What Was the Great Vowel Shift?

A more complete video on the great vowel shift that hopefully incorporates some more detail than the last one I did three years ago.
Geoff Lindsey's video involving the New Zealand shift: • Do New Zealand and Nor...
My video on how a couple of examples of Early Modern English vowels are reconstructed: • Reconstructing Some So...
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This channel's Patreon (thank you very much to anybody who donates): / simonroper

[@yasha.hartberg]

Seriously? Linguists went with "shift" when the Great Vowel Movement was sitting right there?

[@LemoUtan]

delete a letter - change a letter - meh

[@liquidoxygen819]

Lol

[@pooroldnostradamus]

I don't mind that one bit

[@jimbobur]

I bet they didn't feel too flushed with success when they realised.

[@therat1117]

Honestly the Great Vowel Shift is enough of a pain to have to deal with when accounting for historical English phonology that calling it a movement makes it sound too much like we like it.

[@j.s.c.4355]

Rhyming evidence is astonishing to me, because when I was in school, and we would ask the English teacher why some of Shakespeare’s rhymes just didn’t work, she not only didn’t know the answer, but she didn’t know there was an answer. She just called it a “near rhyme” and told us that was acceptable in Shakespearean poetry.

[@swagmund_freud6669]

I had a very smug "I'm smarter than the teacher moment" when I explained to my teacher that the "coin" vowel and the "line" vowel rhymed for shakespeare.

[@francisdec1615]

In Swedish it used to be common to use older pronunciation in songs and poems in relatively modern works, but of course it's easier in Swedish, because spelling and modern pronunciation don't differ that much for most words as they do in English. So words like 'mig' (me) and 'dig' (thee, you) can rhyme on 'krig' (war) and 'stig' (path), although only 'krig' and 'stig' still have the old pronunciation. The same goes for 'dem' (them) rhyming on 'hem' (home), although in most Swedish accents it's pronounced (dom) nowadays.

[@OntarioTrafficMan]

@@francisdec1615 But in the time of Shakespeare the spelling didn't differ that much from the pronunciation. Reading the words as they're spelled does restore many of the rhymes in English as well

[@Halocon720]

Rhyming evidence is also used to reconstruct Middle Chinese

[@violenceislife1987]

​@@francisdec1615awesome

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

It is quite amusing how many dont realize that speaking without accent is like writing without font.

[@sweathogstickerpicker]

Very true.

[@Aenglaan]

Best analogy I've ever heard regarding accents.

[@jwolfe01234]

The idea of "writing without font" would have been perfectly reasonable to someone in the era before ubiquitous personal computers with their ability to easily switch between fonts. Most printed things were in the standard typefaces of newspapers and typewriters. A "font" was a special thing you did with effort. It's interesting that people still cling to the notion of "speaking without accent" even in an era of global communications and global travel.

[@savanahburns5812]

If that’s the case, everyone’s ears see fonts where you don’t. Even in a small town, a thicker or lighter draw or inflection could be seen as a new font because you’re normal accent is the personalize “no font” setting. It’s an interesting way of hearing “normal,” while acknowledging normal is subjectively defined by a person and their household.

[@keithbates9537]

As an experiment, I'd love it if you could invent your own vowel shift, either completely imaginary or based on where you think vowels are going to be in the future and produce a video reading something in this imagined accent!

[@sweathogstickerpicker]

This is a great idea!

[@mananself]

"The relationship between sounds are socially conditioned". I like this statement a lot. I noticed that when language learners try to fit the sounds in the new language to the closest sounds in their native phonology system, they perceive the distance of sounds differently. When Chinese (mandarin) learn English and speak with an accent, we approximate the English letter "C" /si/ as /ɕi/ or /sei/ (depending on regions). Also the English word "she" /ʃi/ as /ʂi/. However, when English reporters pronounce 习 /ɕi/ (the family name of the president of China), they tend to say "she" /ʃi/ but never /si/. So, according to native Chinese speakers, /ʃi/ is close to /ʂi/, and /si/ is close to /ɕi/ (in certain regions of China). But native English speakers think /ɕi/ is close to /ʃi/.

[@swagmund_freud6669]

It reminds me of how /x/ from Spanish words tend to become /h/ when borrowed into English while /x/ from German words when borrowed into English tend to become /k/. I've also noticed placenames in the Ukraine with /x/ tend to become /h/ in English (Kharkiv being pronounced as Harkiv, Kherson as Herson, etc.) but the Russian ones tend to become /k/.

[@mananself]

@@swagmund_freud6669 interesting observation. Is it because English speakers think the word beginning /x/ as /h/ but /x/ after a vowel as /k/? It’s because English doesn’t have any word that ends with /h/ , right?

[@marcusaurelius4941]

And in Russian we pronounce Xi as /si/. Interesting

[@mananself]

@@marcusaurelius4941 interesting. According to Wikipedia, the pronunciation of сч is precisely the consonant of Xi. So Russian does have the exact sound.

[@swagmund_freud6669]

@@mananself Potentially, but a word like "Jalapeno" could just as easily be "Kalapeno" as "Halapeno", while people would pronounce "Khan" (from Mongolian this time, not German, though likely Russian was the original language it came through) as "Kan" and not "Han".

[@pirangeloferretti3588]

As an Italian speaker the variety and 'confusion', as it were, of English vowels has always been a fascinating source of amusement and desperation.

[@bakters]

Italian is supposed to be modern Latin, not? Julius Caesar -> Giulio Cesare anyone? ;-)

[@pirangeloferretti3588]

@@bakters It's an evolution of Latin, we may say so.

[@bakters]

@@pirangeloferretti3588 Yes, it is, and it went quite far. Also, how many Italian languages are there? It depends how you count, I'm sure, but they are often very far away from the standard Italian. So English isn't weird in this. It's weird for other reasons.

