Phonological history of English close front vowels

Template:Short description Template:Lead too short Template:Use dmy dates Template:English phonology topics Template:IPA notice The close and mid-height front vowels of English (vowels of i and e type) have undergone a variety of changes over time and often vary by dialect.

Developments involving long vowels

Until Great Vowel Shift

Middle English had a long close front vowel , and two long mid front vowels: the close-mid and the open-mid . The three vowels generally correspond to the modern spellings Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr respectively, but other spellings are also possible. The spellings that became established in Early Modern English are mostly still used today, but the qualities of the sounds have changed significantly.

The and generally corresponded to similar Old English vowels, and came from Old English or . For other possible histories, see English historical vowel correspondences. In particular, the long vowels sometimes arose from short vowels by Middle English open syllable lengthening or other processes. For example, team comes from an originally-long Old English vowel, and eat comes from an originally-short vowel that underwent lengthening. The distinction between both groups of words is still preserved in a few dialects, as is noted in the following section.

Middle English was shortened in certain words. Both long and short forms of such words often existed alongside each other during Middle English. In Modern English, the short form has generally become standard, but the spelling Template:Angbr reflects the formerly-longer pronunciation. The words that were affected include several ending in d, such as bread, head, spread, and various others, including breath, weather, and threat. For example, bread was in earlier Middle English but came to be shortened and to be rhymed with bed.

During the Great Vowel Shift, the normal outcome of was a diphthong, which developed into Modern English , as in mine and find. Meanwhile, became , as in feed, and of words like meat became , which later merged with in nearly all dialects, as is described in the following section.

Meet–meat merger

The meet–meat merger or the Template:Sc2 merger is the merger of the Early Modern English vowel (as in meat) into the vowel (as in meet). The merger was complete in standard accents of English by about 1700.

As noted in the previous section, the Early Modern/New English (ENE) vowel developed from Middle English via the Great Vowel Shift, and ENE was usually the result of Middle English (the effect in both cases was a raising of the vowel). The merger saw ENE raised further to become identical to and so Middle English and have become in standard Modern English, and meat and meet are now homophones. The merger did not affect the words in which had undergone shortening (see section above), and a handful of other words (such as break, steak, great) also escaped the merger in the standard accents and so acquired the same vowel as brake, stake, grate. Hence, the words meat, threat (which was shortened), and great now have three different vowels although all three words once rhymed.

The merger results in the Template:Sc2 lexical set, as defined by John Wells. Words in the set that had ENE (Middle English ) are mostly spelled Template:Angbr (meet, green, etc.), with a single Template:Angbr in monosyllables (be, me) or followed by a single consonant and a vowel letter (these, Peter), sometimes Template:Angbr or Template:Angbr (believe, ceiling), or irregularly (key, people). Most of those that had ENE (Middle English ) are spelled Template:Angbr (meat, team, eat, etc.), but some borrowed words have a single Template:Angbr (legal, decent, complete), Template:Angbr, or otherwise (receive, seize, phoenix, quay). There are also some loanwords in which is spelled Template:Angbr (police, machine, ski), most of which entered the language later.Template:Sfnp

There are still some dialects in the British Isles that do not have the merger. Some speakers in Northern England have or in the first group of words (those that had ENE , like meet) but in the second group (those that had ENE , like meat). In Staffordshire, the distinction might rather be between in the first group and in the second group. In some (particularly rural) varieties of Irish English, the first group has , and the second preserves . A similar contrast has been reported in parts of Southern and Western England, but it is now rarely encountered there.Template:Sfnp

In some Yorkshire dialects, an additional distinction may be preserved within the meat set. Words that originally had long vowels, such as team and cream (which come from Old English tēam and Old French creme), may have , and those that had an original short vowel, which underwent open syllable lengthening in Middle English (see previous section), like eat and meat (from Old English etan and mete), have a sound resembling , similar to the sound that is heard in some dialects in words like eight and weight that lost a velar fricative).

In Alexander's book (2001) about the traditional Sheffield dialect, the spelling "eigh" is used for the vowel of eat and meat, but "eea" is used for the vowel of team and cream. However, a 1999 survey in Sheffield found the pronunciation to be almost extinct there.

