When did 'The great vowel shift' take place in English,and how were vowels pronounced prior to this time?

Answer 1

1200 and 1600 according to Wikipedia, this link may help.

Answer 2

There are some sensible answers & good links, so I shan't go into detail about the basic facts.

Just notice that the shift is incomplete in some areas. Some Northerners (including Scots) say "dee" when Southerners say "die", "licht" for "light" etc. The long "o" vowel as pronounced in various accents including my own Yorkshire is closer to the original pronunciation than to the modern rather tighter dipthong. As recently as the early 19C the long vowel (and letter-name) "e" was normally pronounced "ay" in Lancashire, even by educated people: "Did tha say it?" for "Did you see it?". This is still occasionally heard in country districts among older people. There are other examples. Just don't get the idea that the shift happened all at once, or that it is, even now, complete and universal.

I sometimes amuse myself imagining old-timers when the shift began to happen grumbling about the sloppy, affected fashion of distorting all your vowels the younger set seem to be going in for!

Answer 3

Prior to the vowel shift, the vowels were pronounced very much like those of Latin, Spanish and Italian.

There's a fairly good description at the following link. Timing was between 1350 and 1550 in southern England.

http://asstudents.unco.edu/faculty/tbredehoft/UNCclasses/ENG419/GVS.html

Answer 4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift

Answer 5

I would hate to see a great bowel shift,very nasty.