[@j.s.c.4355]

He’s not wrong. The English language has a ridiculous number of vowel sounds compared with any Romance language. We have six letters and we can make practically any possible vowel sound with them.

[@bakters]

@@j.s.c.4355 " *ridiculous number of vowel sounds compared with any Romance language.* " French has nasal vowels, for example. " *we can make practically any possible vowel sound with them* " That's just silly. You guys are notoriously bad at pronouncing foreign words, at least partially because your native tongue does not train you for those sounds.

[@Sajxi]

I think one of the most fascinating aspects of your videos is when you demonstrate old pronunciations. As a Swede, it's fun being able to recognize how closely related English is. There's just a diphthong or slight variation in the way! Oftentimes, an old pronunciation is still used in modern Swedish. For example, my ears perked up when you said 'blood', as if I was suddenly listening to a Swedish speaker. It felt like my ears changed lenses - from English to Swedish.

[@francisdec1615]

Until around 1820 the word 'kol' was pronounced like the English cognate 'coal' even in Stockholm. In some dialects you still say 'å(f)' for 'av', which also is cognate with 'of/off'. And notice the pronunciation 'körka' in western Sweden vs. English 'church'.

[@1685Violin]

​@@francisdec1615 Even in many dialects of English, in colloquial speech, the word "of" is often contracted to o' or a' and it's pronounced as a schwa, usually when the following word begins with a consonant.

[@s4archie]

I'm constantly astonished by how clear the differences are in Simon's mouth. I imagine I'd have to practice for a week each of the sentences and it still wouldn't be right.

[@johanneswerner1140]

And without practice, vowels can actually give you sore muscles. I finally get the vowel shift in Norwegian now! Yes, there's a lot very similar to older English, but then there's a shift for o - u - y, with the u and y being tough for Germans (practice the word utstyr for that).

[@evefreyasyrenathegoddessev4016]

I don’t think most ppl realise that almost all these pretty languages come from Proto European, which was the first logical language created by a dude a long time ago, which was very logical for that time, considering how ancient it was, so the languages that came from it had a very strong base / root words, so to speak, and then other similar dudes also dedicated all the time to studying and observing and modifying the language and turning it into multiple languages, as they had better ideas, and then each language that was made from it got modified again and again, and made into a more modern / better / more refined language - the dude that edited Modern English and Modern Dutch made them into the most perfect looking and easiest to read / spell / pronounce / learn / memorize etc and the most refined languages ever, so the most pretty vowels and consonants were used in most words, and both have the EY / EI diphthong or sound, which is one of the prettiest sounds ever, and he made sure that they would look AND sound gorgeous, so the prettiest and most serious-looking spelling was used for each word, and then the most perfect pronunciation was used for each word, so it’s based on which pronunciation sounds best for each word, as it should be, and one is supposed to learn each word with its pronunciation and spelling, which is the right way to learn a new language or a new word, and over the past century, accents and pronunciations etc were influenced by movies / videos / songs etc that were rełeased in each area / region, which is why there are so many different accents today, and it has nada to do with ppl subconsciously trying to avoid using the same vowel in a similar word, technically the pretty languages and accents were created and decided by certain dudes and inspired by nature, and the rest were taught the language / accent at school or via movies / music etc!

[@DDPhfx]

This makes a lot of sense. I've been casually learning Russian and it has forced me to confront the way I use vowels (need to be deliberate about it instead of haphazard) in order to be able to sneak 'ы' in there and deal with all the yods.

[@nazin.s]

Wish you patience and good luck!

[@punkykenickie2408]

I really appreciate how you emphasise that there's no 'neutral' English accent and that yours is just as 'non-standard' as mine (West of Scotland) is. Having puzzled my way through many "this word sounds like" tables it's refreshing to not be a weirdo freak who speaks 'wrong' :)

[@jonathanepstein948]

Wonderful series and this entry is an especial gem. Found a 16th century rhyme which I'd never noticed before - It's Clifford in Henry VI part 2: "To France, to France, and get what you have LOST/Spare England, for it is your native COAST." Not a very typical Shakespeare rhyme so I wonder if this is his attempt to capture Clifford's Cumbrian accent. I'm playing the guy at the moment and treating both like the vowel in a modern RP "force".

[@RectifyingTCovenant]

One of my favourite little vowel shifts is the celery-salary merger, where 'e' and 'a' before 'l' in those words have merged to the 'a' in cat. This is happenening in Australian English, but only in southern Victoria where I'm from. One of the interesting things about this is that Australia doesn't really have much regional variation in accents which makes it far more noticeable when changes like this occur

[@beepboop204]

as a wrestling fan, there is an infamous "solid steel cage" line which is pronounced more like "salad steel cage" due to the american accent

[@nicholassinnett2958]

Interesting, I wasn't aware of this happening in Victoria. I'm in Tasmania (born in NSW), and we still have /e/ and /æ/ (or maybe /ɛ/ in "celery" under low stress) for "celery" and "salary", respectively. But regional changes definitely do stand out because of what you said, yeah. We do have three "main" Australian accents here, but those have typically been more based around class divisions than regional.

[@NixinovaMC]

NZ has completed this merger.

[@shelookstome8727]

I think South Australian accents (where I'm from) are quite obvious from other states because of the trap/bath split in particular. My Victorian partner makes fun of how we talk here haha. Also I find QLDers obvious, by the way they say pool and school, they kind of say pewl and schewl, whereas people from SA don't say it like that. I think there are more differences than we realise!

[@PrometheanRising]

​@beepboop204 what's really weird is that if you ask me, as an American, how to pronounce 'solid' without reality-testing it I would say it with the 'o'. However, when I say it in a sentence or ten it always comes out 'salad'. I think that maybe when I say it with emphasis that the 'o' comes out, but otherwise no.

