The Importance Of The Great Vowel Shift

English language has lately become the world’s lingua franca, making it one of the most spoken languages worldwide. An important feature that gives it a sustainable advantage over other languages is ability to easily adapt to changes. It is spoken in many dialects across multiple countries and continues to welcome new words while other words change meaning or are slowly abandoned. For instance, the word “abandoned” wouldn’t have made sense in the last sentence if an English man from the 14th century read it, because back then, it meant “to subjugate.” On the other hand, there are many English words that are added to official dictionaries at a yearly basis such as “tweep”, “selfie” and “hashtag”.

This property is highly regarded as a positive aspect to the English language because it increases its vocabulary, which consequently opens infinite doors to precise and expressive communication. However, a

The reasons behind this vowel shift remain controversial to this day. However, the most agreed upon reason is said to be due to the English people’s need to modify French pronunciations -- branch of Romance languages -- into more standard Germanic pronunciations after the French’s invasion in 1000 AD. It featured changes in long vowels that sounded; for example, “mine” was pronounced meen and “mate” was pronounced as maat. The father of English literature, Geoffrey Chaucer used to write “life” as lyf, and pronounced it as “leef” (CITE). But after the vowel shift, it evolved into present day’s pronunciation of “life”. The modification in one vowel generated a succeeding chain of vowel shifts, where various vowel pronunciations interchanged among one other. Some words were re-spelt with a double vowel to emphasize it's pronounced with a long vowel such as “feet” and “sheep”. The Great Vowel Shift progressed throughout the