How the English Accent Changed Forever

Gone Medieval

History Hit

History

4.6 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, a profound transformation took place in the ways that the English language was spoken and words were pronounced. This “Great Vowel Shift” saw a change in the pronunciation of all Middle English long vowels, resulting in spellings of words that often deviated considerably from how they are pronounced.

In this edition of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis talks to Simon Roper - who makes videos about linguistics for YouTube - about the developments that led to the English language changing forever.

The Senior Producer on this episode was Elena Guthrie. It was edited and produced by Rob Weinberg.

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Transcript

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1:34.0	Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval, I'm Matt Lewis. Language is an important part of history.
1:40.1	During the medieval period England saw moves from the departing Roman influence and Celtic heritage
1:46.4	to Anglo-Saxons then Viking control towards Norman French domination and then an emerging
1:53.1	sense of Englishness as the period progressed. But what effect did all of this have on the language
1:58.8	that people spoke? How different might it have sounded from today and indeed from the beginning
2:03.9	of the period to the end? I'm delighted to be joined today by Simon Roper to talk about one of
	...

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