[@kippen64]

As someone with a speech impediment, the way people perceive how other people talk was interesting. In my experience as a child, people can be both brutal and lazy. Brutally rude and lazy at listening. As an adult, I still struggle to be understood when I am tired. Indeed, at such times, I have even been falsely accused of being drunk.

[@VoidUnderTheSun]

23:36 Seeing those goslings move reminds me that birds are, just indeed, dinosaurs.

[@jameskennedy7093]

Your nature backgrounds are an incredibly classy choice that seems secondary at first to your main topic but which I think makes absorption of the information much easier.

[@stargazingsongs]

Great video! I especially enjoyed your point about people registering different sounds as the same sound but in different accents. It really is quite interesting how we’re able to subconsciously swap out vowels whilst conversing with someone with a different accent!

[@rowlganartamas2835]

Those goslings at the end really do look like little dinosaurs don't they

[@larsmathiesen8224]

I've always though that. Scary little buggers innit.

[@j.s.c.4355]

here’s an example of how our perceptions of accent are related to the accent that we have. I have the cot-caught merger (I actually have to type that into my phone because my phone just writes “cot cot” when I speak it.) and I did not know that was a thing until I started watching your channel and others a few years ago. In my mind no vowel could be pronounced with a rounded mouth position except for the O or the OO. anybody who pronounced the letter A with a rounded mouth was putting on a posh accent. I didn’t believe it was a natural way for anyone to make that vowel.

[@fruitygarlic3601]

Chain shifts to distinguish otherwise similar words explained something funny about my Bajan (Barbadian) dialect. The word "cannot" or "can't" becomes something like /k:æⁿ/, so "can" becomes something like /kə/ depending on the speaker's region or generation, and perhaps a merger with the word "could". People alternate between dialect and more standard English throughout the day, so they can hear the polar meaning of the "cannot" that sounds like "can" to someone unfamiliar with our accent. (Apologies for any confusion caused by incorrect IPA. It's a process.)

[@myspleenisbursting4825]

Finally, a video about this sound shift

[@PlatinumAltaria]

I was talking with someone earlier about my having [ɤ̞] in place of the /ɜː/ vowel. It's interesting that our brains can automatically handle a lot of different accents, even if isolating the sound would make it seem weird.

[@numeroVLAD]

I am amazed by your ability to hear and pronounce all these vowels. My first language has only 5 main vowels like Latin.

[@ekmad]

Excellent video as usual. The section at the end about how the simple fact that we don't use these sounds anymore is what makes them seem so strangely novel was very well explained.

[@gypsybill]

I appreciate your videos with graphics interspersed with local footage. Very informative and very chill; thank you for sharing

[@ocaollaidhe]

my granny born in 1930s Ireland had preserved the distinction between meet/meat

[@ShawnGillette]

Being around to hear English English turn into approximately US English is fantastic. What a time to be alive.

[@TheKaliedescope]

Earlier today I was trying to understand this east Tennessee shift that's like Star --> Store --> Stower --> Stohrrr and I don't understand any of this stuff formally. Thank you for helping me feel like it might eventually make sense.

[@ksbrook1430]

Nicely done and informative. I appreciate the graphics. And I like your technique of changing the garden scene each time the topic or concept changes.

[@MikeS29]

As always, very well thought out and articulated. I enjoy your channel so much, and I love the garden shots as you explain the concepts!

[@taurusmonkey8780]

Everyone loves A Great Vowel Movement!

[@tonyf9984]

Re the pronunciation of English short 'a' (e.g. in 'man'), I remember years ago having some involvement in a German primary-school English project, and the kids were taught explicitly to pronounce it exactly like the German letter 'ä', representing the short vowel /ɛ/ (not the long one in 'Käse', which has two variants, as Simon modelled). What's more, they were actually reprimanded for substituting German /a/ (as in 'Mann'), which they did instinctively because of the spelling ... but also because of the Yorkshireman in the room reinforcing what the teacher obviously considered a very bad habit! Fortunately for her fashions have since shifted in her favour, as the British model has largely been superseded by the American ...

[@PlatinumAltaria]

That's especially weird for the English speakers that also have /a/.

[@OntarioTrafficMan]

In the Netherlands they continue to enforce that pointless A->E vowel swap. For example the English loan word "app" is pronounced as "epp" and if I say "app" they make fun of me because it sounds similar to "aap" meaning monkey (cognate with 'ape'). I always found it bizarre that they insist on teaching a New Zealand accent for that sound, but outdated RP explains it.

[@tonyf9984]

@@OntarioTrafficMan I'm sure outdated RP was once a factor in this, but my feeling is that nowadays it's driven by American English pronunciation, where the target /æ/ vowel in, say, 'man' is raised a bit higher than in British English, in the direction of /ɛ/, and is quite often slightly diphthongised to something like [ɛə]. But whatever the cause, it's certainly shaped the standard German pronunciation of English loanwords such as, for instance, 'das Handy' (mobile/cell phone), which sounds like 'hendy' ...

[@tyreesetranh4074]

@@tonyf9984 In the U.S. that raised pronunciation occurs principally in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes area, which has undergone the "Northern Vowel Shift." It's very noticeable in the speech of many native Chicagoans. For example, in my area (in Calif.), when a certain lawyer advertising his auto collision litigation services on tv says "car crash," it sounds to me like "kær kresh." I'm pretty sure I know which city he's originally from!

