【学习说英语前必须了解的基本常识】元音大变化（早期英语的读音和拉丁语差不多）

很多英语学习者对英语发音有近乎疯狂的执着。根本原因是不了解英语的元音大变化。

英语原文

The Great Vowel Shift

Why Latin pronunciation confuses modern English speakers.

By N.S. Gill

Ancient/Classical History Expert

I can say to you that Latin vowels are pronounced just as they are written, but you probably still won't know how to pronounce them since you probably think that applies to English.

We may not think about it much after we learned to read and spell, but English is not spelled as consistently and predictably as it might be.

For example, if I say the sound of the "a" in the word "back" is different from the sound of the "a" in the word "ward", you may have to think about it.

There would not be that distinction in the Latin "a".

Even if you can feel that one of the a-vowels is pronounced further back in the mouth, there are still items about English that you may not be aware of unless you have studied Romance languages.

Take the French alphabet.

How do you pronounce the ninth letter (I)?

Not like the English letter I at all, but more like the English letter E.

That's because English has experienced a vowel shift so dramatic it is called the Great Vowel Shift (GVS).

Around the time we started speaking modern English -- the time of Shakespeare -- English underwent a dramatic change known as the Great Vowel Shift that was partly responsible for our odd, unintuitive English spelling.

Prior to the time of Queen Elizabeth I and Shakespeare, English speakers pronounced the vowels about the same as other speakers, and not too differently from the way the Romans would have pronounced Latin.

prior to adv.在前, 居先

That's probably how English speakers in, say, Chaucer's time, would have pronounced their vowels.

The Great Vowel Shift affected only the long (or "tense") vowels.

The short vowels were not affected.

This is the general process, here used to explain the pronunciation of Latin to English-speakers.

It is not intended to be an adequate linguistic analysis of the GVS.

Orthographically, long vowels in English are often marked

• by being repeated (e.g. "feet", "feel," "tooth") or
• by having an "e" at the end of the word that, our teachers tell us, make the preceding vowel long (e.g., "like", "came", "home").

Vowels are pronounced in different areas of the mouth.

If you hold your chin while going through the vowel sounds, you'll notice your chin rises and falls.

When your chin is up, you're pronouncing high vowels and when you're chin is as far down as it goes in vowel pronunciation, you're pronouncing an "a", the low vowel.

Vowels are often pronounced more in the front or back of your mouth.

High vowels: /i/ /u/
Mid vowels: /e/ /o/
Low vowel: /a/
Back vowels: /u/ /o/

When the Great Vowel Shift took place, the vowels rose upward, pushing the next higher vowel into the slot above.

The vowels on top had no higher place to go and so became diphthongs.

The front vowels were one chain pushing upwards, and the back vowels were another.

What was written as an "e" was pronounced like a modern long "a" before the shift.

When it moved up it came to be pronounced like a modern long "e" or a French or Roman "i".

An old "i" became a diphthong [aj] as in "high".

"O" became "u" as in the word "moon", which must have previously been pronounced something like our word "moan."

Front vowel chain of the Great Vowel Shift
/long a/-->/long e/-->/long i/--/aj/
Back vowel chain of the Great Vowel Shift
/long o/ -->/long u/ -->/aw/

So, if you see the letter "i" in a Latin word, remember it's not the Romans who pronounced the vowels oddly.

We do -- now, and thanks to the GVS.

A Latin "i" is pronounced as our "i" used to be.