This ruined English spelling 

*elusive

We should call it "The irritable vowel shift" then.

Basically, English standardized its spelling at exactly the wrong moment.

I study linguistics at a university in Belarus. Today I had an exam in the history of English language and got a question related to your video. Thanks to you, I was able to write it well :)

Very interesting! As a Dutch person learning to speak English it was very strange to see same spelling being pronounced very differently. The funny thing is that if I would pronounce the English words in a Dutch way (reading the words as if they were Dutch words), these words, I now find, sounded a lot like the original words. Keep on doing this good work, Rob!

English is a difficult language. It can be understood through tough thorough thought though….

“Look” and “spook” and “book” do all rhyme for me. (cries in Scottish)

As a German, at minute 13:29 where you pulled out the words "Knight" and "Gnome", I tried to apply the "original" "gh" sound on knight, but also pronouncing the k, it instantly sounded like the German "Knecht".

Thank you Rob! I’m an ESL teacher, and these videos have helped me explain some of our strange English pronunciation and spelling to my students 😊

This is BY FAR the easiest and most comprehensible explanation of the Great Vowel Shift i've ever seen. Every linguist will overcomplicate it by assuming you can fluently read the IPA and know exactly what are the various classifications of consonants and what's the exact difference between similar vowel sounds, so it always ends up sounding like an advanced algebra lesson instead of a quick 15 minute explaination.

When I saw the video title, I shook an imaginary fist and blamed the French first and foremost.

I wondered most of my life why Australian english seemed to have lost so many of the distinctive nuances of the variety of dialects from all over Britain, that walked off the first ships onto Australian shores. We kept, and still use, so many phrases, words, slang etc but the accent is flatter and more homogenous. The best explaination I've read is that convicts and settlers had to conciously pull their regional accents down to a level all could comprehend. I think we had our own vowel shift! Excellent article as usual Rob.

West Pennsylvania: Creek is crick; roots are ruts; roof is ruff; route is rute. Say, "I like things lie gat (like that)." Many more. There is a bit of PA Dutch around, and a sweep of Appalachia but can't say if that is the influence in the dialect I've just mentioned.

Looking at the three main western germanic languages, English went through its great vowel shift; High German underwent its consonant shift; Dutch basically ignored these changes. That's why you find quite a few cognates where the Dutch word has roughly the same consonants as English, and roughly the same vowels as German - appel/apple/Apfel straat/street/Straße.

0:52 - In my home town there was once a professor who, unlike Otto Jespersen here, DID always refer to "The Great Vowel Shift" as "The Great Vowel Movement". The students in his class were always biting their pencils to avoid breaking out in cackling.

Oh, you did it! I asked you to do the great vowel shift in a comment on one of your previous videos. I told you I’d rather learn it from you than anyone. And now you have. Quite an undertaking to explain all that. Thank you so much.

I pronounce it both "often" and "ofen". I think it's generally "ofen" unless I want to sound more formal or put emphasis on "often".

11:13 - The acknowledgment that Rob just punned should have been more elaborate. It was so subtle that it almost went over my head.

Most of my family emigrated from East Anglia to Wells, Maine USA around 1640. My Great Aunt and Uncle lived across the street from us and were like Grandparents to me. They were both born around 1880 and talked with the old "Maine accent". there is a section of Wells that is a raised bog with very little tree growth (unusual for here) of about 500 acres. It has always been called "The Great Heath", pronounced hayth. I noticed many pronunciation and word usage anomalies when I went to elementary school. The teacher was adamant that chimney should be used rather than chimbley. Hark was in common usage at home, mainly telling children to be quiet and listen. A Drain was pronounced dreen, particularly the pipe draining the cellar. A funnel was called a tunnel. A recipe was a receipt. The Maine accent is non rhotic and practically all vowels are pronounced (door is two syllables) something like doe-wah. In the fall at killing time, a beef to be slaughtered was always called "a creature" as in "are you goin' ta kill a creecha this fall?" keep up the good work, I find your postings very interesting.

As a dutchie I love these kinds of videos, it's fun comparing our pronunciations as well!

Hi Rob, I’m very much a fan of yours & I love your videos. As an amateur linguist for the past 50 years, I absolutely loved this video. It took me decades to distill all the information you’ve brought together in this production & you should be very proud of the quality of your work. And the cherry on the cake? In my humble opinion, this is the slickest video you have produced (and I have watched them all!). Cheers! Dennis

1:20 Both time periods are labelled "1100 - 1500."

"Until we mate again" signoff. Ouch.