[@tonyf9984]

@@tyreesetranh4074 Very interesting to hear that - we (in the UK) tend to think of General American as being a standard accent, whereas of course it's not. That said, I still feel that most US speakers use a vowel closer to /ɛ/ where we say /æ/ (or, here in northern England, a sound closer to [a]). I've just had a quick listen to pronunciations on the Forvo site, using your 'crash' as the keyword, and the British vs American pronunciations seem to bear this out. (You have the advantage of being able to hear where they're from!) Similarly with my own example of 'man', which - ending in a nasal - triggers the diphthongised [ɛə] sound in American English ...

[@LearnRunes]

Thanks for pointing out how our own natural dialect feels more 'neutral'. That may quite possibly be the hardest sticking point to overcome when attempting to create a spelling reform that works across dialects.

[@someguy3766]

Yeah it's probably easier for non-native English speakers to hear a modern and medieval English accent and see the similarities as much as the differences, and how one lead to the other.

[@georgina3358]

Do you mean dialect or accent?

[@sweathogstickerpicker]

@@georgina3358 I think he means accent? It's bard to evaluate your own sounds when you're so used to them.

[@georgina3358]

@@sweathogstickerpicker Yes, i think he means accent too. I know my English accent (I'm from the UK) is all over the place. It's been influenced by lots of different factors

[@MaoRatto]

@@georgina3358 Or Southern Appalachian, where the long vowels of southern mix with glottalizing with Appalachian. So we have more vowels or vowel... A basic word like vaʊəl ->vaʊɔ̞l The first is higher, second is lower. Also last K, D, T will typically end up as aspirates and just weak.

[@VinsCool]

1350's accent sounds exactly like me when I speak English but keep the (Québecois) French pronunciation for all words, as if I read them literally, unaware of it being a different language at all.

[@pierreabbat6157]

Rhyme evidence: "The hooly blisful martir for to seke / That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke." In modern English, at least in dialects I'm aware of, "seek" and "sick" don't sound the same. To Chaucer, they did. This also shows that the replacement of "hem" with "them" was in progress.

[@marara8670]

always appreciate your videos thank you

[@stephanieparker1250]

Thank you, Simon! 🎉🎉

[@mmcworldbuilding5994]

you should make a video about the origins of the phonology of multicultural london english

[@jackputnam4273]

yet another great explanation! this video really helped me understand the sound differences in a much more intuitive way. thanks, simon!

[@mathewdallaway]

Thank you, Simon. Nicely explained. And demonstrated.

[@aragutierrez6685]

Watched your GVS videos when I had to write an essay about it for uni last term… super helpful and interesting, thank you for your content!

[@fenoftheforest]

thank you for making a video on this! i have to study it for my A levels but it doesn't feeling like boring studying when you explain it because i watch your videos in my free time!

[@peter_oso]

Fascinating. Thank you. Watching Your videos is great compensation for difficulties in learning English.

[@TheSwordofStorms]

Related to this, I've heard a lot of hype about a similar vowel shift occurring today in Inland Northern American English/The Upper Midwest. Probably most well known as the "Chicago" accent. It's quite drastic and I feel it might surprise a lot of non-American viewers!

[@Great_Olaf5]

The most confusing part about the NCVS to me is that I live in the affected region and have virtually no real live exposure to it. I hear the Chicago accent on TV, but I struggle to distinguish it from some New York accents, and, despite living in spitting distance of Detroit, I've never heard any of the classic features of the NCVS by anyone in my area.

[@beepboop204]

ive noticed some american accents also make "solid" the same as "salad"

[@TheSwordofStorms]

@@Great_Olaf5 I watch multiple KZbinrs who were raised in the Chicago area and I have relatives who live in Upstate NY and they all have the shift. A more fully shifted accent is a class indicator I would imagine hence the confusion. Almost universally through in people from this region I hear the /æ/->/e/ shift

[@TheSwordofStorms]

@@beepboop204 Yup! In this region, but becomes /bɔt/, bought becomes /bɑt/, bot becomes /bat/, bat becomes /bet/, and bet becomes /bɜt/!

[@Great_Olaf5]

@@TheSwordofStorms Okay, listening carefully to the way that I speak, I have intermittent breaking of the TRAP vowel into a diphthong. In the word trap itself it breaks, as well as in van, can, and, and sand , but not in man, cat, bat, sat... I am seeing something of a pattern there actually, it breaks in before front consonants, except man for some reason... At least I think those are supposed to be the same vowel. But it's definitely not turning into just e, it's ea or e+schwa, hard to tell for sure. Also looking at the Wikipedia page, my R-colored vowels are all _solid_ northern inland American, though I'm not sure if that's related to the shift. It also like line several of the changes presuppose the cot caught merger, eich i don't have. One of the first changes in the chain is one to the LOT/PALM vowel, which are two separate vowels for me. Also, a lot of the sound changes are things people I know make fun of Bostonians for, and they're absolutely not part of the region.

[@LimeyRedneck]

Fascinating as ever! 🤠💜

[@spooderman9122]

Great video as always Simon

[@beepboop204]

hi spooderman big fan

[@shelookstome8727]

Brilliant video, thank you! I learnt a lot.

[@robthetraveler1099]

What you say at 23:13 about how your accent would be perceived differently by different English speakers across time and space is fascinating to me. It would be very interesting for native speakers across the Anglosphere to record themselves speaking and exchange the recordings with each other, and then try to glean (or guess) as much information about the speaker as they could. I wonder how much they would get right and how off-base they would be.

[@francisdec1615]

This goes for all languages, I think. I live on the countryside near a relatively small town in western Sweden but have studied languages and linguistics at the university. People from my home province/county think that I sound rather "posh", while people who really sound posh clearly can hear that I have a local accent.

[@robthetraveler1099]

@@francisdec1615 Whereas I, who know very little about Swedish, had no idea that there were "posh" or "local" accents of Swedish, nor have any idea what they might sound like! Languages are fun.

