a historical phenomenon known as the Great Vowel Shift (GVS), which caused significant changes in the pronunciation of English vowels. This process spanned centuries, from the 15th to the 18th century, and transformed vowel sounds in a systematic way. The paragraph explains how GVS created the disparities between words like 'look' and 'spook' or 'great' and 'beat'.
đ Chaucerâs Rhymes and Shifting Sounds
In this paragraph, Chaucerâs writings are used to illustrate the shift in vowel sounds over time. Before the GVS, words like 'breath' and 'heath' rhymed, but this changed as 'heath' underwent the typical vowel shifts, while 'breath' shortened, aligning with words like 'head' and 'dead'. Additionally, words with double O, like 'look' and 'spook', behaved inconsistently, leading to different pronunciations such as 'blood'. The journey of various words through the GVS, such as 'boat', 'folk', and 'bite', is detailed, showing the significant differences in how English pronunciation evolved.
đ The Impact of Migration and Printing on Language
The paragraph discusses how external factors, such as the Black Death and increased migration to cities like London, influenced the Great Vowel Shift. People from different dialectal backgrounds mixed, leading to shifts in pronunciation. French influence and fashion trends may have also driven some of the vowel changes. The invention of the printing press is highlighted as a major factor in language standardization, which, alongside the GVS, caused spelling to become fixed even as pronunciation continued to evolve. This led to many of the spelling irregularities in modern English.
đŁ Regional Variations and the GVSâs Legacy
Regional differences in the GVS are explored, with northern dialects, for example, retaining older pronunciations of words like 'but'. This contrasts with the changes seen in southern English accents. The paragraph also explains how English dialects across the Atlantic, such as in America and Canada, evolved differently due to the GVS ending before further changes occurred. Differences in words like 'bath', 'grass', and 'dance' between American and British English are linked to this historical phenomenon.
đ¤ Consonant Shifts and English Spelling Chaos
The final paragraph focuses on consonant changes during the Early Modern English period that further complicated spelling. Sounds like the 'gh' in 'through' and 'sight' either disappeared or shifted to 'f', as seen in 'cough' and 'rough'. Other changes include the silent 'L' in words like 'folk' and 'palm'. The reintroduction of silent letters in words like 'fault' and 'debt', influenced by Latin, added further complexity. The T in 'often' reappeared in modern speech, influenced by spelling, but inconsistencies in silent letters remain. These changes contribute to the ongoing challenges of English spelling.
Mindmap
Keywords
đĄThe Great Vowel Shift
đĄPronunciation
đĄMiddle English
đĄEarly Modern English
đĄChain reaction
đĄConvergence
đĄSpelling standardization
đĄPrinting press
đĄBlack Death
đĄHomophones
Highlights
The Great Vowel Shift is the biggest reason why the same letter clusters in English make different sounds depending on the word.
The Great Vowel Shift was a centuries-long process that caused the pronunciation of English long vowels to change completely, spanning from the 15th to 18th centuries.
The vowel changes during the Great Vowel Shift followed a consistent pattern, with vowel sounds moving higher up in the mouth.
Words like 'meat' and 'meet' became homophones during the Great Vowel Shift due to changes in pronunciation.
EA words like 'beat', 'bear', 'break', and 'bread' developed different sounds based on the vowels that followed them, contributing to irregular spelling.
The Black Death and mass migration to cities, especially London, after the plague may have influenced the dialectal mixing that led to the Great Vowel Shift.
Some linguists believe that fashion and prestige played a role in the vowel changes, as people adjusted their speech to sound more fashionable.
The printing press fixed spellings in the middle of the Great Vowel Shift, creating lasting discrepancies between pronunciation and spelling.
Words like 'through', 'rough', and 'cough' show inconsistencies due to the pronunciation of the GH sound disappearing or becoming an F.
Consonant changes, such as the silent L in 'folk' and 'palm', also contributed to spelling inconsistencies.
Some silent letters, such as the L in 'fault' and the C in 'perfect', were added later by scholars to reflect the wordsâ Latin roots.
The disappearance of consonants like the T in 'castle' and the D in 'handsome' led to further changes in pronunciation.