Changes before and

In certain accents, when the Template:Sc2 vowel was followed by , it acquired a laxer pronunciation. In General American, words like near and beer now have the sequence , and nearer rhymes with mirror (the mirror–nearer merger). In Received Pronunciation, a diphthong has developed (and by non-rhoticity, the is generally lost unless there is another vowel after it) and so beer and near are and , and nearer (with ) remains distinct from mirror (with ). Several pronunciations are found in other accents, but outside North America, the nearer–mirror opposition is always preserved. For example, some conservative accents in Northern England have the sequence in words like near, with the schwa disappearing before a pronounced , as in serious.Template:Sfnp

Another development is that bisyllabic may become smoothed to the diphthong (with the change being phonemic in non-rhotic dialects, so ) in certain words, which leads to pronunciations like , and for vehicle, theatre/theater and idea, respectively. That is not restricted to any variety of English. It happens in both British English and (less noticeably or often) American English as well as other varieties although it is far more common for Britons. The words that have may vary depending on dialect. Dialects that have the smoothing usually also have the diphthong in words like beer, deer, and fear, and the smoothing causes idea, Korea, etc. to rhyme with those words.Template:Sfnp

Other changes

In Geordie, the Template:Sc2 vowel undergoes an allophonic split, with the monophthong Template:IPAblink being used in morphologically-closed syllables (as in freeze ) and the diphthong being used in morphologically-open syllables not only word-finally (as in free ) but also word-internally at the end of a morpheme (as in frees ).Template:Sfnp

Most dialects of English turn into a diphthong, and the monophthongal Template:IPAblink is in free variation with the diphthongal (with the former diphthong being the same as Geordie , the only difference lying in the transcription), particularly word-internally. However, diphthongs are more common word-finally.

Compare the [[phonological history of English close back vowels#other changes|identical development of the close back Template:Sc2 vowel]].

Developments involving short vowels

Lowering

Middle English short /i/ has developed into a lax near-close near-front unrounded vowel, , in Modern English, as found in words like kit. (Similarly, short /u/ has become /ʊ/.) According to Roger Lass, the laxing occurred in the 17th century, but other linguists have suggested that it took place potentially much earlier.

The short mid vowels have also undergone lowering and so the continuation of Middle English (as in words like dress) now has a quality closer to Template:IPAblink in most accents. Again, however, it is not clear whether the vowel already had a lower value in Middle English.

Pin–pen merger

File:Pin-pen.svg

The merger of pin and pen in Southern American English. In the purple areas, the merger is complete for most speakers. Note the exclusion of the New Orleans area, Southern Florida, and of the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia. The purple area in California consists of the Bakersfield and Kern County area, where migrants from the south-central states settled during the Dust Bowl. There is also debate whether or not Austin, Texas, is an exclusion. Based on Template:Harvcoltxt.

The pin–pen merger is a conditional merger of and before the nasal consonants , , and . The merged vowel is usually closer to than to . Examples of homophones resulting from the merger include pin–pen, kin–ken and him–hem. The merger is widespread in Southern American English and is also found in many speakers in the Midland region immediately north of the South and in areas settled by migrants from Oklahoma and Texas who settled in the Western United States during the Dust Bowl. It is also a characteristic of much African-American Vernacular English.

The pin–pen merger is one of the most widely recognized features of Southern speech. A study of the written responses of American Civil War veterans from Tennessee, together with data from the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States and the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle South Atlantic States, shows that the prevalence of the merger was very low up to 1860 but then rose steeply to 90% in the mid-20th century. There is now very little variation throughout the South in general except that Savannah, Austin, Miami, and New Orleans are excluded from the merger. The area of consistent merger includes southern Virginia and most of the South Midland and extends westward to include much of Texas. The northern limit of the merged area shows a number of irregular curves. Central and southern Indiana is dominated by the merger, but there is very little evidence of it in Ohio, and northern Kentucky shows a solid area of distinction around Louisville.