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

Its interesting how a language variety is still understandable after 1 or 2 vowel chain shifts. I have an axe to grind with people who bring out a single latgaliešu words like "deiga" and when people in Rīga cant recognise it as it sounds like dega to them assert that latgaliešu language is a different language, because if you actually take full sentences or even paragraphs their speech is perfectly recognisable to anyone who knows the literary latviešu language or is a master of any dialect really 1) rēzekniešu folksong (if memory does not fail me, I last sung it in university) 1) same song in the literary language 1) Sēju rūtu sēju mātru sēju lilejeiti; sēju munu jaunu dīnu kai zaļā rūteņa. 1) Sēju rūtu sēju mētru sēju lilejeiti; sēju manu jaunu dienu kā zaļo rūteni 2) Deiga rūta deiga mātra deiga lilejeite; deiga muna jauna dīna kai zaļā rūteņa. 2) Dīga rūta dīga mētra dīga lilejeite; dīga mana jauna diena kā zaļā rūtaine. ... You can clearly see the regular sound corespondances makings these too language varieties perfectly inteligable in context.

[@ExtremeMetal]

Vowel shift enters the chat Most of North England: leaves chat

[@neeleneeleambarpar2151]

I have noticed that when you do older accents, there's pitch difference from your regular pitch to the point that your voice sounds completely different. I know it's a stupid question but how much of it is due to an artistic choice and/or the difference between vowel quality? As in if pitch played a role in older accents of English and not necessarily the social association with certain accents as you discussed at the end. Loved the video as always!

[@wtc5198]

i think it's just due to it not being his native lect

[@brandonpieplow9207]

Thanks so much for doing this video. I've always kind of scratched my head over how the 'face' vowel was able to move up so far, but this explained it. You make have already discussed it elsewhere, but I would love to hear you speak to how some 'double-o' words like 'foot', 'blood' broke away (in pronunciation) from the basic 'goose' vowel.

[@piloto3189]

Prior to the Great Vowel Shift (even as far back as Old English), Middle English fot, blood and goos (possible spellings at the time) all belonged to the same set of words with a /oː/ vowel. This raised to /uː/ during the Great Vowel Shift. Later on, foot and blood jumped to the nearby 'strut/put' vowel /ʊ/ whilst goose remained /uː/. Then during the 1600s, the 'strut/put' set split in two, with most words from this set (including strut and blood) lowering and unrounding to /ʌ/ whilst put and foot remained /ʊ/ (and goose, still, remained /uː/). This means that by around 1700, foot /ʊ/, blood /ʌ/ and goose /uː/ now belonged to different groups, hence the distinction we have today in most accents (many accents in Northern England still rhyme strut, put and blood). But as Simon pointed out in the video, significant changes took place after the Great Vowel Shift. In today's Standard Southern British (SSB) English, foot (and good, hood, wood etc) has fronted to /ɵ/, blood (and strut, flood etc) has numerous possible realisations from /ə/ to /ɐ/ to /ɑ/, and goose (and moon, loop, food etc) has diphthongised to /ʉw/ (phonetically realised as [ɵẅ] amongst many other realisations especially before final l such as fool, cool)

[@vwestlife]

KZbinr "Parrot175" is a perfect example of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift in modern American English. He pronounces the word bag as "bayg" (as in bagel without the -el).

[@Juniperus_Godegara]

Good video, thank you 🙏

[@frankmitchell3594]

Thank you for this. It explains why my German colleague used to say 'bleck' for black. (I am from the East Midlands)

[@isaacelliottsloman4276]

Great video!

[@rekin1654]

Lol, that makes so much sense When in Polish ó was pronounced as ɔː long time ago, later as ʊ, and now as u In Czech ý used to be ɪː, then changed to iː and modern speakers of Bohemia pronounce it as ɛj Russian а is(and was) technically a, but is pronounced a bit like ɔ, when on weak possition in word All of those are higher in mouth

[@nemetskiylager]

In russian [a] pronounced like schwa if it's unstressed.

[@F_A_F123]

@@nemetskiylager */a/, not [a]

[@VulcanTrekkie45]

And in Canada and the northeastern US, by now the PRICE and MOUTH vowel sets have split as well thanks to another raising shift

[@violjohn]

Good heavens, I met Roger Lass and had fascinating chats with him here in Cape Town. I never realized… Thanks for a great video. I realize my accent is stuck in 60´s rp with South African influence.

[@d.m.collins1501]

Whoa, the Closed Captions actually understood that guy from Cumberland far more than I ever could. Schoolmaster = "scalemuster?"

[@pedropedro9605]

very beautiful shirts, Simon!

[@davissae]

Wonderful summary at the end that accents and dialects are mechanical, not tied to status.

[@theJellyjoker]

Modern Southern American English, West-central Florida: Ah feel uh blisstr on mah fayse. chahld, gown-thuh haoowz-n-git thuh goozez maeet. (I feel a blister on my face. Child, go in the house and get the gooses meat) Keep in mind, this is me analyzing my own pronunciation based on what I could make out of what the closing statement was, and I also do not have any teeth.

[@dirkbastardrelief]

Thanks for turning me on to Dr. Geoff Lindsey. (The "There Is No Spoon" kid from The Matrix really grew up fast!)

[@litfill54]

amazing, and nice batik

[@AtomikNY]

My dialect allows for vowels that are pretty close to the early stages of the vowel shift. I avoid some of these pronunciations when I'm speaking formally (where my speech becomes closer to General American), but these are all possible realizations in my US/Canada border region dialect: price [pɹəis], fleece [fliːs], face [feːs], mouth [məʊθ], goose [ɡʉːs], goat [ɡoːt]

[@franticranter]

I always love the footage of birds you have in the background by the way. My two interests together - birds and language

[@jonathonjubb6626]

I've learned a lot here because i thought it was the Great Bowel Shift..

