Vowel shifts... obviously they happen, but how do researchers know how 16th century English sounded?

Question

Do they use poetry to track what rythmes with what?

Answer 1

You are, of course, talking about the "Great Vowel Shift".
So, what is the evidence for this shift and exactly what it looked like, including how the sounds USED to be made?

Spelling of Modern and Middle English is a big part of the evidence (along with modern pronunciation).

But notice some of the specific TYPES of evidence involved:

a) for Modern English, the spelling & prononciation of clearly related words:
e.g., the vowels of "please" and "pleasant"

b) for MIDDLE English, the spelling of
--- RHYME words
-- doubled vowels indicating vowel "length"
---comparison with French and Latin spellings

This is laid out in more detail and with examples in the following page:
http://asstudents.unco.edu/faculty/tbredehoft/UNCclasses/ENG419/GVS.html


Another important piece of the puzzle is the relationship of English vowel sounds to those of OTHER European languages, and how that changed during the Middle > Modern English transition.

On that matter, sorry if you are familiar with the following and find it tedious... perhaps it will help some.
If you've studied other European languages, esp. the Romance languages, you will know that the pronunciations of several of their "long vowels" is quite different from that of many Modern English words, while that for the "short vowels" may be quite close".

You may ALSO have seen that in these languages the "short" and "long" versions of the same vowel are more clearly and consistently related than they are in English. This of itself suggests that at some point in the history of English these long vowels shifted. The questions are basically how (much debated!) and when (= from Middle to Modern English as the evidence being mentioned here makes clear).

More specifically, note the names we use for the following notes in the scale. These syllables, borrowed from Latin, retain the Latin pronunciation of the long vowels:
* "re" -- the original long e - sounds = more like our word "ray", and what WE call "long a" (as in "gate")
* "mi" -- long i - sounds more like "me" in English, that is, what we call "long e"

Comparing the long & short versions of vowels:
* the long e of "re" is related to the our short e (/eh/ as in "get")
* long i of "mi" is related to our short i (compare "mit")

Answer 2

yes, they use ancient texts in lyric form to understand how certain combinations of letters sounded when at the end of the verse... -> rimes
then they also use other languages from the same family... they look at them and at their literary texts and thus they can conclude something about how the english language back then must've been pronounced...

Answer 3

yes, that would be one way. they also use basic english spelling. as english words from certain era's are written differently.

night, bite - sound similar, but are written differently because they are from different era's

Answer 4

I'm guessing poetry myself, but read this (It may or may not help):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift