http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_258.html
How do we know how vowels were pronounced prior to the 1350’s? Cecil says that, for example, long i sounded like our modern long e as in he. How do we know that, given the absence of audio recording at the time?
The only possibility I can think of would be to look at rhyming poetry of the time to compare words that presumably rhymed, but I’m still not sure how that would lead us to deduct the correct pronunciation.
Comparison with cognates in other languages is a big clue. However within English itself there are several closely-related words that have different vowel pronounciations, e.g. “crime” and “criminal”, “please” and “pleasant”, “rite” and “ritual”, etc. These words “ought” to be derived from the same source, and so “ought” to be pronounced similarly, but there are numerous examples in modern English where this is not true. The presence of the “silent e” (e.g., the “e” that produces a different pronounciation in “bit” vs. “bite”) is another big clue indicating that the written orthography of words was trying at some point to “catch up” with some change in pronounciation.
It is possible, then, looking only at how modern English is written and pronounced, to develop the theory that something like the GVS happened in English. But to understand the mechanics of this–and make it a testable theory–you need to look at comparative liguistics and start diving into old/middle English texts. Though it may seen unusual, rhyme in older texts is indeed one way this can be done, along with figures of rhetoric where we suspect some kind of wordply/pun is being made. Chaucer is the classic example; in his Canterbury Tales he includes several rhyming pairs which do not rhyme in English, e.g. post and cost, two and so, wyn (wine) and Latyn (Latin). There are also cases where Chaucer uses a double vowel to indicate long vowel sounds, e.g. he will spell “told” as “toold”. This is fact indicates why the “o” in “told” is called a “long” vowel: as in the classical languages of Greek and Latin, the vowels took longer to pronounce. In fact the distinction between the “i” in “bit” and the one in “bite” is sometimes better described as a difference between “tense” and “lax” vowels (referring to the way the mouth is held when pronouncing them), since quantity is no longer a feature of modern English (there’a a lot being glossed over here, as Chaucer’s spelling is a subject unto itself, but the basic idea is there).
To summarize, there is a lot of evidence in the modern language itself for some kind of vowel shift in the past, but the details of how that shift occurred are a matter of intense and still somewhat current study of Old/Middle English texts such as Chaucer.
Thanks, CJJ*! I came in here to ask the same thing.
Wow, CJJ*, I’m impressed.
Something else to point out is that there was no standardized spelling at first, so words were spelled phonetically.
And a fair bit is known about the pronunciation of Latin, from the Classical era to the present day. Since scribes would often have known both Latin and the local language, you could assume that they would generally write the same vowels the same way in both languages.
There are actually written records in which fairly old people just after the time of the Great Vowel Shift make note of the fact that most English people have changed their pronunciation over their lifetime. There are other records in which people try to write the new pronunciation. Recall that the old difference in pronunciation of short and long vowels was a difference between tense and lax vowels, while the new difference is more a difference between a single vowel and a diphthong (two vowels in quick succession). These people actually wrote words with two vowels to try to express the new pronunciation.
I was told that I was going to go to hell by my grade one teacher, who demoted me back to kindergarten because of the great vowel shift and my inability to tie my shoes.
The fool teacher was of the opinion that I was being insubordinate in my refusal to spell my name her way. Unfortunately, at the time I was not aware of the great vowel shift, so I was unable to explain to her why my name is spelled the way it is.
My parents bought me a pair of slip-on shoes, and had the both the teacher and the principal fired. I went on in later years to teach English at university, when at long last I learned why my name is spelled the way it is.
I think we really lost something when we standardized on spelling and punctuation (and I really don’t see what we gained). Stupid prescriptionists.
On only a tangentially related note, it’s a bit funny how “wyn” actually sounds the same way now as we guess it sounded back then (long i). Isn’t part of the answer to how we know that vowels changed sound just that we’re reading it as they wrote it?
Well, we gained speed. It’s a lot easier to read and write when words are spelled the same way.
And we gained stability. It’s a lot easier for us to read Shakespeare than it was for Shakespeare to read “Ancrene Wisse”.
‘Lauerd’, seið Godes spuse to hire deorewurðe spus, ‘þe rihte luuieð þe.’ Þeo beoð rihte þe liuieð efter riwle. Ant 3e, mine leoue sustren, habbeð moni dei icrauet on me efter riwle. Monie cunne riwle beoð; ah twa beoð bimong alle þet Ich chulle speoken of þurh ower bone, wið Godes grace.
Hm, yeah, you’re right about speed, although non-standard spelling should only be a bit slower once we got used to it. Actually, maybe it’d actually get us to concentrate harder on what we’re reading. Stability is good too, though I don’t really think it helps us much to keep reading Shakespeare. Too much stabiliy is a bad thing.
I guess the real problem is what we standardized on. Our spelling is, of course, retarded (catering as it does to the pretentious sensibilities of the educated prescriptionists who set it in stone), but I also look back to how people used to capitalize words for emphasis or poets would change spelling to indicate pronounciation (something Shakespeare got to employ), and I feel that those things were very useful. Relying in these days of the Internet as we do on the written word for everyday communication, it becomes painfully obvious how punctionation (and spelling) fails to communicate the 90% of meaning that isn’t contained in words.