[@jony4real]

badum-tchhhhh... I'll be here all week :-)

[@JFJ12]

Being from Antwerp, I think the "ea" and oa" sounds were actually pronounced as e(y)a and o(y)a. We have a lot of sounds like that. A goat in official Dutch is geit (pronounced as "ge(y)it"), but in Antwerp we say "ga(y)at" like in might or night. When someone would actually say the word "go(y)at", we would interpret it as a geit, pronounced in very "plat (=flat) Aantwaarps". Meat was probablty pronounced as "mè(y)at", shifting over "mé(y)at" and "mi(y)at" to "mi_t". - The word blood, (with a long vowel, unlike the short one in English, wich sounds like "blot") is just how we pronounce it here, with an oo sound like in eau (french water, or waterloo lol), although in official Dutch it is bloed, wich sounds exactly the same as the German Blut.

[@jmac8834]

2:46 How does he do that?! This man is so skilled.

[@celiabarrett2107]

I like how you include Cumbrian dialects in your videos

[@dirkbastardrelief]

Are there terms to reflect the relationship between "a vowel sound" (which remains fixed) and "the vowel used in a given word" (which moves)? (Similar to how we say that a "sign" is the relation between "signifier" vs "signified"?)

[@kernowforester811]

We still hear elements of various stages of the vowel shift in various regionals accents and dialects. To me it is more like a process of drawl, where e.g. leek, becomes leik, becomes, becomes modern diphthong 'ai' in 'like' (using modern English spellings). I still hear down here fortneet or fortneit (fortnight), or tea as 'tay' or head as 'aid as examples. The vowel shift is still going on upcountry in some areas like Birmingham and London, were 'like' sounds like 'loik' etc, and in London van sounds like 'vain'.

[@TheBlimpFruit]

Amazing, informative and entertaining video as always. Loved the gosling footage - where did you film them?

[@christianstainazfischer]

What if we use umlauts and circumflexes to mark when it used to be one vowel but is now another? Umlauts for front vowels, circumflexes for back vowels, for example: originally /a/ but now /e/ = ä, originally /e/ but now /i/ = ë, originally /a/ but now /o/ = â, originally /o/ but now /u/ = ô, and maybe the back accent to represent dropping: originally /u/ but now /o/ = ù, and so on. This way we could continue spelling many words the same way, but we’re now noting that hey a doesn’t actually make the sound ei and so on

[@ericfielding668]

I've witnesses a lesser vowel shift in my lifetime. When I took the course "Stochastic Processes" at university in the 1990's, nobody thought of pronouncing a long "e" just before the final "s" of "Processes," but now I hear it all the time. I hear the same with "biases." I cringe when I hear them, but language evolves.

[@larksie]

A long e like the intermediate 'fess' (approximately) pronunciation of 'face' we hear in this video (like fehhs), or a long e like the modern reading of 'ee' (e.g. pronouncing the letter E in the alphabet)? Cause the first option sounds implausibly unnatural to me and the second sounds like people trying to use the latin singular-is -> plural-es thing on words that don't work that way (e.g. the plural of crisis is crises; of axis is axes;... but of bias is not bi-ees or bias-ees!). Do you mind if I ask if you're in the US/UK/somewhere else? I'm in Australia and have never heard that particular quirk!

[@ericfielding668]

@@larksie long e as double-e "feel" : It comes from people thinking that scientific-sounding words should be pronounced differently. Basis + Basis = Bases is correct to pronounce in this way, but Process + Process = Processes is not, yet many are doing it here (in Canada). Note that I haven't heard Base + Base = Bases pronounced in this new way.

[@daniel72_751]

Love the Cumbrian accent clip - the accents of the north of England have sadly been lost as they were perceived to reflect lower social class and lower intellect…

[@beepboop204]

also, its a pet peeve of mine when people who learned English as an alternate language, decide to try and virtue signal by criticizing native Noth American English speakers for using the wrong pronunciations for words. this dude was mad about "guerilla" and "gorilla" being pronounced as "g'rilla". so he figured he would tell this guy that he was pronouncing "guerilla" wrong and sounded like he was talking about gorillas. 🤨

[@charlesrogers347]

Great video as always. Something I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on is the variation of length in vowels in different phonological environments, particularly in reference to their RP symbology. I find that in my own speech (not far off your own), /æ/ for example has a similar length distribution to /iː/, while some vowels are always short and others always long (choosing not to narrowly transcribe diphthongs here): bat bad [baʔ baːd] beat bead [biʔ biːd] butt bud [bʌʔ bʌd] bart bard [bɑːʔ bɑːd]

[@nemetskiylager]

That's because /æ/ is actually long sound, not short one (in most english dialects).

[@dayalasingh5853]

Oh this a big deal, excited to watch this

[@jg90049]

You would find a trip to rural areas along the Maryland/Virginia Eastern Shore of the U.S. fascinating for the pronunciations you would hear.

[@Storm_.]

The strangest memory I have from primary school in the 1980's was an odd teacher who stopped the entire assembley (we used to sing songs in assembley in the mornings) when we were singing 'she'll be coming round the mountain when she comes'. He was quite annoyed at us all and said "she isn't coming round a mounTIN, she's coming round a mounTAIN", he then made us all sing it with emphasis on the TAIN (so pronouncing it mountayn) it's a rather odd memory of a very peculiar teacher. I'm still sure that us kids were pronouncing it properly.