The inconsistent pronunciation of the T in 'often'âsometimes pronounced 'offen'âis an example of how spelling influenced speech over time.
The silent K and G in words like 'knight' and 'gnome' were once pronounced but became silent over time as language evolved.
English spelling is a snapshot of how words were pronounced at different times in history, which explains why modern spelling often seems inconsistent.
Transcripts
Why doesnât that rhyme with that?
And why doesnât that rhyme with that?
English spelling is apparently chaos with the same Â
clusters of letters making different sounds depending on where you look.
But there are reasons for all of it
and one single bizarre phenomenon plays a bigger part than any other.
Letâs get to the bottom of it in another RobWords.
So why is English so messed up that we can spell Â
lots of different sounds in lots of different ways?
Well if weâre going to look - of should that be lewk - for the single biggest reason,
then we need look no further than The Great Vowel Shift.
The Great Vowel Shift is the reason why âlookâ Â
doesnât rhyme with âspookâ and âgreatâ doesnât rhyme with âbeatâ.
Itâs to blame for a lot of things.
The term Great Vowel Shift was coined by a Danish linguist called Otto Jespersen who Â
showed an enviable level of maturity by not calling it the Great Vowel Movement
and it refers to a centuries-long process that saw the pronunciation Â
of the so-called long vowels in English change completely.
The GVS - as all the hippest linguists call it - took ages
from as early as the 15th century to arguably as late as the 18th century.
So thatâs the end of the Middle English period - the English of Chaucer - and Â
through the period of Early Modern English, the English of Shakespeare.
As well as taking ages, it also played out in several stages.
But nevertheless, the Great Vowel Shift gets treated as Â
a single phenomenon - the great vowel shift, rather than shifts -
because all of the changes can be seen as part of a chain reaction,
with each vowel sound changing in a predictable way.
Let me try and explain this with the help of this handy diagram of a mouth.
It doesnât look like a mouth at the moment, Â
but just let me add a few things to help with the visualisation.
So this is the chart that linguists Â
use to describe where in the mouth the many different vowel sounds we make are produced.
You can find it online with sounds and clicking around on it definitely isnât hilarious.
[Website sounds] Ooh, err, uh, ay, orr
Anyway letâs simplify all that and just plot on Â
the vowel sounds affected by the Great Vowel Shift.
Now donât stress about what these phonetic symbols mean
like what the heck is that? and what does that one mean?
Itâs not that important. The reason Iâm showing you this is to show how uniformly Â
the vowel sounds in words change during the Great Vowel Shift, because thereâs a pattern.
Words that contain any of these vowels at the start of the Great Vowel Shift end the Great Vowel Â
Shift with a vowel sound that is produced higher up and sometimes further forward in the mouth.
So words that were pronounced with an âehhâ start to be pronounced with an Â
âayyâ. Or words that were pronounced with an âohhâ were pronounced with an âoohâ.
The only exceptions are the sounds that were already at the top of the mouth, Â
which move towards the centre and become diphthongs.
But again, ignore the phonetics jargon.
All you need to take away from this is that there is a consistent direction of travel Â
that vowel sounds are moving in and thatâs why the Great Vowel Shift is seen as this Â
single phenomenon despite taking several hundreds of years and happening in stages.
But letâs get to the meat of this and talk about how specific words changed as a result of it all.
Well âmeatâ is actually a great example. It enters the Great Vowel Shift with its Â
Middle English pronunciation mairt, part-way through its pronunciation becomes more like Â
âmateâ and by the end itâs pronounced much more like we say it now: meat.
And by the way, we pronounced another word like that, donât we? Meet.
And itâs during one of the stages of the Great Vowel Shift that the Â
pronunciations of these two words unhelpfully converge.
So you see how spelling is getting messed up here? Because at the same Â
time the pronunciations of see and sea become the same. So do piece and peace.
And thatâs because some words go through more stages than others, leaving other words that Â
are spelt the same behind and converging with words that are spelt differently.
EA words are the best example of this. Just think Â
about the different sounds those two letters can make together.
They make one sound in beat, but a different one in bear.