I think beside capitalizations and ingenious use of punctuation, the future will be served well by writing that is colored by all sorts of other cues toward its subtle meanings. Adjectives would convey their degree. Verbs their intensity. That sort of thing, and not in the coarse strokes they do now. And without wordiness. (Since, of course, with enough words you can convey anything… if there are still any awake people left to read it.)
And easier to type. I’m working on a hypothesis that it was the QWERTY keyboard that killed the thorn.
Except that the thorn went out of use several centuries earlier. Perhaps it was printing from movable type that killed it: the early English printers presumbly got their supply of letters from the continent, and the special English letters weren’t used in Latin, French, German, Dutch or Italian.
I didn’t say my hypothesis was valid or even based in reality. 
I keep trying to figure what is it about this thread that pins a “Democrats Suck” banner to the bottom every time I refresh.
Not only do Democrats take your morality, and rob you of your money, they also caused the Great Vowel Shift. Damn flip-floppers, taking our old vowels and replacing them with new ones that none of us Middle English people understand. Bring back Anglo-Saxon! And bring back the lash while you’re at it!
Welsh changed K to C because early Welsh printing was done with English typesets that didn’t have enough K’s.
By the way, don’t forget ash, eth, wynn, and yogh. (Wynn isn’t even customarily used to print Old English, because it looks too much like thorn, and yogh was a late addition to Unicode because it was confused with ezh. Ash, on the other hand, enjoys continued life, but as a simple a-e ligature, rather than as a separate letter.)
How does one “get used to” something that is constantly in flux and subject to the whim of every individual?
Concentrating on puzzling out the individual words, and then having to assemble them into meaning wouldn’t help me understand the meaning any better. For myself, I prefer having the interface between print and meaning be as fluid and easy as possible; it allows me to focus on meaning rather than form.
“Too much” of anything is a bad thing. That’s what “too much” means. But I don’t think the language is in any danger of being “too” stable; it is undergoing constant evolution, through simultaneous degradation and creation, just as it always has. As for Shakespeare, well, I’ve long been aware that some people don’t enjoy reading him, but I have never (and will probably never) understand how that could possibly be so. Each to his own. In any case, his contribution to our modern language will make him of interest to most who are interested in the English language, for at least as long as his contributions remain a significant part of the language.
I can’t agree with most of this, other than that “standard” spelling is a crapshoot. But how would free-for-all spelling be an improvement? As for the rest: Poets still can (and do) change spelling as they choose, for effect, for emphasis, to indicate a particular voice or dialect, or for whatever reason. Writers of prose do so as well. “Standard” spelling isn’t an immutable law of physics; it can be broken, and is, all the time. The only real question is whether it’s broken by a skilled writer for a specific purpose, or by a sub-literate who doesn’t realize he’s doing it, and thereby conveys an unintended effect and forces the reader to spend time decoding his meaning.
Also, I’ve never found the panoply of punctuational and typographical tools we have available to us to be too confining in expressing meaning. It’s true that facial expressions and body language and vocal inflection add a great deal to the spoken word, but speech will always be a different form of expression from writing. One might as well complain that speech doesn’t contain all the same modes of expression as song, or dance, or painting. Different forms of expression are, well . . . different. I doubt that they can ever be interchanged and made identically equivalent; if they could, they wouldn’t be different forms of expression. To decry the language of writing because it isn’t the language of speech is to miss the point: Writing lacks aspects of speech, but it also has aspects that speech lacks. They will never be the same, and we would be losing something if they were.
The written form will no doubt evolve, and in fact always has. Its evolution may be stimulated by the advent of widespread keyboard-based communication, and probably will; handwritten correspondence was already dying out before the Internet came along. But written English has always been capable of expressing anything that can be expressed in words, which is all that can be asked of it. Perhaps the main thing missing in most casual (and much formal) writing today is the knowledge on the part of the writer of how to effectively use the stylistic tools available. The use of punctuation, varying typefaces, spacing, paragraphs, offsets, indentation, the differences conveyed by bold, italic, and underline, and the effective and intentional breaking of the “rules” of spelling, syntax and grammar: these things are apparently unknown to the average writer on the Internet. There are already “all sorts of other cues” available; they’re just not being used by most people. But that is not a weakness of the written language; it’s a weakness of education. Possibly as the Internet becomes more fixed as a part of the culture, the educational system will catch up and do a better job of teaching writing (and reading) skills. Perhaps. (Personally, I’m doubtful. I’ve never seen the public school system improve at anything, so I’m not sure it’s possible. But maybe.)
Are we discussing standardized spelling or standardised spelling?
Either way, uniformity makes for easier database and internet searches.
As far as bad spelling goes, it is an embuggerance when it comes to reading.
“-ize” is legitimate. “-ise” is French. Why the British are so enamored of spelling Greek and Latin roots as though they were French will forever be beyond me. Old Talbot’s ghost is weeping.