Outside the South, most speakers of North American English maintain a clear distinction in perception and production. However, in the West, there is sporadic representation of merged speakers in Washington, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado. However, the most striking concentration of merged speakers in the west is around Bakersfield, California, a pattern that may reflect the trajectory of migrant workers from the Ozarks westward.

The raising of to was formerly widespread in Irish English and was not limited to positions before nasals. Apparently, it came to be restricted to those positions in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. The pin–pen merger is now commonly found only in Southern and South-West Irish English.Template:Sfnp

A complete merger of and , not restricted to positions before nasals (and so termed kit–dress merger), is found in many speakers of Newfoundland English. The pronunciation in words like bit and bet is , but before , in words like beer and bear, it is .Template:Sfnp The merger is common in Irish-settled parts of Newfoundland and is thought to be a relic of the former Irish pronunciation.

Examples of homophonous pairs

		IPA	Notes
Ben	bin
bend	binned
cents	since
clench	clinch
den	din
emigrate	immigrate
eminent	imminent
fen	fin
gem	gym, Jim
hem	him, hymn
Jen	gin
Ken	kin
lent	lint
meant	mint
N	in
pen	pin
send	sinned
sender	cinder
sense	since
ten	tin
tender	tinder
tent	tint
tremor	trimmer
wench	winch
Wendy	windy

Kit–bit split

The kit–bit split is a split of standard English (the Template:Sc2 vowel) that occurs in South African English. The two distinct sounds are:

• A standard , or [i] in broader accents, which is used before or after a velar consonant (lick, big, sing; kiss, kit, gift), after (hit), word-initially (inn), generally before (fish), and by some speakers before (ditch, bridge). It is found only in stressed syllables (in the first syllable of chicken but not the second).
• A centralized vowel , or in broader accents, which is used in other positions (limb, dinner, limited, bit).

Different phonemic analyses of those vowels are possible. In one view, and are in complementary distribution and should therefore still be regarded as allophones of one phoneme. Wells, however, suggests that the non-rhyming of words like kit and bit, which is particularly marked in the broader accents, makes it more satisfactory to consider to constitute a different phoneme from , and and can be regarded as comprising a single phoneme except for speakers who maintain the contrast in weak syllables. There is also the issue of the weak vowel merger in most non-conservative speakers, which means that rabbit (conservative ) rhymes with abbott .Template:Sfnp The weak vowel is consistently written Template:Angbr IPA in South African English dialectology, regardless of its precise quality.

Thank–think merger

The thank–think merger is the lowering of to before the velar nasal that can be found in the speech of speakers of African American Vernacular English, Appalachian English, and (rarely) Southern American English. For speakers with the lowering, think and thank, sing and sang, etc. can sound alike. It is reflected in the colloquial variant spelling thang of thing.

Developments involving weak vowels

Weak vowel merger

The weak vowel merger is the loss of contrast between (schwa) and unstressed , which occurs in certain dialects of English: notably many Southern Hemisphere, North American, Irish, and 21st-century (but not older) standard Southern British accents. In speakers with this merger, the words abbot and rabbit rhyme, and Lennon and Lenin are pronounced identically, as are addition and edition. However, it is possible among these merged speakers (such as General American) that a distinction is still maintained in certain contexts, such as in the pronunciation of Rosa's versus roses, because of the morpheme break in Rosa's. (Speakers without the merger generally have in the final syllables of rabbit, Lenin, roses and the first syllable of edition that is distinct from the schwa heard in the corresponding syllables of abbot, Lennon, Rosa's and addition.) If an accent with the merger is also non-rhotic, then for example chatted and chattered will be homophones. The merger also affects the weak forms of some words and causes unstressed it, for instance, to be pronounced with a schwa, so that dig it would rhyme with bigot.Template:Sfnp

