A History of English Language

A history of the english language 222
176. From Middle English to Modern.
When we come to the vowel changes in Modern English we see the importance of the
factors that determined the length of vowels in Middle English. All Middle English long
vowels underwent extensive alteration in passing into Modern English, but the short
vowels, in accented syllables, remained comparatively stable. If we compare Chaucer’s
pronunciation of the short vowels with ours, we note only two changes of importance,
those of a and u. By Shakespeare’s day (i.e., at the close of the sixteenth century)
Chaucer’s a had become an [æ] in pronunciation (cat, thank, flax). In some cases this ME
a represented an OE (at, apple, back), and the new pronunciation was therefore a
return to approximately the form that the word had had in Old English. It is the usual
pronunciation in America and a considerable part of southern England today. The change
the u underwent was what is known as unrounding. In Chaucer’s pronunciation this
vowel was like the u in full. By the sixteenth century it seems to have become in most
words the sound we have in but (e.g., cut, sun; love, with the Anglo-Norman spelling of o
for u). So far as the short vowels are concerned it is clear that a person today would have
little difficulty in understanding the English of any period of the language.
177. The Great Vowel Shift.
The situation is very different when we consider the long vowels. In Chaucer’s
pronunciation these had still their so-called “continental” value—that is, a was
pronounced like the a in father and not as in name, e was pronounced either like the e in
there or the a in mate, but not like the ee in meet, and so with the other vowels. But in the
fifteenth century a great change is seen to be under way. All the long vowels gradually
came to be pronounced with a greater elevation of the tongue and closing of the mouth,
so that those that could be raised
were raised, and those that could not
without becoming consonantal (i, u) became diphthongs. The change may be visualized
in the following diagram: