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Great Vowel Shift and forks

Genealogy, Local, General
stewamax
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Great Vowel Shift and forks

#77786

Postby stewamax » August 29th, 2017, 9:42 pm

The cause of the Great Vowel Shift in English between 1400 and around 1650 is ‘unknown’.

It has been proposed that human jaw closure in England changed from a parallel bite (where teeth are edge to edge) to an overbite (where the upper front teeth close in front of the lower ones) when forks became common. (To break meat one either needs to grip it with front teeth and tear off a morsel with a hand or to hold it down with a fork and cut). The change happened between 1400 and 1700ish.

Since the position of the jaw and development of jaw muscles greatly influences how we pronounce vowels, could the GVS have been caused by the introduction of forks?

Clariman
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Re: Great Vowel Shift and forks

#77799

Postby Clariman » August 29th, 2017, 11:14 pm

To me that seems unlikely. The shape of someone's jaw and associated teeth position are something that you are born with. So you don't really go through life adjusting the position unless you have a real issue with them and need orthodontic treatment. I can't see humans adjusting jaw position because they started using forks. Also it is perfectly feasible to tear meat with a normal modern jaw position.

Also, any major change in jaw position would be noticeable in paintings of the respective periods, so it would have been more obvious.

Just my tuppenceworth.

It is an interesting question.

C

bungeejumper
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Re: Great Vowel Shift and forks

#77960

Postby bungeejumper » August 30th, 2017, 4:39 pm

I don't think anybody really knows why sound shifts occur - unless it's the force of fashion, or perhaps the need to declare political allegiance to some other region which controls all the power or all the trade routes. ;)

The Germanic languages experienced what they call the second sound shift between 500 and 800 AD - it's the one that broadly distinguishes between modern-day northern languages such as Dutch ("wat?") or Anglo-Saxon ("what?") and the ones toward the Germanic centre and south that changed over to saying "was" (pronounced "vass") instead.

The northern countries simply didn't get around to making the change, whereas the southerners did. I doubt that the availability of forks (or knives) had much to do with it, although perhaps the fact that the southerners had all the wine might have been a factor? :lol:

But hey, that's language for you. Here in the UK, there are young people who insist on talking like Pwofessor Alliss Wobbuts, or who affect an annoying permanent lisp so as to be thought trendy among their peers. Sometimes the affectation becomes commonplace, as it did in the early decades of BBC Home Service English, and sometimes it simply dies away again. Either way, I doubt whether Laura Kuenssberg would ever have made it to becoming BBC political editor if she hadn't toned the accent down a bit. ;)

BJ

Slarti
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Re: Great Vowel Shift and forks

#78479

Postby Slarti » September 1st, 2017, 5:16 pm

bungeejumper wrote:Sometimes the affectation becomes commonplace, as it did in the early decades of BBC Home Service English


Speaking of which, did you know that the BBC set up the "Advisory Committee on Spoken English" to decide how English should be spoken on the radio in 1926 and that they invented RP?

There is a fascinating book on the subject https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dictating-Mob- ... 0198736738

Slarti


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