The merger is very common in Southern Hemisphere accents. Most speakers of Australian English (as well as recent Southern England English)Template:Sfnp replace weak with schwa, but in -ing, the pronunciation is frequently . If there is a following , as in paddTemplate:Underlineck or nomadTemplate:Underlinec, some speakers maintain the contrast, but some who have the merger use as the merged vowel. In New Zealand English, the merger is complete, and indeed, is very centralized even in stressed syllables and so it is usually regarded as the same phoneme as although in -ing, it is closer to [i]. In South African English, most speakers have the merger, but in more conservative accents, the contrast may be retained (as vs. . Also, a kit split exists: see above.Template:Sfnp

The merger is also commonly found in American and Canadian English, but the realisation of the merged vowel varies according to syllable type, with appearing in word-final or open-syllable word-initial positions (such as dramTemplate:Underline or cTemplate:Underlinelantro), but often appears in other positions (abbTemplate:Underlinet and Template:Underlinexhaust). In traditional Southern American English, the merger is generally not present, and is also heard in some words that have schwa in RP, such as salad. The lack of the merger is also a traditional feature of New England English. In Caribbean English, schwa is often not used at all, and unreduced vowels are preferred, but if there is a schwa, remains distinct from it.Template:Sfnp

In traditional RP, the contrast between and weak is maintained, but that may be declining among modern standard speakers of southern England, who increasingly prefer a merger, specifically with the realisation .Template:Sfnp In RP, the phone Template:IPAblink, apart from being a frequent allophone of (as in foot ) in younger speakers, appears only as an allophone of , which is often centralized when it occurs as a weak vowel, and never as an allophone of . Therefore, can stand for only "Lenin", not "Lennon", which has a lower vowel: . However, speakers may not always clearly perceive that difference, as is sometimes raised to Template:IPAblink in contact with alveolar consonants (such as the alveolar nasals in "Lennon" ). Furthermore, Template:IPAblink never participates in syllabic consonant formation and so G-dropping in words such as fishing never yields a syllabic nasal * or a sounded mid schwa *, with the most casual RP forms being . Both and especially were considered to be strongly non-standard in England as late as 1982. They are characteristic of Cockney, which otherwise does not feature the weak vowel merger, but can be centralized to Template:IPAblink as in RP and so and are distinct possibilities in Cockney. In other accents of the British Isles, the contrast between and weak may be variable. In Irish English, the merger is almost universal.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

The merger is not complete in Scottish English, whose speakers typically distinguish except from accept, but the latter can be phonemicized with an unstressed Template:Sc2: (as can the word-final schwa in comma ) and the former with : . In other environments, Template:Sc2 and Template:Sc2 are mostly merged to a quality around Template:IPAblink, often even when stressed (Wells transcribes the merged vowel with Template:Angbr IPA. There, Template:Angbr IPA is used for the sake of consistency and accuracy) and when before , as in fir and letter (but not fern and fur : see nurse mergers). The Template:Sc2 vowel is : .Template:Sfnp

Even in accents that do not have the merger, there may be certain words in which traditional is replaced by by many speakers (both sounds may then be considered to be in free variation). In RP, is now often heard in place of in endings such as -ace (as in palace); -ate (as in senate); -less, -let, for the Template:Angbr in -ily; -ity, -ible; and in initial weak be-, de-, re-, and e-.Template:Sfnp

Final , and also and , are commonly realized as syllabic consonants. In accents without the merger, the use of , rather than , prevents the formation of syllabic consonants. Hence in RP, for example, the second syllable of Barton is pronounced as a syllabic , but that of Martin is . Many non-rhotic speakers also pronounce pattern with , which is accordingly homophonous with Patton.

Particularly in American linguistic tradition, the unmerged weak -type vowel is often transcribed with the barred i Template:Angbr IPA, the IPA symbol for the close central unrounded vowel. Another symbol sometimes used is Template:Angbr IPA, the non-IPA symbol for a near-close central unrounded vowel. In the third edition of the OED, that symbol is used in the transcription of words (of the types listed above) that have free variation between and in RP.