Can’t believe i just realised those words with the “gh” at the end…? The Dutch words for “laugh, sight, cough, enough and rough” are “lach, zicht, kuch, genoeg and ruig”, all with that choking gg sound. Same with some German words like durch (through). Frisian is also surprisingly similar to English… Oh and you have one new subscriber 😊

Great video. I was reminded of Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey, who in one of Dorothy Sayer's stories explains that, though many pronounced his second name to rhyme with "teeth", he preferred to rhyme it with "breath".

As a French native speaker, I’ve always been amused by other French speakers saying English is so easy, unknowingly admitting they have no idea how complex English pronunciation can be

I had an English teacher in elementary school whose sole focus seemed to be correcting any student that tried to say the T in often.

I have always said “handsome” & “landscape” & I’m 70. Then again, I’ve always been a voracious reader, so maybe I just caught the “influenced by spelling” bug earlier.

Elusive as in it eludes you, not illusive - blame this confusion on the centering of unstressed vowels (: Lovely video and it looks like you guys have really stepped up your editing and production recently!

The way the "OO" graphic moved on screen, I was expecting a different word that starts with "B" and has a double "O". The one about birds with blue feet. 😀

In the US east coast, which was settled early -- we still retain vowel distinctions (probably inherited from the UK) that the rest of the country doesn't have. I'm from Philadelphia, and we have some of the fussiest vowel distinctions in the country. When I was in school in linguistics, I had so many grad students coming up to me asking me to pronounce things and then gaping in shock. For example, NONE of the following words rhyme in Philadelphia: Mary, merry, marry, and Murray. And we can tell them apart when other Philly people say them. We raise the vowel in words like "like" and "cider" but don't raise it in "house" or "about," so we have only one-half of Canadian raising. The vowels in words "cot" and "caught" along with "don" and "dawn" are very, very different. We even have an extra vowel that produces a minimal pair for no one but us: "can" and "can." One means "to be able to" and the other is the container you drink soda out of, and I'd need to say them for you to hear the difference, but they are different enough to us to be completely different words. Why did we retain these vowel distinctions and they got lost in the rest of the country? I guess the same reason why many language distinctions disappear -- migration. Lots of people from lots of places all gradually shifted westward and vowel distinctions got smeared out as they went.

I love this channel, and never realized how obscure the spelling is of many of the words I use daily. Keep up the great work!

That was an excellent overview of the Great Vowel Shift. Very informative! Thanks, Rob!

At 11:15 I laughed so much at “Rob did a joke there”. I don’t know why. It caught me off guard. So sunny. I love your videos. Very educational.

One of the best videos in the channel, ever! Congrats, Rob, and thank you for such a nice treat!

Still one of the best channels! Thank you Rob!

There was a little girl Who had a little curl Right in the middle of her forehead And when she was good She was very very good But when she was bad She was horrid

This is very interesting and helps non-native speakers of English like me understand why words are spelt differently to how they're pronounced. And hats off to you, Rob, for explaining it so well. You made it really easy to understand. 👏👏

Thank you, Rob. I’ve been eagerly waiting for an insight into this topic for a while. Great explanations. Keep up the good work.

What a beautiful background for this video! It looks like a lovely place to be

The “murder most foul/vowel” jingle was stupid and hilarious! Loved it!

We have been waiting for this video to come out!

I just discovered your channel Rob, and I have to say it's amazing. I'm slowly going through all your videos. It's great work. Keep it up.

Could you illustrate how a 'vowel shift' is continuing in Australian, Canadian and USA English, please? Many thanks for your videos.

Can you do a video about the ways American and British pronunciations diverged? You touched on it briefly here and I'd love to see more about that. Great work sir! Love your videos!

I didn't look at the video right away, I just heard " why doesn't 'that' rhyme with 'that' " and I was really confused for a moment.

Love your videos, Rob! And I've just subscribed to your podcast, which has been a delight to listen to on my drive to work each day!

This word shift really messes with my being dyslexic.

As a Czech, I certainly have a tendency to pronounce silent letters in English, especially those I picked up from reading. Even though I know better, I still visualize the silent letters in my mind (“handsome” being a great example). Since Czech is spelled and pronounced the same, it is a hard habit to let go of. Ask any Czech how to pronounce “salmon” and you’ll see. Ha, ha.

5:45 I like how he went with look and spook, yet went with having the OO track like that.

Thank you for such an easy and fun explanation of such a complex topic.

One of the best explanations of the Great Vowel Shift that I have ever seen. Thank you!

Oh, it's the "Great Vowel Movement" from now on.

This channel is excellent! The combination of informative content and his smooth delivery makes watching the videos a truly enjoyable experience. Great work, dude!

Thanks so much for this, I have been wondering about/researching this for years! Great video, as always!

