The Great Vowel Shift
The Great Vowel Shift was a huge sound change influencing the long vowels of English amid the fifteenth to eighteenth hundreds of years. Fundamentally, the long vowels shifted upwards; that is, a vowel that used to be articulated in one place in the mouth would be articulated in a better place, higher up in the mouth. The Great Vowel Shift has had long haul suggestions for, in addition to other things, orthography, the educating of perusing, and the comprehension of any English-dialect content composed earlier or amid the Shift.
Any standard history of the English dialect course reading (see our sources) will have an exchange of the GVS. This page gives only a brisk diagram; our intuitive See and Hear page adds sound and liveliness to give you a superior feeling of how this all functions.
When we discuss the GVS, we more often than not discuss it occurring in eight stages. It is critical to recollect, in any case, that each progression did not occur incidentally. At any given time, individuals of various ages and from various districts would have diverse articulations of a similar word. More seasoned, more preservationist speakers would hold one articulation while more youthful, further developed speakers were moving to another one; a few people would have the capacity to articulate a similar word at least two diverse ways.
A similar thing happens today, obviously: I can articulate “course” to rhyme with “boot” or with “out” and may change starting with one elocution then onto the next amidst a discussion. If it’s not too much trouble see our Dialog: Conservative and Advanced segment for a representation of this wonder.