Homophonous pairs

Template:IPAc-en	Template:IPAc-en	IPA	Notes
Aaron	Erin		With Mary-marry-merry merger.
accede	exceed
accept	except
addition	edition
Aleutian	elution
allide	elide
allied	elide
allision	elision
allude	elude
alluded	eluted		With intervocalic alveolar flapping.
allusion	illusion
amend	emend
apatite	appetite
arrays	erase		Some accents pronounce erase as .
barrel	beryl		With marry-merry merger.
battered	batted		Non-rhotic
bazaar	bizarre
bettered	betted		Non-rhotic
bleachers	bleaches		Non-rhotic
bustard	busted		Non-rhotic
butchers	butches		Non-rhotic
buttered	butted		Non-rhotic
carat	caret
carrot	caret
censors	senses		Non-rhotic
chartered	charted		Non-rhotic
chattered	chatted		Non-rhotic
chiton	chitin
chromous	chromis
Devon	Devin
ferrous	Ferris
foundered	founded		Non-rhotic
humo(u)red	humid		Non-rhotic
installation	instillation
Lennon	Lenin
mandrel	mandrill
mastered	masted		Non-rhotic
mattered	matted		Non-rhotic
mergers	merges		Non-rhotic
modern	modding		Non-rhotic with G-dropping.
officers	offices		Non-rhotic
omission	emission
parody	parity		With intervocalic alveolar flapping.
pattered	patted		Non-rhotic
pattern	patting		Non-rhotic with G-dropping.
pigeon	pidgin
proscribe	prescribe
racers	races		Non-rhotic
Rosa's	roses
Saturn	satin		Non-rhotic
scattered	scatted		Non-rhotic
seraph	serif
splendo(u)red	splendid		Non-rhotic
surplus	surplice
tattered	tatted		Non-rhotic
tendered	tended		Non-rhotic
titan	titin

Centralized Template:Sc2

A phonetic shift of Template:Sc2, the vowel , towards schwa, the vowel (and potentially even a phonemic shift, merging with the word-internal variety of schwa in gallop, which is deliberately not called Template:Sc2 here since word-final and sometimes also word-initial Template:Sc2 can be analysed as Template:Sc2: see above), occurs in some Inland Northern American English (the areas in which the final stage of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift has been completed), New Zealand English, Scottish English and partially also South African English (see kit–bit split). In non-rhotic varieties with the shift, it also encompasses the unstressed syllable of letters with the stressed variant of being realized with a schwa-like quality Template:IPAblink. As a result, the vowels in kit , lid and miss belong to the same phoneme as the unstressed vowel in balance .Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

It typically cooccurs with the weak vowel merger, but in Scotland, the weak vowel merger is not complete: see above.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

There are no homophonous pairs apart from those caused by the weak vowel merger, but a central Template:Sc2 tends to sound like Template:Sc2 to speakers of other dialects and so Australians accuse New Zealanders of saying "fush and chups", instead of "fish and chips", which in an Australian accent sounds close to "feesh and cheeps". That is not accurate, as the Template:Sc2 vowel is always more open than the central Template:Sc2. In other words, there is no strut–comma merger, but a kit–strut merger is possible in some Glaswegian speech in Scotland.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp That means that varieties of English with the merger effectively contrast two stressable unrounded schwas, which is very similar to the contrast between and in Romanian, as in the minimal pair râu 'river' vs. rău 'bad'.

Most dialects with the phenomenon feature happy tensing and so pretty is best analysed as in those accents. In Scotland, the Template:Sc2 vowel is commonly a close-mid Template:IPAblink, which is identified phonemically as Template:Sc2: .

The term kit–comma merger is appropriate in the case of the dialects in which the quality of Template:Sc2 is far removed from Template:IPAblink (the word-final allophone of ), such as Inland Northern American English, but can be a misleading name in the case of other accents.