It looks like frequency of use has a lot to do with it too! “Look” is used daily far more than “spook” (which I rarely use), so it will naturally shift to something quicker and easier while “spook” doesn’t. “Look” takes much less effort and time than “Luke”. That would explain why “took” and “book” went with it, but “kook” didn’t. It also explains “often” vs “soften”.

I have to say, your production quality is really good. I've watched several of your videos, enjoying all of them! Good job!👌

Thank you Rob, that was very interesting! Your way of explanation is very entertaining!. My children grew up in Australia, and I found it very hard for the kids to learn write, because spelling the words out is not much help. I had it much easier in my childhood, because I went to school in Germany, and the written German is closer to the spoken standard German. Almost ideal are Italien and Spanish, you can read almost everything without need to understand.what you read. English in this regard tends to go Chinese, you've got to know the written words, disregarding the letters.

Just want to say Rob that I really enjoy listening to all your videos and have for years - thanks!

Thank you Love it. I'm a native English speaker and I used to have competitions with my Estonian friend making up sentences with the same words/pronunciation/sound eg: Row in a row while you row about the best way to eat roe. Or flying in plane, over a plain plain, thinking about how to sharpen your plane, wishing you were on a different plane...... Oh no, I've confused my old addled brain now 😵‍💫

Again you blow me away with words and sounds how u do this and your news job is just amazing. U deserve a raise😂❤

Being so clear about something so foreign, is a testimony to your knowledge. Bravo !! I’m British and have lived abroad for 40 years and it was only when I started to talk to my kids in English that I understood how messed up it all is. Until then I thought is was pretty straight forward. How far from reality I was.

Thank you. Again, another entertaining, fabulously informative and (I must say) charming video. At long last someone has explained to me what the Great Vowel Shift was. Or more precisely, what it is. The speed of change is astonishing, and I think is continuing. A few years ago, I returned to live in Aotearoa New Zealand where I was born and grew to adulthood. Then overseas. Soon after my return I was in Auckland in conversation with some young men whom I found difficult to understand. Their accent was not only new to me, it was New. It was a tongue of compatriots who were New Zealand born. But I am sure that when I left New Zealand in the 1970s there was no such accent so removed from the accents I grew up with. It was 'native' in that it is spoken by people born here. Yet it presented vowels, vocabulary, grammar and expressiveness that were new to me. These speakers were children or grandchildren of people who had moved to Aotearoa from various Pasific island nations. Their new English was perhaps derived from some 'standard' English spoken through the New Zealand larynx, from their forebears' accents and from American popular culture song and rhetoric. This rapid creation of a new accent in these islands, supports your suggestion that significant change may be driven by fashion and by migration. Conversely, as the printed word becomes less culturally significant, spoken language becomes less constrained by it. Heard influences, rather than printed text, again gain prominence. Thank you for your wonderful videos.

From Ontario (Canada) the 'about' pronunciation 'a-boot' is primarily the East Coast, particularly areas of Nova Scotia. The rest of Canada says 'ah-bowt' ('normal' pronunciation'). Another peculiarity from NS is 'ka-ear' for 'car'.

I saw what you did with the double o overlay. I like it 👌🏼

Used the “ni” from Month Python.. but missed opportunity with knight, where the guard of French castle pronounced it “k-nig-its“

I have been an English Language teacher for almost 10 years. Your videos provide me with all those questions that I have never been able to answer before. Thank you.

As a brain exercise I have taken up online teaching of English. English spelling causes so much confusion, especially when 'ed' is added to a verb to make the past tense. That 'ed' when spoken can sound like a 'd' or a 't' but rarely as 'ed'. One exception being painted. Trying to stop people saying the end as 'ed' is a full time job.

As a lass from Oxford that puts 'R' into things, I was sat saying the words with you for how i say it.... we got to " Soften" and I headbutted my desk laughing at Soff-Ten" ..... Though, on another note... If I wrote how I spoke... " We would be having a Glarse of Warter before cutting the Grarse and having a Barth" Side note.... Do people who say " baff " Call it a Fiat Abaff or say it how I do, A Fiat Abarth... how it's spelt? I wonder many word things, I'm so glad of your videos and knowledge.

Really interesting, Rob, well presented and explained. Thank you (from a fellow Derbeian)

Hey thanks for the link to the IPA Website. That's really useful, and fun!

I was brought up in Camberley, Surrey by two people who were immigrant Austrians and one who was from Edgware. I then spent three years in Leicester followed by a year in Snodland. Then, ten years in Brixton and south London. I like this Rob bloke and I find myself subscribing. For counselling.

Thanks for this, Rob. In Hartlepool, we pronounce the u in curry the same way as e in Kerry, and we do it with blackcurrant, purple, nurse, etc. I tell anyone not from Hartlepool about vowel shifts. It's interesting that this particular vowel shift is regionally specific

Fascinating. And because of its use in your final point, I would like to request an analysis, even if it’s a brief one, of the difference between the British use of “different to” and the standard American use of “different from“. Thanks.

