Download the app
educalingo
Search

Meaning of "Great Vowel Shift" in the English dictionary

Dictionary
DICTIONARY
section

PRONUNCIATION OF GREAT VOWEL SHIFT

Great Vowel Shift  [eː] play
facebooktwitterpinterestwhatsapp

GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY OF GREAT VOWEL SHIFT

noun
adjective
verb
adverb
pronoun
preposition
conjunction
determiner
exclamation
Great Vowel Shift is a noun.
A noun is a type of word the meaning of which determines reality. Nouns provide the names for all things: people, objects, sensations, feelings, etc.

WHAT DOES GREAT VOWEL SHIFT MEAN IN ENGLISH?

Great Vowel Shift

The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in England between 1350 and 1700. The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto Jespersen, a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term. Because English spelling was becoming standardized in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Great Vowel Shift is responsible for many of the peculiarities of English spelling.

Definition of Great Vowel Shift in the English dictionary

The definition of Great Vowel Shift in the dictionary is (linguistics) a phonetic change that took place during the transition from Middle to Modern English, whereby the long vowels were raised: ((eː) became (iː ), (oː) became (uː )), etc. The vowels ((iː )) and ((uː )) underwent breaking and became the diphthongs ((aɪ )) and ((aʊ )).

WORDS THAT BEGIN LIKE GREAT VOWEL SHIFT

Great Slave Lake
Great Slave River
Great Smokies
Great Smoky Mountains
Great St Bernard Pass
Great Stour
great tit
Great Trek
great vassal
Great Victoria Desert
Great Wall
Great Wall of China
Great War
Great Week
great white heron
great white shark
Great White Way
Great Yarmouth
great year
Great Zimbabwe

WORDS THAT END LIKE GREAT VOWEL SHIFT

back shift
blueshift
day shift
Doppler shift
downshift
frameshift
gearshift
graveyard shift
Lamb shift
makeshift
night shift
paradigm shift
redshift
shift
split shift
stick shift
swing shift
unshift
upshift
vowel shift

Synonyms and antonyms of Great Vowel Shift in the English dictionary of synonyms

SYNONYMS

Translation of «Great Vowel Shift» into 25 languages

TRANSLATOR
online translator

TRANSLATION OF GREAT VOWEL SHIFT

Find out the translation of Great Vowel Shift to 25 languages with our English multilingual translator.
The translations of Great Vowel Shift from English to other languages presented in this section have been obtained through automatic statistical translation; where the essential translation unit is the word «Great Vowel Shift» in English.

Translator English - Chinese

元音大转移
1,325 millions of speakers

Translator English - Spanish

Gran cambio de la vocal
570 millions of speakers

English

Great Vowel Shift
510 millions of speakers

Translator English - Hindi

ग्रेट स्वर शिफ्ट
380 millions of speakers
ar

Translator English - Arabic

حرف العلة التحول الكبير
280 millions of speakers

Translator English - Russian

Великий гласных Сдвиг
278 millions of speakers

Translator English - Portuguese

Grande vogal Mudança
270 millions of speakers

Translator English - Bengali

গ্রেট স্বরবর্ণ Shift
260 millions of speakers

Translator English - French

Grand Changement de voyelle
220 millions of speakers

Translator English - Malay

Shift Besar Vokal
190 millions of speakers

Translator English - German

Große Vokalverschiebung
180 millions of speakers

Translator English - Japanese

大母音推移
130 millions of speakers

Translator English - Korean

큰 모음 이동
85 millions of speakers

Translator English - Javanese

Great Vowel Shift
85 millions of speakers
vi

Translator English - Vietnamese

Lớn nguyên âm phím Shift
80 millions of speakers

Translator English - Tamil

பெரிய உயிர் ஷிப்ட்
75 millions of speakers

Translator English - Marathi

ग्रेट स्वर शिफ्ट
75 millions of speakers

Translator English - Turkish

Büyük Harf Değiştirme
70 millions of speakers

Translator English - Italian

Grande Vowel Maiusc
65 millions of speakers

Translator English - Polish

Przesunięcie świetnie samogłosek
50 millions of speakers

Translator English - Ukrainian

Великий голосних Зрушення
40 millions of speakers

Translator English - Romanian

Marea Vowel Shift
30 millions of speakers
el

Translator English - Greek

Μεγάλη φωνήεν Shift
15 millions of speakers
af

Translator English - Afrikaans

Groot vokaal Shift
14 millions of speakers
sv

Translator English - Swedish

Stora vokal Shift
10 millions of speakers
no

Translator English - Norwegian

Stor Vokal Shift
5 millions of speakers

Trends of use of Great Vowel Shift

TRENDS

TENDENCIES OF USE OF THE TERM «GREAT VOWEL SHIFT»

The term «Great Vowel Shift» is used very little and occupies the 156.872 position in our list of most widely used terms in the English dictionary.
0
100%
FREQUENCY
Rarely used
27
/100
The map shown above gives the frequency of use of the term «Great Vowel Shift» in the different countries.
Principal search tendencies and common uses of Great Vowel Shift
List of principal searches undertaken by users to access our English online dictionary and most widely used expressions with the word «Great Vowel Shift».

FREQUENCY OF USE OF THE TERM «GREAT VOWEL SHIFT» OVER TIME

The graph expresses the annual evolution of the frequency of use of the word «Great Vowel Shift» during the past 500 years. Its implementation is based on analysing how often the term «Great Vowel Shift» appears in digitalised printed sources in English between the year 1500 and the present day.