Happy tensing

Happy tensing is a process whereby a final unstressed i-type vowel becomes tense rather than lax , today found in most dialects of English worldwide. That affects the final vowels of words such as happy, city, hurry, taxi, movie, Charlie, coffee, money and Chelsea. It may also apply in inflected forms of such words containing an additional final consonant sound, such as cities, Charlie's and hurried. It can also affect words such as me, he and she when they are used as clitics, as in show me, would he?Template:Sfnp

Until the 17th century, words like happy could end with the vowel of my (originally , but it was diphthongised in the Great Vowel Shift), which alternated with a short i sound. (Many words spelt -ee, -ea, -ey once had the vowel of day; there is still alternation between that vowel and the happy vowel in words such as Sunday and Monday.)Template:Sfnp It is not entirely clear when the vowel underwent the transition. The fact that tensing is uniformly present in South African English, Australian English and New Zealand English lends support to the idea that it may have already been present in southern British English already in the early 19th century. However, it is not mentioned by descriptive phoneticians until the early 20th century and even then at first only in American English. The British phonetician Jack Windsor Lewis believed that the vowel moved from to in Britain in the second quarter of the 19th century before it reverted to in non-conservative British accents towards the last quarter of the 20th century.

The laxer pronunciation is also found in some Southern American English, in much of northern England and in Jamaica. In Scottish English, an sound, similar to the Scottish realization of the vowel of day, may be used. It is also still found among some older speakers of Conservative RP. The tense [i] variant, however, is now established in as the norm in Modern RP and General American, and is also the usual form in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, in southern England and in some northern English regions (such as Merseyside, Hull and the entire North East).Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

The lax and tense variants of the happy vowel may be identified with the phonemes and respectively. They may also be considered to represent a neutralization between the two phonemes, but for speakers with the tense variant, there is the possibility of contrast in such pairs as taxis and taxes (see English phonology – vowels in unstressed syllables). Template:Harvcoltxt and Template:Harvcoltxt consider the tensing to be a neutralization between and .Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp Template:Harvcoltxt regards the tense variant in modern RP as still an allophone of on the basis that it is shorter and more resistant to diphthongization than is .Template:Sfnp Template:Harvcoltxt regards the phenomenon to be a mere substitution of for .Template:Sfnp

Most modern British dictionaries represent the happy vowel with the symbol Template:Angbr IPA (distinct from both Template:Angbr IPA and Template:Angbr IPA). That notation was first introduced in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1978) by its pronunciation editor, Gordon Walsh, and it was later taken up by Template:Harvp, who extended it to Template:Angbr IPA representing the weak vowel found word-medially in situation etc., and by some other dictionaries, including John C. Wells's Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (1990).Template:Sfnp In 2012, Wells wrote that the notation "seemed like a good idea at the time, but it clearly confuses a lot of people". Template:Harvcoltxt criticizes the notation for causing "widespread belief in a specific 'happY vowelTemplate:'" that "never existed".Template:Sfnp

Merger of with and with

Old English had the short vowel and the long vowel , which were spelled orthographically with Template:Angle bracket. They contrasted with the short vowel and the long vowel , which were spelled orthographically with Template:Angle bracket. By Middle English, the two vowels and merged with and and left only the short–long pair . Modern spelling therefore uses both Template:Angle bracket and Template:Angle bracket for the modern KIT and PRICE vowels. Modern spelling with Template:Angle bracket or Template:Angle bracket is not an indicator of the Old English distinction between the four sounds, as spelling has been revised after the merger occurred. For example, Modern English bridge derives from Old English , while Modern English scythe derives from Old English . The name of the letter Template:Angle bracket has acquired an initial [w] sound in it to keep it distinct from the name of the letter Template:Angle bracket.

Additional mergers in Asian and African English

The mitt–meet merger is a phenomenon occurring in Malaysian English and Singaporean English in which the phonemes and are both pronounced . As a result, pairs like mitt and meet, bit and beat, and bid and bead are homophones.

The met–mat merger is a phenomenon occurring in Malaysian English, Singaporean English and Hong Kong English in which the phonemes and are both pronounced . For some speakers, it occurs only before voiceless consonants, and pairs like met, mat, bet, bat are homophones, but bed, bad or med, mad are kept distinct. For others, it occurs in all positions.

The met–mate merger is a phenomenon occurring for some speakers of Zulu English in which the phonemes and are both pronounced . As a result, the words met and mate are homophonous as .

See also

• Phonological history of English
• Phonological history of English vowels

Bibliography

• Template:Accents of English
• Template:Cite LPD