[@edwardhubbard5425]

Excellent video! I’ve found an explanation of the GVS on Quora, which sounds absolutely fascinating if it’s true, but which I don’t understand! I have copied and pasted it below. Do you think there’s anything in this? “Absurd as it might sound, the English Great Vowel Shift is the inevitable result of a seemingly unrelated linguistic change happening two millennia earlier. Proto-Germanic developed out of the Pre-Proto-Germanic Indo-European language in the mid first millennium BCE. The three defining changes, in the order they occurred, was Grimm’s law, Verner’s law and the shift in word accent from a moveable pitch accent to a stress accent fixed on the first syllable. The last of these is the culprit in this long story. At first, Proto-Germanic retained the Proto-Indo-European vowel system with phonemically contrasting long and short vowels. Whereas this had worked well in conjunction with the earlier pitch accent, the new stress accent combined somewhat uneasily with it. In a way it doubled the vowel inventory, creating four variants of each vowel quality: long stressed, short stressed, long unstressed and short unstressed. Each of the descendant languages of Proto-Germanic have at glacial speeds resolved this in similar but not identical ways, indicating that it is an inherent tendency and not cross-branch loans of features. In the earliest phase, unstressed vowels were reduced and stressed ones diversified. The reduction of unstressed vowels was a combination of loss (primarily of originally short vowels), shortening of long vowels and conflation of vowel qualities (which were still distinguished in stressed syllables). While this resulted in fewer possible vowel phonemes in unstressed syllables, the number of options for stressed syllabled conversely increased as variant vowel qualities were introduced by assimilation to the unstressed vowels prior to their reduction, and phonemised if those were lost or conflated with a different vowel. Throughout this period, vowel length remains a phonemic distinction in stressed syllables. However, vowel length is not the only component of syllable length. Long (double) consonants or consonant sequences following the vowel also makes a syllable long; and in combination with a long vowel or a diphtong, the syllable becomes “overlong”. This variation ultimately made it too cumbersome to maintain a pure length distinction in stressed syllables also, resulting in the quality of long and short vowels starting to diverge already towards the end of the phase described above. But with the increased number of vowel qualities resulting from the assimilations described above, a further doubling was not feasible. English, Icelandic and Faroese all changed some previously long vowels into diphtongs, and changed the quality of others. Norwegian and Swedish took a somewhat different approach, and adjusted the quality some long and some short vowels so that few of the original pairs today match up, but trending towards a situation where originally “neighbouring” qualities form new matching pairs. At the same time, short vowels not followed by long consonants or consonant sequences were lengthened, so that stressed syllables are always long. Originally long vowels followed by long consonants or consonant sequences were shortened to avoid overlong syllables. As diphtongs are difficult to shorten, another consequence of this is the monophtongisation of diphtongs in eastern Old Norse, which is yet only partially carried out in Norwegian.” I’ve also often wondered when people first realised that the shift had happened. I know Jespersen was the first to describe it, but was he the first to discover it? (Thomas Moore apparently thought she also didn’t know how to rhyme so apparently he didn’t realise that the pronunciation of language can change.)

[@AlmightyRawks]

Thank you for adding this context to understanding the shift, not just how the sounds changed but in unison with each other, and in somewhat predictable patterns that are still happening today. I found the particular part about New Zealands 'kit' sound ending sort of as 'ket' in the middle very interesting too, isn't that similar as what happens in South African English? Also, I have a few questions that I'm interested in: Firstly: in a lot of comparisons with European languages you have, over the years, often used German examples. Being Dutch, I find that on quite some occasions the Dutch example would have matched the description possibly more closely (though this isn't my profession so this can be dismissed, as a native speaker it just feels this way). Do you have some experience with Dutch? I know that you have used Dutch examples sometimes, but more commonly German ones. Or, perhaps do you use German because it's often a little further apart and therefore easier to make a point? Or possibly it really is a closer match when talking about older English compared to modern? Secondly: I'd be interested in the challenges in pronunciation that the letter y presents, in relation to different accents. I noticed (and I hope that's okay with you) that when you said the word 'use' in the second half of your video, it perhaps sounded a little more like 'yeese' than 'yuuse' (I am not familiar enough with the symbolic writing so I don't dare try that lest it's wrong). I also had an English colleague who pronounced the word year as 'yur'. Are these things related? I feel that the y-sound followed by vowels could be interesting?

[@piloto3189]

Addressing your second concern, those two phenomena you described are not related. You're not wrong in thinking you heard Simon's 'use' as 'yeese.' The preceding yod [j] does indeed often affect the goose diphthong in words such as you, use, music etc, usually fronting so that 'you' can be realised as something like [jyʉ̯] or even monophthongised to [jyː] in rapid speech for instance. The word 'year' being pronounced as 'yur' (thus 'here' and 'near' pronounced as 'hyur' and 'nyur' respectively) is a remnant from traditional Received Pronunciation wherein the 'near' vowel was a centring diphthong /ɪə/ (centring since it ended in a schwa or schwa-like vowel). So 'year' and 'here' were pronounced /jɪə/ and /hɪə/ respectively, or in some cases /jəː/ and /hjəː/ (probably similar to what you described). That's still heard today in England. However, the 'near' vowel is nowadays almost always a long monophthong /ɪː/ in today's Standard Southern British (SSB) English, so 'year' would be /jɪː/ (phonetically [jeː ~ je̞ː])

[@AlmightyRawks]

@@piloto3189 Thank you, I'm still learning and I appreciate the detail you added.

[@piloto3189]

@@AlmightyRawks You're most welcome. Frankly I'm learning too out of interest and curiosity, and there are a lot of things I still don't know! Hence I would love to be corrected for any errors I've made. Anyhow I'm glad to have helped!

[@frankharr9466]

I had a friend who could not believe that others couldn't hear the phonetic distinctions that she could.

[@janearmstrong7945]

It's interesting listening to this as a very badly dyslexic person. I can't easily process phonological sounds and definitely can't relate the phonological sound to how it might be spelt. In the case of people like me who are a Venn diagram of history nerd and very badly dyslexic, understanding the history of how English changed might be helpful.