Examples of use in the English literature, quotes and news about Great Vowel Shift

EXAMPLES

10 ENGLISH BOOKS RELATING TO «GREAT VOWEL SHIFT»

Discover the use of Great Vowel Shift in the following bibliographical selection. Books relating to Great Vowel Shift and brief extracts from same to provide context of its use in English literature.
1
Great Vowel Shift
One of the most important changes in the English language, which appeared especially in the south of England during the 15th to 18th centuries, was a Chain Shift, the so-called Great Vowel Shift.
Victoria Tutschka, 2009
2
The Great Vowel Shift
Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,7, University of Cologne (Englisches Seminar), course: Early Modern English, language: English, comment: Bewertung: "Der ...
Timm Ole Bernshausen, 2013
3
Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language
"Seth Lerer's Inventing English is a history of the English language from the age of Beowulf to the rap of Eminem.
Seth Lerer, 2013
4
History of Englishes: New Methods and Interpretations in ...
This year (1990) marks my official majority in Greal Vowel Shift affairs; it was exactly twenty-one years ago (Lass 1969) that I first entered the arena (with the Great Vowel Shift all metaphors are gladiatorial). In particular, I came down on Luick's ...
Matti Rissanen, 1992
5
Optimality Theory and Language Change
VIOLA MIGLIO & BRUCE MOREN MERGER AVOIDANCE AND LEXICAL RECONSTRUCTION An Optimality-Theoretic model of the Great Vowel Shift Abstract. This paper offers a model of the Great Vowel Shift (GVS) within Optimality Theory ...
D.E. Holt, International Linguistic Association, 2003
6
An Historical Study of English: Function, Form and Change
Provides examples of these changes, such as the standardisation of spellings and accent and the origins of the Great Vowel Shift Focuses on the origins of two non-standard varieties; eighteenth century Scots and twentieth century British ...
Jeremy Smith, 2003
7
Methods and Data in English Historical Dialectology
Jeremy J. Smith Phonological Space and the Actuation of the Great Vowel Shift m Scotland and Northern England l . The Northern Vowel Shift Students of English historical phonology have, traditionally and notoriously, focussed on the ...
Marina Dossena, Roger Lass, 2004
8
Methodology in Transition
In Middle English, a also changed to o, and the mechanism of this change is important for understanding the entire Great Vowel Shift, even though the labialization of ME a did not have the dramatic consequences we observe in Swedish and ...
Irmengard Rauch, Gerald F. Carr, 1995
9
Articles on Vowel Shifts, Including: Great Vowel Shift, ...
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online.
Hephaestus Books, 2011
10
Language Histories: History of Esperanto, Germanic Umlaut, ...
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online.
Books, LLC, Source: Wikipedia, Books Group, 2011

10 NEWS ITEMS WHICH INCLUDE THE TERM «GREAT VOWEL SHIFT»

Find out what the national and international press are talking about and how the term Great Vowel Shift is used in the context of the following news items.
1
Nine weird Google searches about Reading
Something to do with the Great Vowel Shift that went on the Middle Ages - originally it was pronounced "Berkshire" with an "er" sound, but for ... «getreading, Jun 15»
2
Ditch the which!
Personally I think it all went wrong with the Great Vowel Shift, if not the invasion of the Normans and the corrupting influence of French. «Crikey, Jun 15»
3
Plenty of life in Scots language
... hadn't suppressed it for 300 years (insisting on Norman French) and then forced it through that terrible aberration, the great vowel shift. «Herald Scotland, Mar 15»
4
You don't know ABCs like this
And he refers to the Great Vowel Shift – the period between 1400 and 1600 A.D. when pronunciation of the letter A went from “ah” to “ay” and ... «Concord Monitor, Feb 15»
5
Crossing the threshold: Why “thresh ~ thrash”?
In the Early Modern period, the long vowels of English underwent a major restructuring known as the Great Vowel Shift. This is the shift that, ... «OUPblog, Feb 15»
6
Most writers love words. This one loves letters.
And he refers to the Great Vowel Shift — the period between 1400 and 1600 A.D. when pronunciation of the letter A went from “ah” to “ay” and ... «Washington Post, Feb 15»
7
Leader: Opportunity for SNP and Labour to unite
... miles from a Dundee housing estate to a Forfarshire village produces a change in language that would put the Great Vowel Shift to shame. «Scotsman, Feb 15»
8
Why do we pronounce February without the "r"?
At the same time, the English language was undergoing the Great Vowel Shift, one of whose features entailed that the long vowel 'u:' was split ... «The Independent, Feb 15»
9
The way we teach most children to read sets them up to fail
Pronunciation changed dramatically in England between 1350 and 1700 (The Great Vowel Shift), and scribes paid by the character added ... «The Conversation AU, Feb 15»
10
Why do we have silent letters in the English language?
Nowadays, the distinction between long and short vowels in English is actually more than just length because of the Great Vowel Shift. «The Independent, Jan 15»

REFERENCE
« EDUCALINGO. Great Vowel Shift [online]. Available <https://educalingo.com/en/dic-en/great-vowel-shift>. Apr 2024 ».
Download the educalingo app
en
English dictionary
Discover all that is hidden in the words on
index
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z