Talk:Great Vowel Shift

Request link to explanation of vowel symbols
Like others who have posted above, I can't understand the table on this page. (And that's a shame beacuse I find the subject fascinating.)

This problem would be easily solved with a link (just above the table) to a list of all the vowel symbols, showing how to pronounce them. But where is such a list? I've searched Wikipedia and the only thing I could find was this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language (under the 'Vowels' section) However, that list seems quite different to the vowel sounds used in the table here, with many symbols not listed.

Clearly, the symbols used in one of these two pages is either wrong, or incomplete. Someone needs to fix it!

Grand Dizzy (talk) 20:33, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The table looks OK to me (and is extremely helpful, well done to whoever put it up). Everything in it is IPA, but many of the symbols are inevitably not in the English language article, as they are historic rather than present-day English sounds. The reader will need to look at the full IPA article to understand the symbols, but I think that's preferable to giving a dumbed-down version which only gives vague approximations.
 * My only criticism is that the typeface for the symbols is too small (and can't be adjusted) for it to be clear what exactly is underneath the eː in 1500 and the oː in 1700 and 1750. I assume it's the "lowered" diacritic (shaped like a T), but can't tell for sure. Vilĉjo (talk) 16:08, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I`m sorry that you think that having examples would be "dumbed down". Like the user who follows, I am an amateur at phonetics.  I don't consider myself to be that "dumb"; I'm an educated person with a university degree, but I don't know the IPA alphabet and I rather imagine that most non-specialists who use Wikipedia for information are in the same situation.  Linguists fluent and conversant in IPA symbology probably don't come to Wikipedia for this information; they've learned it elsewhere and/or have access to specialised references.  It is, I think, rather too much to ask that the reader look up several different articles and tables in order to understand the concepts that this article is trying to explain.  For myself, and – I suspect – many other users, the tables with only IPA vowels shown /vowel/ is close to meaningless.  I (we) don't know what sounds are meant by those symbols.  If those meanings are unknown to the reader, then the symbols become useless, and the reader is just left without any understanding, and therefore, unenlightened about what the Great Vowel Shift is actually about.  I've left this article with only a vague grasp of how the great vowel shift changed the sound of spoken English, and isn't the point of an encyclopædic article to inform the reader? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.54.253.142 (talk) 00:37, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

I am a rank amateur in phonetics. Please consider this example from the summary above the main chart:

Middle English [ɛː] raised to [eː] and then to modern English [iː] (as in beak).

I can find no reference to the Middle English [ɛː] symbol in any Wiki-supplied SAMPA or IPA chart. Yet the OED guide to pronunciation has precisely this symbol which it describes as pronounced like the 'are' in 'square'. To have to go to the main IPA article in Wikipedia and find out that the colon-like symbol following the epsilon-like symbol makes the preceding sound 'long' is not a clue that helps me lengthen the 'e' in 'bed' which is how the IPA indicates the epsilon-like IPA symbol is pronounced. It would have been helpful if each stage was followed by a word in modern English that sounds like the Middle English. Given that the article provides a phonetic combo of symbols for which the OED finds perfectly easily a modern examplar, couldn't the article be modified to do the same?

The article needs to have EVERY phonetic symbol it displays provided with a modern English example or a brief explanation of what modern English sound(s) approximate it.

This is a fascinating subject that an amateur ought to be able to work out from the article w/o spending days excavating sources to find information.

I have no complaints about the article other than this one, which is kind of central - how the heck did the actual sounds change?

What about having little sound-bytes for each sound at each stage of the GVS? Ken M Quirici 16:43, 26 December 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kquirici (talk • contribs)

It is a weakness of Wikipedia that pronunciation is such a difficult issue. Many times I have followed a pronunciation link and given up quickly. Definitely the tables in this article need the old vowel sounds explained with reference to words we know. Timmytimtimmy (talk) 02:27, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Unhelpful
For people like me, who know nothing of linguistics, this article is not particularly helpful. Maybe you could include some practical examples. Since I do not know the subject I am at a loss as to how to improve the entry, but I can say that this entry has not helped improved my understanding of the subject. Perhaps the authors should write for people who go to an online encyclopedias for a basic understanding of the subject rather than for each other. To be specific: Suppose I am a 17 year-old assigned the Canterbury Tales in school. This has sparked my interest in the evolution of the English language. On Wiki I read "[aː] (ā) fronted to [æː] and then raised to [ɛː], [eː] and in many dialects diphthongised in Modern English to [eɪ] (as in make). " This means nothing to me. I literally do not have any idea what you are talking about. You have not contributed to my knowledge in any way. As an encyclopedia, this entry has totally failed except as a sandbox pissing contest among experts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.148.84.35 (talk) 16:56, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree. This article is an incomprehensible waste of space on some server somewhere. The only people who can make head or tale of it are people who already know it. I know the IPA symbols used in modern dictionaries, so am disappointed I have to look up more to understand this twaddle... This kind of elitist rubbish should be deleted. 111.68.120.158 (talk) 08:21, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
 * This sort of recurring completely unconstructive criticism also seems like a waste of server space FWIW.
 * It is difficult to tell what exactly is the problem. The phonetic transcription? The subject cannot be explained in detail without a notation more fine-grained than what is required for transcribing pronuciation in dictionaries. This is not a bug, it's a feature.
 * In particular, I suspect that a confused understanding of the concept of vowel length may be a key difficulty?, but again, hard to tell form this kind of comments. The concept of vowel height is another prerequisite. Hence, both are linked right from the 3rd paragraph.
 * What would be helpful is knowing what people actually expect of this article. To somehow explain the history of vowels in English to people who do not understand what vowels actually are and how they work in general? -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 22:57, 12 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I have changed the link above the chart to a page that has all the symbols used, with built-in sound files. This means the confused readership can hear the different vowel sounds. I hope this addresses the various complaints on this talk page. Davidelit (Talk) 08:02, 13 March 2013 (UTC)


