This came up on a thread the other day and I just can’t get my head around what happened and why. I can’t read IPA which obviously isn’t helping my reading
In: Other
Okay for starters you’ll need to learn IPA. You can’t ask a question about .. say.. Russian spellings without learning their alphabet. IPA is the alphabet of pronunciation.
English speakers changed the way we say vowels. The cause is unknown. But maybe you have some friends who say a particular word in a particularly weird way… just for fun? You can still understand them even if the pronunciation isn’t perfect. We mispronounce things all the time. Sometimes is dialect. Sometimes it’s just fun.
So when enough people start pronouncing something differently… it sticks. Kids learn what they hear and repeat it, nevermind the spelling.
I’m spitballing here because… again… nobody knows why the vowels shifted. They just did. We have evidence they did, and the fact that it DID shift is separate entirely from WHY.
I’ll give you one example from the wikipedia page.
The word “law” used to be pronounced with the “ow” from “cow” or “slouch” even if today it is pronounced with the “aw” from “awesome” and “auto”
Latest Answers