This is off-topic, but today is 5/12 and Mother's Day here in the USA. So... Happy Mother's Day, England! And warm wishes from your oldest child! I hope this is part of a new tradition...😊

Love this video. It explains the GVS in a straightforward, yet educated way. So well, in fact, the a maths teacher from the Newcastle can understand it. Thank you Rob! PS I do pronounce the T in soften.

Rob, another great video. Love what you are doing for the English language.

Fascinating Rob - thank you so much for introducing me to such a wonderful study of the language I have always used, but had never really appreciated its heritage.

Or what I taught my students in Brittany France: " La grande mutation vocalique". I imposed conversations via cassettes and later CDs to learn at home on a daily basis. These little Bretons looked and sounded like little Britons after a few months. I never took off marks for spelling. I told them not to copy my Canadian accent but unfortunately a few did. One girl said "hass" for house. I couldn't figure it out until I asked myself, how do I pronounce it? /a/. I noticed on visits to Canada that Canadians sounded more "American" than before or was it just they sounded more American to me? Une explication très rigoureuse sur le sujet; Rob! Merci!

I don't think I had previously heard of the GVS, much less had it explained so well. Thank you, Rob! ❤

I studied english (in France) and I've always struggled to explain the Great Vowel Shift in a few words for me fellow french persons. Thank you for that! I'm going to send this video everywhere! Regarding "weird" (peculiar may be more accurate) pronounciations the french Canadians are really great with French as well (and we have some nice stuff going on in our own hexagon), and it's amazing to do a little bit of history on every of those occurences. Anyway thanks for your videos. Ran into your channel a couple of weeks ago and it's been a very nice ride so far :)

This is so interesting and explains a lot. Thanks Rob.

You crack me up! Love your sense of humor.

'Contributing' has a different stress syllable here in Nova Scotia than what you pronounced close to the 8 minute mark. I normally hear the stress on TRI.

The word egg is a good example of the influence the printing press had on the English language. In the 15th century, there were two words used in two separate English dialects to represent this particular dairy product: egg and eyg (I think it was spelled like this). When an English printer in London came to the word egg, he immediately chose egg, for this was the word from his dialect. He completely ignored eyg which was used by London residents no more than a mile from his shop. Within 50 years, eyg was no longer seen in documents.

RubberRoss jokingly said "kuhnees" in his recent video and it really got me. I love the idea of using old phonetic pronunciations as funny emphasis.

Another absolutely brilliant video. I have just started following your podcast

Rob in full joke mode! "The Great Vowel Movement"! Monty Python! Very entertaining and informative.

Another brilliantly understandable explanation of something i didn't know i didn't understand correctly. Thanks Rob, love your channel.

I had long attributed the confusing spelling to the printing press "fixing" the spelling while the pronunciation was still changing, but I had not thought about the other possible contributing factors. A nice presentation.

This is so interesting, thank you very much. In German there happened something similar called "Lautverschiebung", I looked it up: "consonant shift". It's good to see how we've become to what we are now.

Fashion is a thing. In french the "r" sound changed during the 20th century , the former one being more and more associated with people from rural areas (the so called "culs terreux"). You can here it clearly comparing songs from the thirties and songs from the fifties.

My late grandfather used to pronounce meat like mate or met. Lot of other words in Scots (Doric) sound to me like pre vowel shift English.

Thanks Rob for another interesting language video. :-) BTW: your pronunciation of the “soft G” is quite good for a native English speaker. I appreciate that. As you can imagine, that is quite important to me. ;-)

Great job, sir!!! Loved the video.

Something I've never seen discussed (not that I go out of my way to find it I guess) is why only English? The Plague affected most/all of Europe. I would think people would be moving around just the same, frequently in multilingual kingdoms and empires. The printing press would have come into play in all these places eventually. Were there cultural differences that led to spelling standardization before the printing press? It also kind of makes sense that England would have more of the language fashion going on since they had the language split between nobility and everybody else after 1066. But I'd also expect language differences like that to be happening all over Europe too (like pre unified, pre strong king France). Maybe something about the Holy Roman Empire being over this large swath of land of various cultures and languages, and having to handle communication for that already, insulated a lot of Europe from similar changes??

Fantastic video! Thank you so much, Rob.

Terrific explanation beautifully presented. Outstanding production!

It isn't often that I laugh out loud in delight during a language video -- Thanks, Rob!

Your videos are the perfect balance for me. The graphics are novel and attractive. The history and information is palatable in the small bites given. I am less ignorant, now.