And another one in break. And another in bread.
And the reasons why these EA sounds are different is Â
partially down to the sounds that come after them.
You can see this in the fact that break and steak rhyme, because they both have the K after the EA.
That appears to have played a part in how their pronunciation changed during the vowel shift.
The same goes for bear rhyming with wear and tear, because they all share that rrr.
Grrr.
By the way, the fact that these four letters can Â
also be pronounced teer shows just how messed up this whole thing is.
âŚand also why the consonant sounds donât explain anything.
Just look at this quote from Geoffrey Chaucer, Â
who was writing before the Great Vowel Shift, or at least only in the early stages of it.
We can learn so much about how vowel sounds changed just by looking at Â
the words that so far as he was concerned, rhymed.
In his London dialect, anyway.
So to Chaucer the words breath and heath rhymed. They were âbraythâ and âhaythâ.
But they donât to us anymore.
And thatâs because heath went through the normal changes weâd expect from the Great Â
Vowel Shift. But breath shortened like vowel sounds in head and dead.
Double O words also behaved inconsistently during Â
the Great Vowel Shift. Hence my earlier point about look and spook.
But you also end up with another sound in blood.
Letâs look at a few more words that changed during this period.
Well one word that had an interesting voyage through the Great Vowel Shift is the word boat, Â
which is pronounced bort - like the modern German Â
word for boat is now - at the start of the great vowel shift
but more like it is now by the end.
And actually folk is pronounced more like Â
the German word Volk before its vowel sound shifts too.
And In Middle English, the word bite is pronounced more like beet. In Early Modern Â
English - so during the shift - it morphs into bate, and by the present day it becomes bite.
Right? So these differences are big arenât they?
The way people were speaking changed dramatically.
Chaucer and Shakespeare would have had an awful Â
lot of trouble understanding one another as a result.
So whee oh whee⌠sorry, why oh why, did all this happen?
Well, thatâs a very difficult question with a lot of very interesting answers.
The most grim among them is that it was triggered by this: the Black Death.
The violent plague that struck much of Europe - including England - in Â
the middle of the 14th century forced people to move around.
In the wake of the plague they flocked to devastated cities Â
like London to take advantage of higher wages caused by new shortages of people.
So people with different dialects started to mix Â
and probably influence one anotherâs ways of speaking.
Among those to flood into Englandâs cities were also migrants from abroad, Â
whose accents may also have influenced local dialects.
Now, this is a good time to mention the French, Â
because they may also have played a role in the Great Vowel Shift.
Over the centuries during which the shift took place, Â
the French went from basically running England to being its sworn enemies.
And some linguists have suggested that attempts to Â
sound either more or less French may have driven some of the vowel changes.
Thatâs interesting isnât it, because that suggests that the Great Vowel Shift was somehow conscious
and that leads us to another possible contributing factor: fashion.
Itâs possible that people were changing the ways Â
they spoke to sound either more prestigious or more fashionable.
Fascinating stuff, right?
And then, thereâs another major development in not just the history of England, but the Â
history of language all over the world, that almost certainly played its part.
The invention of the printing press.
Suddenly, people can get books. Literacy increases, Â
and people are seeing words written down for the first time.
As a result theyâre changing the way they speak to match the spellings.
Thatâs an amazing idea right? And itâs one we can relate to.
You know, itâs not so long ago that forehead was Â
more commonly pronounced forrud and arctic was often pronounced artic.
In fact, you can still hear both but those pronunciations, Â
but the pronunciations closer to the spellings have ultimately won out.
Anyway, we need to do a bit more finger pointing at the printing press, Â
because many of the spelling problems weâve talked about are ultimately its fault.
The arrival of the printing press leads to a certain Â
level of standardization of English spelling.
Dictionaries start to be written which help to fix how certain words should be written.
But all of this is happening in the middle of the flippinâ vowel Â
shift meaning that spellings are getting fixed mid-change.
As I explained in a video ages ago: the fact we have about a dozen ways of pronouncing Â
ough is partly down to the words having their spellings fixed at different times, Â
or at times when they were pronounced the same.
