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Pronunciation and Spelling:
History of the Vowels

This website uses symbols to transcribe phonemes (sounds). For an explanation of what these symbols represent, click here: vowels, consonants. The following special symbols are used:
ə Λ ā ē ī ō ū ű œ θ δ š ž č ĵ ŋ
If your browser cannot display any of these characters, you are advised to move to a browser which can, such as Internet Explorer 6.0.
Note: an apostrophe ' is placed before the accented vowel.
Closely related pages: Pronouncing single vowel-letters. Forming derivatives. Spelling rules for adding suffixes.

Each of the 'vowel-letters' a, e, i, o and u has a 'long' and a 'short' pronunciation. The letter y, when used to represent a vowel sound, behaves like the letter i.

Centuries ago, the long forms of the vowels were like extended forms of the short vowels, so long a, o were pronounced much like the vowels in the German words Rahm, Lohn. Then the Great Vowel Shift occured (between the 15th and 18th centruries), which caused sound changes much like this (the macron, a horizontal line above a vowel-letter, indicates a long vowel):

/ā/ > /ē/
/ē/ > /ī/
/ī/ > /ai/
/ō/ > /ū/
/ū/ > /au/

The changes /ī/ > /ai/ and /ū/ > /au/ also took place in Standard German. They did not take place in some dialects of both English (particularly Scotland and northern England, carried by colonists to Canada) and German (particularly Swiss German). So we see similar forms in Standard English and Standard German, with olders forms in Scots (Scottish English) and Swiss German:

Some Scots dialects Standard English Standard German Swiss German
house /hūs/ house /haus/ Haus /haus/ Huus /hūs/

Often, modern spellings represent these old pronunciations. For instance, oo often represents an archaic /ō/ which has changed to /ū/. In some words this /ū/ has changed further to /u/ or rarely to /Λ/.

Old English hr�f /hrōf/ > roof /rūf/
Old English m�na /mōna/ > moon /mūn/
Old English b�c /bōk/ > book /buk/
Old English f�t /fōt/ > foot /fut/
Old English bl�d /blōd/ > blood /blΛd/
Old English fl�d /flōd/ > flood /flΛd/

Similarly, ee can represent an archaic /ē/ which has changed to /ī/. The spellings ou and ow may represent a mediaeval pronunciation /ū/, spelt ou.

Old English f�t /fēt/ > feet /fīt/
Old English m�s /mūs/ > mouse /maus/

However, the spelling o is rarely used for /ū/. This letter more commonly represents /ō/.

See also:
Pronouncing single vowel-letters.
Forming derivatives.
Spelling rules for adding suffixes.

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