This is usually indicative of some type of dialect shift that produces an instability, for example in the Great Vowel Shift, which according to phonological theory occurred for precisely this reason.
42.
Note that language reforms occur at a punctual point in time; this article does not discuss changes in languages that took place over several centuries, such as the Great Vowel Shift.
43.
Immediately after the Great Vowel Shift, the vowels of " meet " and " meat " were different, but they are merged in Modern English, and both words are pronounced as.
44.
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45.
:Since it ceased to exist before the great vowel shift the question is moot : the vowel in " Michael " did not meander to its present strange place in the mouth until later.
46.
In words coming from Middle English, most cases of the Modern English diphthongs originate from the Middle English long monophthongs through the Great Vowel Shift, although some cases of originate from the Middle English diphthongs.
47.
As a result of the Great Vowel Shift, the long of " face " was RP there has been a recent trend for it to be lowered again to a fully open [ a ].
48.
The Great Vowel Shift explains many irregularities in spelling, since English retains many spellings from Middle English, and it also explains why English vowel letters have very different pronunciations from the same letters in other languages.
49.
For English, this is partly because the Great Vowel Shift occurred after the orthography was established, and because English has acquired a large number of loanwords at different times, retaining their original spelling at varying levels.
50.
If the difference between the Northern and Southern vowel shifts is caused by the vowel systems at the time of the Great Vowel Shift, did not shift because there was no the back mid vowel in Northern English.