[@patchy642]

Isle of Tenerife, Spain, Africa. Well done, Richard! How well are you acquainted with your Gaelic equivalent, An Loingseach? Hey, I intend to start learning Frisian next week. Do you fancy joining me in the adventure? It will greatly help our understanding of Old English, don't you think? Best wishes, Patchy.

[@_volder]

Is there a list of words that linguists normally use as examples for English vowel phonemes? I notice that a few seem to be standardized, such as that the "fleece" vowel is never called the "seed" vowel or the "deep" vowel, and the "kit" vowel is never called the "sip" vowel or the "rig" vowel, but English's vowel inventory has over a dozen phonemes and I haven't caught a dozen standard example words yet.

[@simonroper9218]

These are Wells' lexical sets - I think he chose the words because the vowels are surrounded by consonants that don't affect their articulation too much. I often use 'put' and 'cut' (rather than 'foot' and 'strut') for those two vowels because I think it works better for historical reasons, although I think the consonants in those words exclude them from the criteria Wells was using to come up with words :)

[@adam-k]

I am a bit confused. The raising of vowels contradicts what you said earlier about the chain shift. That vowels try to keep distance from each other. The raising of vowels seems to be the exact opposite where vowels clump together or even merge, arguably making them less distinguishable. What could be the driving force behind such "raising of vowels"

[@eueumesmoaquelecara4638]

Great video! People tend to not see or be able to reproduce the difference between two similar sounds when this difference doesn't exist in their own language. I, per example, speak Portuguese, and while I was studying English, I couldn't distinguish "man" /mæn/ from "men" /mɛn/ or "beach" /bijtʃ/ from "bitch" /bɪtʃ/ (luckily mine always sounded like "beach", not the other one) or even "mall" /mɑl/ from "mol" /mɔl/ because these distinctions don't exist in Portuguese. I used to pronounce both as /mɛn/, /bijtʃ/ and /mɔl/ (/mɔw/ actually). And the same works the other way around. Portuguese makes a very important distinction between é /ɛ/ and ê /e/, and ó /ɔ/ and ô /o/, English doesn't. So English Portuguese learners often can't either hear or speak the difference between "posso" /'pɔ.su/ (I can) and "poço" /'po.su/ (water well) neither the difference between "desce" /'dɛ.si/ (it descends) and "desse" /'de.si/ (of this one). It gets worse when it's a recurring thing that 2 different words are only distinguished by pronunciation and context alone, per example: "o começo" /u ko'me.su/ (the beginning) and "eu começo" /ew ko'mɛ.su/ (I begin); and "o porco" /u 'por.ku/ (the pig) and "os porcos" /us 'pɔr.kus/ (the pigs). None of these examples rhyme. And it and it gets even worse when you add to the balance all the nasal vowels and diphthongs.

[@user-om2ti8jj1f]

Thanks, Simon! Enlightening video! My native language (Ukrainian) has only 6 vowel phonemes: /i ɛ a ɔ u ɨ*/ and English vowels has been a big challenge for me. *It's described as /ɪ/ in "Ukrainian phonology" in Wikipedia, but the way the letter "И" is usually pronounced in Ukrainian, at least in my accent, sounds closer to [ɨ] than to [ɪ].

[@energeticwave5437]

Hi! This was a very helpful video, I understood a lot about the great viwel ahift. Just one curiosity, where do schwa sounds come into play? Is it up or down?

[@marie-zt6uh]

I finally have some kind of explanation why you say "Tea" but not "Bear" pronounced like "Beer". I made the mistake in English class at school (I am from Germany) because I thought when you say "Tea" the EA combination in "Bear" must be pronounced like "Beer". Well. The title of the story I was supposed to read out loud turned into "The fox and the beer" and caused some laughter. Unfortunately my teacher just said I made a mistake and corrected me but never explained me why it's pronounced different.

[@AmySoyka]

21:10 I wonder how much the linguistical changes were influenced by people's hearing health? If you think about it, even today, when peope are comminicating, the thing that most people naturally do when you're trying to communicate, if the other person cant hear you, is to shift your vowels around. 'Why Hello there'. 'Wye Halloo tharr'. 'Wee Haylow Tayhr'. ...etc... So, to surmise, maybe it wasn't our speech that was shifting after all, but our hearing changed as people moved to live in populations with different levels of ambient noise in the background?

[@ivanrumanek]

A very good talk! When did the long back quality in "plant" develop? Was it a French influence? And was "LAW" ever pronounced with the /au/ diphthong?

[@longuevalnz]

Re 12:45 - Just would like to note that the NZ vowel shift doesn’t apply to all front vowels - it’s confined to the short vowels only.

[@redrizzla1989]

What about those places in the midlands where ppl dont quite say the northern u or the southern u. So its not bus or booss, more like birs. Leicester, Coventry, Northampton. Think Alan Moore (Northamptonian).

[@barpoe]

Intresting about many Germans pronouncing 'cat' with that æ sound as the phonetic spelling would dictate. I think this is how it sounds in South African English as well. I recently watched a KZbinr and I couldn't exactly make out where he was from and asked him if his accent was a mix of German and South African, and he said, no, just South African lol. Anyway, this was interesting!

[@benw9949]

Sion, could you explain how Old/Middle French ei/ey became oi/oy and then was / wehN ? This happened after the Norman English period, some sometime after Caucer and into the modern period.

[@Syldoriel]

I'm sorry if this is a bit out of line but you look especially handsome today ☺️ Love your videos Simon!

[@JekaterinaZyryanova]

I've always wandered, what about the future. Does this Vowel Shift continue now and what English may sound like hundreds years in the future? Are there any researches?

[@beepboop204]