Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English

language.

This is Episode 143, the Great Vowel Shift, Part 3.

In this episode, we're going to conclude our look at the Great Vowel Shift.

We'll do that by focusing our attention on the vowels pronounced in the back part of

the mouth.

The vowel changes that we know today as the Great Vowel Shift affected all of the long

vowel sounds, including the back vowels.

Those vowels also experienced a chain shift, whereby a series of vowel sounds moved in

unison.

Those changes caused many words to be pronounced in new ways, but the spellings tended to stay

the same.

As a result, this process contributed to the modern disconnect between the way words

are pronounced and the way they're spelled.

So this time, we'll explore the impact of the Great Vowel Shift on the vowels pronounced

in the back part of the mouth, and we'll see how those changes shaped the way many

words are spelled today.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com,

and you can sign up to support the podcast and get bonus episodes and transcripts at

patreon.com slash historyofenglish.

Now let's turn our attention to the vowels pronounced in the back part of the mouth.

As we've seen before, the various vowel sounds are produced by slightly altering the way

...