GalacticCactus Forum
Forums => English & Linguistics => Topic started by: Jonathon on July 07, 2006, 11:10:58 PM
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Vowel sounds are primarily determined by the position in the mouth where they're voiced, so they're defined in terms of height (or sometimes openness) and frontness or backness. A high vowel is produced near the roof of the mouth, while a low vowel is produced lower, with the mouth wider open.
Vowel shifts are a fairly common thing. Because vowels are not tied to a particular place of articulation like consonants are, they tend to slide around a lot. That is, consonants by definition are produced with restriction of air flow, while vowels are produced without restriction of air flow.
There have been other vowel shifts in the history of the English language, and there are some going on today, but the Great Vowel Shift was by far the largest. The Great Vowel Shift only affected long vowels; the long-short vowel distinction isn't what they teach you in elementary, but rather a literal difference in the duration of a vowel.
This nifty site (http://facweb.furman.edu/~mmenzer/gvs/seehear.htm) lets you see and hear each vowel change in sequence. The first step was the diphthongization of the high vowels, /i/ and /u/ (as in modern-day beet and boot). Next, the mid-high vowels, /e/ and /o/ (roughly like modern-day bate and boat) rose to take their spots. Then /a/ (which doesn't exist in many dialects of modern-day English, but is halfway between the sounds in bat and bot) moved forward and merged with /æ/ (as in bat).
Then the mid-low vowels, /?/ and /?/ (bet and bought [for people who don't rhyme bought and bot]) moved up and diphthongized at the same time, becoming /ei/ and /ou/. Then /æ/ moved up to take the place of /?/. The new /ei/ then moved again and merged with /i/, and the new /?/ moved up to take the place of /ei/. (That's sort of a confusing sequence; basically, /?/ and /ei/ shifted up twice.)* Meanwhile, the diphthongized high vowels from the first step continued to fall, leaving them with low starting elements.
And that, essentially, is why English vowel characters don't match up with other European languages—our vowels have moved one or two positions (or even three), but we never changed our spelling to reflect the new positions.
*I believe that not all words with these sounds moved twice. That's why we have so many pronunciations of the combination ea. In Middle and Early Modern English, it was used to repesent the sound /?/, both long and short (the short vowel hasn't changed, so you can still see it in words like dead and leapt). However, some of those long ea words moved up to /ei/ and then /i/ (neat and speak for example), while some just moved up to /ei/ and stopped (like steak).
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When did this happen?
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There is evidence that it was starting as early as Chaucer's time, based on some of the words he rhymed. That is, he appeared to rhyme some words that had historically been different, which means that they had started to change.
It took a century or so to complete, and then a little while longer to spread throughout the rest of Britain, so it was winding down by the beginning of the Early Modern English period (the time of Shakespeare).
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Have there been any similar vowell shifts in any Romantic languages?
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I once had a theory that God kind of patched English together for it to be the language the Book of Mormon could be translated into. I don't really class that as a theory so much anymore, and the grace of the Arabic translation causes me to think of it less so. Even Joseph Smith preferred the German translation over the King James (reportedly). The King James was written to sound elevated, while the German was written to be understandable (if I am informed correctly.)
Sorry, that was a bit of a non-sequitur. The thought that I skipped in between is to what degree the incorporation of French and Latinate vocabulary on a Germanic substrate would have accomplished this vowel shift.
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Have there been any similar vowell shifts in any Romantic languages?
There have been plenty of small vowel shifts, but I don't know of any extensive chain shifts (where the vowels play musical chairs).
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I once had a theory that God kind of patched English together for it to be the language the Book of Mormon could be translated into. I don't really class that as a theory so much anymore, and the grace of the Arabic translation causes me to think of it less so. Even Joseph Smith preferred the German translation over the King James (reportedly). The King James was written to sound elevated, while the German was written to be understandable (if I am informed correctly.)
The KJV was based very heavily on the Tyndale translation, which followed the Lutheran notion of putting the Bible into the vernacular. I have heard that it sounded slightly archaic when it was published, but that's probably just because the Tyndale version preceded it by several decades, so the KJV was slightly out of date.
Sorry, that was a bit of a non-sequitur. The thought that I skipped in between is to what degree the incorporation of French and Latinate vocabulary on a Germanic substrate would have accomplished this vowel shift.
The cause of the Great Vowel Shift is still subject to debate, and I don't know that anyone will ever be able to pin down a cause with any degree of certainty. I'm not even sure if people can explain the causes of the vowel shifts going on today.
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It's because of our degrading morals ;)
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Or maybe, to take a Whorfian approach, our degrading language is leading to degrading morals. ;)
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Have there been any similar vowell shifts in any Romantic languages?
There have been plenty of small vowel shifts, but I don't know of any extensive chain shifts (where the vowels play musical chairs).
I'm trying to figure out why Romantic languages are spelled how they sound. Did they change their spellings after their own vowell shifts?
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Yeah. For the most part their spelling has kept up with their pronunciation changes. It's not something unique to Romance languages, though; for instance, French spelling is sort of out of date compared to its pronunciation, but it's not as bad as English spelling. German spelling is very phonetic, too, as is the spelling of many other languages.
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Why do some languages adjust their spelling to match the pronunciation but others, like ours, don't?
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I really don't know. I would guess that it largely relies on the power of a nation's government to effect changes like that. There's no governmental body that regulates the English language, though many countries do have such organizations.
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Do you have any idea why English spelling in particular didn't keep up with the times?
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Not really, but I'll see what I can dig up about it.