The Great Vowel Shift: How English Used to Sound
English, like all languages, is constantly evolving. Slang words become part of the language, foreign terms enter the dictionary, and old words go out of fashion or change in meaning.
So here's a question that puzzles the internet — if you went back in time, would you still be able to understand English speakers?
Of course, the first recordings of people talking were only made in the second half of the 19th century, so we can't know directly. But we can still guess how English sounded from writing.
Before efforts started being made to standardize English spelling in the 15th century, people spelled words however they wanted — usually based on how they sounded.
Some of these spellings still changed over time, giving us hints about how words were being pronounced. We can also get hints from words that rhymed in old poetry.
Between the 15th and 18th centuries, there's evidence of something called the "Great Vowel Shift," when the sounds of long vowels changed significantly.
The biggest changes happened between the 15th and 16th centuries.
Before this shift, in the sort of Middle English used by Geoffrey Chaucer — the 14th century author of The Canterbury Tales — the long "e" sound in "sheep" was pronounced like an "a."
So "sheep" would have sounded like "shape," and "feet" like "fate." Meanwhile, "house" was pronounced "hoos," while "goose" was pronounced "goas."
As you can imagine, understanding someone speaking English before the 15th century would have been very difficult!
However, since English spelling started to get standardized right around this time, we can still guess the meanings of many words we read in a 14th century book.
But if we heard "flour" actually being said to rhyme with "poor," it would be very confusing!
And that's without including all the different accents and dialects of the time!