 * The article seems to take on faith that this Great Vowel Shift happened. How do we know?  Shouldn't there be at least one sentence explaining how we know it happened? 50.49.134.141 (talk) 17:19, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
 * This is exactly what I came here to ask. I'm quite surprised there is no explanation as to "how" we know the pronunciation of words changed. It is not as if we can rely on poetry seeing as poets will take liberties with rhymes, correct? I truly would love to know this. I guess I am off to dive into site:edu searches. Wish me luck. :-) Dhugot (talk) 13:42, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

pitched way to high
people an encylopedia should be accesible to the general reader this article is not get thee to rewrite

after reading thru some of the comments, most of them seem to be some variant of what i said: this article is incomprehensible oto 90% of readers — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:192:4701:BE80:403D:F8F2:7CF0:CEBD (talk) 03:52, 19 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Yes, the problem with Wikipedia is too many articles like this one, that were written by experts in the subject who never had to teach the subject to beginners. The passion to get every single word of every single sentence technically accurate has meant that accuracy has crowded out intelligibility.
 * By no means the only article to have this flaw.
 * Encyclopedia articles need to be understood by people who know nothing of the field. This one fails. Skepticalgiraffe (talk) 00:53, 17 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I very much agree with this. This page is unfortunately dominated by people who think that just because they put in the effort to learn IPA, everybody else should. As someone who has mastered a large number of different technical notations, if I didn't have better uses for my time, I could no doubt learn IPA, but that would be just as stupid as other people learning HTML and CSS to read the source text of this page without using a web browser. If IPA is really any good there should be automatic tools that enable it to be translated into audio in a wide range of different spoken forms - just select the one that suits you. This is presumably what people who know IPA do in their heads. Wikipedia could then provide access to this just as it provides access to existing audio and video samples. It would then be easy for users to understand all the information on a page like this without having to learn HTML, CCS, JavaScript or IPA! No doubt the idea of having their knowledge encoded into a mere computer program would horrify the average IPAite! 31.50.203.115 (talk) 12:15, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Well said Timmytimtimmy (talk) 02:28, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

"*all* middle English long vowels were changed"?
What about 'long u' (u:)? As in, rude, or dune. s that vowell not pronounced pretty much the same way that it was in middle English? At most there are some slight dipthonging variations in some dialects, but those aren't great vowellshift related... Firejuggler86 (talk) 20:58, 21 May 2020 (UTC)


 * I think we're saying here that /u:/ mūs became /aʊ/ mouse. Wolfdog (talk) 19:59, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

The linguistic knowledge level displayed by some of the commentariat here is truly remarkable
The common thread is more or less, how do we know if the GVS happened at all, and then continue to go from there, kind of agitating each other ('raging anglo-autistic folly'). Superior british edusys? But help is on the way.

Consider the fact that english developped from a merger of 'german' and 'french' (which may well have been the cause for the subsequent GVS). Then see how the vowels are being pronounced in most european languages. There are even words in english that have retained the pre-GVS sound, like (A-E-I-O-U) dunce-ten-sin-ton-bush

But you need to differentiate: The vowels appear in short syllables (like in these five examples) and are then spoken 'open', or in long syllables and spoken 'closed'. Example for sound A: dunce - dance; sound I: sin - seen; sound U: bush - rouge. The first word is short/open, the second long/closed.

Do you feel the principle? You will need to, because this is the way to solve the issue with non-existing (in english) long E and O: by extrapolating from the three examples just given. E: Try ten (short/open) and form a fictitious word with a long/closed sound. O: Ditto, parting from ton.

Until here I avoided to use the IPA script, although quite clearly it would help to show the difference between short/open and long/closed. Thus for the sake of completeness - again first short/open, then long closed:

A   [a] [aː] E   [ɛ] [eː] I   [ɪ] [iː] O   [ɔ] [oː] U   [ʊ] [uː]

So don't worry about all the other IPA signs you may see, these are the ones you need for the vowels.

Caveat: This little article is written as a 'popular-scientific' essay, cutting out extreme accuracy in the interest of making the issue more widely understandable. Let's make sure we do see the wood for the trees! Contorista (talk) 09:07, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The above is bunch of nearly impenetrable ranting. Try getting to the point very clearly and without invective. And we're not really in a position to take linguistic advice from someone who confuses the Anglo-Saxon dialects with German. They're both German language, but that's like confusing Old French with Romanian just because they're both Romance languages. Ultimately, though, none of what you say here is of any interest to anyone without reliable sources that very specifically back up all of the claims you are making. Wikipedia is not a place for your own novel ideas like what might have lead to the GVS and whether particular sound changes pertain to syllable length. Wikipedia and its editors are not here "to solve the issue" of any question about this subject. Previously published reliable sources that we refer to are what "solve the issue"; we simply report on their solution. If they don't provide one, then we cannot either. If you don't already understand this about Wikipedia, you may be at the wrong site and should maybe be posting your novel opinions on a blog or in social media.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:18, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Is that really so? You have refuted not even one of my arguments. Instead, you sound aroused in authoritarianism. Such a performance would be unsuitable and embarassing even if you were much older than you seem to be   .) Contorista (talk) 09:51, 11 December 2023 (UTC)