So weâve got the Black Death, immigration, fashion and the printing press:
just some of the probable explanations for the cause and continuation of the Great Vowel Shift.
But as I said up top, the shift was a chain of events, Â
where one change happens and that causes the next.
So itâs the cause of that first change that we really need to find, Â
and that has so far proven illusive.
By the way, itâs important to point out that Â
the Great Vowel Shift didnât happen the same everywhere.
These changes are primarily happening in the area around London and the English Midlands, Â
the dialects of which do become the dominant form of British English.
But different areas were affected to lesser or greater extents by the Â
shift and thatâs apparent in accent variations across England today.
For example, Northern dialects didnât see the change in the pronunciation of Â
the word âbutâ that gave us âbutâ in the southern English accents.
Where I come from we still say âbuttâ. And catch the bus to Lundun.
And you donât just see - or hear -Â the evidence of variations in England.
In Canada itâs there in the way people say âaboatâ instead of âaboutâ.
Which reminds me: the end of the Great Vowel Shift doesnât leave Â
all the vowel sounds in British English the way they are now. They continue to develop.
But in the meantime, the English language crosses the Atlantic and an American English Â
starts to develop, free of the further changes that happen in Southern England.
Thatâs why American English, like Northern English, Â
doesnât have that long vowel sound in bath and grass and dance.
However North American English makes up for it Â
by incorporating a similar vowel sound into words like not and caught and hot.
Okay, weâve covered the GVS and its aftermath, Â
but the death of English spelling isnât just a case of âMurder most vowelâ.
[jaunty song] âRob did a joke thereâ
âWasnât it fun?â
âIt was a pun on Murder Most Foul.â
Consonant changes also characterise the shift from Middle English to Â
Early Modern English and wreak havoc with the ways we write things down.
I touched on one earlier when I mentioned the different pronunciations of this.
You see, In a lot of cases the sound the GH would have represented, Â
a sort of ghh sound, either disappears completely or turns into an F sound.
So we say throo instead of through and site rather than sicht and coff instead Â
of cough and ruff instead of rough.
Itâs during the Early Modern English period that certain Ls become silent, Â
like in folk, but also in almond and palm.
Now if youâre thinking âbut I do pronounce those Lsâ thatâs because Â
your dialect either didnât drop them or has reinstated them based on the spelling.
Annoyingly, at around the same time, some Ls were put into words that never previously had them too.
For example, fault never had an L until some know-all scholar popped Â
one in to show off the wordâs Latin heritage.
They did the same with the C in perfect and also the silent letters in words like Â
debt and receipt, but we didnât start to pronounce those ones.
Early Modern English also sees the T sound disappear from castle and hasten, Â
as well as the D sound in handsome and landscape.
Although the D in landscape is definitely back and I guess some people maybe Â
pronounce handsome in hands-ome -Â again, influenced by the spelling.
The T in often is another good case of this. Queen Elizabeth the first supposedly Â
pronounced it offen, but as early as the 17th century, the T was being pronounced Â
again by some people whoâd spotted it in the spelling and also in its relation to oft.
Now lots of people say of-ten and itâs absolutely Â
fine. I fact I think a lot of the time I say of-ten.
Interestingly though: no one says sof-ten.
And just one more change that really messes up our spelling.
Around the 17th century Ks and Gs start to fall silent in words like knight and gnome, Â
having previously been pronounced.
Linguists think this is probably just because nee is easier to say than k-nee.
Ni! Ni. Ni. We humans do tend towards the lazy.
And on that broad philosophical point⌠there we have it.
To sum up: English spelling has suffered from the Â
fact that pronunciation went through radical changes - to both vowels and consonants - at Â
precisely the time when weâre trying to nail down the language on paper.
As a result, many spellings are a snapshot of a moment in English Â
history when a word was pronounced rather differently to it is today.
Thanks Great Vowel Movement.
Youâve really helped us oot.
If youâve enjoyed this video check, you should watch this one here next.
And also check out my new podcast Words Unravelled which you can Â
watch here or you can listen to wherever you get your podcasts.
Words Unravelled.
Until we mate again⌠take care.
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