Middle English

The Great Vowel Shift AKA why English is a stupid, stupid language

If you’ve ever wondered why ‘though’ and ‘cough’ are spelled the same but pronounced completely differently, you’re not alone. Why does English spelling have so many quirks/really effing stupid things that are hard to remember? The answer lies in a dramatic event that happened a few hundred years ago: the Great Vowel Shift. Yes, that’s a thing. A vowel shift. Because English, at some point, decided it was too easy.

What even is a Great Vowel Shift?

A vowel

The Great Vowel Shift was a major linguistic event that took place in English between the 15th and 18th centuries. And it dramatically altered the way we pronounced long vowels. What the hell’s a long vowel, I hear you ask? The opposite of a short vowel, obvs. Sorry. A long vowel is one that’s pronounced the same way as the letter’s name in the alphabet, like ‘a’ in ‘cake’ or ‘i’ in ‘bike’. A short vowel has a more clipped sound, like the ‘a’ in ‘cat’ or the ‘e’ in ‘bed’.

It doesn’t seem like much of a distinction, I know. And that’s because of the Great Vowel Shift. Before it, in Middle English we held long vowels for longer when we spoke. For example, we pronounced the word ‘bite’ with a long ‘i’, like ‘beet’. But then some bright sparks started shifting vowels upwards in their mouths. This is called ‘raising’ in linguistics. It happens when the tongue is positioned higher in the mouth during the pronunciation of a vowel.

The problem is that no one bothered to tell our spelling about this. So the way many of our words are spelled today reflects how they used to sound before the Shift. That’s why words like ‘cough’ and ‘through’ look like they should rhyme but sound like they come from completely different universes.

If you think things are bad now, imagine what it was like for anyone trying to speak and spell English in the 1500s. One day ‘boot’ rhymes with ‘foot’, then the next it doesn’t any more. WHAT. THE. FUCK.

But why though?

The extremely informative answer is that no one really knows. Theories range from the influence of French after the Norman Conquest (thanks a lot, France) to social mobility and dialect mixing, particularly after the Black Death and the War of the Roses. Or it might just have been down to people wanting to sound fancier (like saying ‘myself’ when you mean ‘me’ today, GRRRR). Whatever happened, it’s like English made a bet with itself on how hard it could make things for future generations. Spoiler: it won.

The good news is that next time you hear someone complain about English spelling, you can smugly and knowledgably say ‘Well actually, that’s down to the Great Vowel Shift’. You’re welcome.

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C’est what?

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I spend a lot of my time editing enormo legal books packed with esoteric jargon (lucky me!) and some of the longest sentences known to man (or woman). A lot of those terms are Latin (for example, habeas corpus, prima facie, ex parte, pro bono, etc). But it turns out lots of our legal terms have also been infiltrated by another language. And that language is French. Specifically, Old French, which was spoken from the 9th century to the 14th century (roughly – I mean the years are rough, not that the Old French was spoken roughly).

Old French developed from Latin and evolved into Middle French, which eventually led to the modern French language that I’ve been learning on Duolingo for years, yet still can’t say anything remotely useful in.

Let’s have a look at Old French in action.

Les mots

  • ‘Attorney’ comes from the Old French word ‘atorne’, meaning ‘to assign’.

  • ‘Court’ is from (say it in a French accent) ‘court’, meaning ‘enclosed yard’ or ‘sovereign’s residence’.

  • ‘Plaintiff’ (now pretty much replaced by ‘claimant’) is from ‘plaintif’, meaning ‘complaining’ or ‘lamenting’.

  • ‘Defendant’ is from (get the accent ready again) ‘defendant’, meaning ‘defender’.

  • ‘Bailiff’ is from ‘baillif’, meaning ‘administrative official’ (dunno why we added another ‘f’ – maybe so it matched ‘plaintiff’?).

  • ‘Jury’ is from ‘juré’, meaning ‘sworn’.

  • ‘Larceny’ is from ‘larrecin’, meaning ‘theft’. 

  • ‘Trespass’ is from ‘trespas’, meaning ‘wrongdoing’.

Pourquoi?

We have the Norman Conquest of 1066 to thank for all these French words sneaking in and stealing our English words’ jobs. That’s because the Normans, who were originally Vikings but settled in what’s now Northern France and adopted French as their own language, became the ruling class in England. And that meant French became the language of the English aristocracy and, therefore, the legal system, for several centuries.

English (well, the incomprehensible Chaucer-esque Middle kind, anyway) eventually came back into fashion around the time of the Plantagenets (from the 12th to the 15th centuries). And over time, it would go on to replace French as the dominant language in all parts of society. But our Gallic cousins’ influence still remains in the legal lexicon today. Sacre bleu.

I’ve included this video by Kid Creole & the Coconuts because it was the first time I ever heard the word ‘larceny’ (‘He caught the mug who did in the forgery / And the babe in charge of larceny’), and also because it is a CHOON.