What’s a vowel shift?

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A vowel shift is a general change in the inflection or phonetics of a vowel sound over time, in a particular language. A vowel change can be applied to any language, but some languages ​​are more vulnerable than others to this type of change. Generally, a vowel shift occurs over a significant period of time, usually hundreds of years, according to a gradually developing shared dialect that includes more and more speakers until it naturally becomes a widespread and standard feature of the language. This kind of change is an important aspect in the field of historical linguistics.

Every language experiences vowel changes that linguists observe in their overall study of language assessment and its relationship to other neighboring languages. For example, in the English language, experts have identified a “major vowel change” that occurred over three centuries, from about the mid-15th century to the mid-18th century. Other smaller changes have occurred in the English language, but many linguists study the large vowel shift and similar changes in other languages, to understand how languages ​​mutate over time. Historical vowel shifts are most commonly identified by studying changes in the way words are written over time; what may initially appear to be scribal misspellings will slowly transition into common usage.

Linguists can also benefit from knowing the entire history of a language when observing vowel changes and other dynamic changes. Taking the example of English again, historians can see how the language started with Old English, which had its own fixed vowel sounds, and changed into more modern versions. Even today, linguists are looking at current changes, for example, in American English, where experts have identified a pattern they call a major vowel shift in the northeastern United States. Experts are calling it the “change of northern cities,” and it’s been covered in major media, as well as in academic articles.

In vowel shifts, vowels change their sound in several ways. One of the most common is when a vowel becomes a diphthong. A diphthong is a vowel sound that has two separate components; for example, in English, the diphthong “oy” has a distinct combination of ‘o’ and ‘ee’. Vowels that become diphthongs are usually more lengthened, although this is not necessarily always the case. A vowel can become longer or shorter, and it can also change into a completely different vowel sound.

Scientists have discovered that vowel changes, along with consonant changes, are largely social and that there is an organic social process driving the more broadly defined changes. Linguists sometimes use Venn diagrams, or similar visual tools, to observe the precise ways in which a set of individuals pronounce their vowels. Some experts theorize that some vowel changes and other dialectal changes may relate to social mobility, as people from different language groups meet and influence each other. For example, the Mongol-Tatar invasion of Russia in the 13th century is thought to have greatly influenced the development of Russian, causing it to diverge significantly from other Slavic languages.

In general, mass media tend to produce a “standardization” of vowel sounds within a language by constructing a common accent defined for a large region. Many who are familiar with vowel shifts argue that these linguistic shifts thrive despite any attempts at standardization, largely through their natural origin in communities, where individuals influence each other’s dialects and speech patterns to a high degree. . Theorists often try to understand vowel changes within the general observation of “natural language” and the local dialect.

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