Phonological history of English high front vowels
Encyclopedia
The high
front
vowel
s of English
have undergone a variety of changes over time, which may vary from dialect to dialect.
) with unstressed /ɪ/ (sometimes written as /ɨ/, and occasionally called "schwi" by analogy with "schwa
") in certain dialects of English
. As a result of this merger the words abbot and rabbit rhyme; in accents without the merger they are distinct. The merger is complete in the Southern Hemisphere
accents and Hiberno-English
and variable in General American
.
This merger is not usually stigmatized. Dictionaries usually represent the distinction and not the merger.
The following end differently for speakers without the merger:
/ɪ/ found in South African English
, where kit [kɪt] and bit [bət] do not rhyme. It is not clear whether this is a true phonemic split, since the distribution of the two sounds is predictable: [ɪ] is used adjacent to velars
(kiss, gift, lick, big, sing, kit), after /h/ (hit), word-initially (inn), generally before /ʃ/ (fish), and by some speakers before /tʃ, dʒ/; [ə] is used elsewhere (limb, dinner, limited, bit). Nevertheless because of the phonetic similarity of the two vowels in a word like dinner [ˈdənə], they may belong to the same phoneme /ə/, while the vowel of kiss, big, hit, inn etc. belongs to the phoneme /ɪ/.
The kit–bit split is perhaps the most distinctive feature of South African English, as many of its other features are also found in New Zealand English
. In New Zealand English, however, a centralized realization of /ɪ/ as /ə/ is general: there is no split and the vowels of kit and bit are pronounced identically.
Because of the centralized realization of the vowel /ɪ/ in some words in South African English, South Africans are often stereotyped as pronouncing "woman" and "women" the same way, as "women" has the vowel [ə]. In reality, they are distinct in South African English. "woman" is /wʊmən/ and "women" is /wəmən/, so they are distinct and never confused.
The pin–pen merger is a conditional merger of /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ before the nasal consonant
s [m], [n], and [ŋ]. The merged vowel is usually closer to [ɪ] than to [ɛ] (examples include: kin-ken, bin-ben, and him-hem). The merger is widespread in Southern American English
, and is also found in many speakers in the Midland region immediately north of the South, and in less densely populated inland areas of the Western United States
, particularly in Bakersfield, California
. It is also a characteristic of African American Vernacular English
.
Although this merger was not complete in the South even in fairly recent times, there is very little variation throughout the Southern States in general, except that Savannah
, Austin
, Miami, and New Orleans are excluded from the merger. The area of consistent merger includes southern Virginia
and most of the South Midland, and extends westward to include much of Texas
.
The northern limit of the merged area shows a number of irregular curves. Central and southern Indiana
is dominated by the merger, but there is very little evidence of it in Ohio
, and northern Kentucky
shows a solid area of distinction around Louisville
.
In the west, there is sporadic representation of merged speakers in Washington, Idaho
, Kansas
, Nebraska
, and Colorado
. But the most striking concentration of merged speakers in the west is around Bakersfield, California
, a pattern that may reflect the trajectory of migrant workers from the Ozarks
westward.
The pin–pen merger is one of the most widely recognized features of Southern speech. A study of the written responses of Civil War
veterans from Tennessee
, together with data from the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States and the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle South Atlantic States, show that the merger was at a very low level through the first sixty years of the 19th century, but then rose steeply to 90% in the middle of the 20th century.
Outside the South, the majority of North American English
speakers maintain a solid distinction in perception and production, though there are in almost every region of the United States
—and even a few places in Canada
—a certain number of speakers that perceive the pairs of words as close or pronounce them acoustically closely.
The pin–pen merger also appears in slightly different form in the forms of English spoken in Counties Cork
and Kerry
, Ireland
.
People that have the merger will often use terms like ink pen and stick pin to make a clear distinction between the two words that are otherwise homophonous.
[ɪ] becomes tense [i] in words like happy. Happy tensing is absent from many varieties of British English
and, traditionally at least, from Southern American English
. Other realizations of the final vowel are also possible, such as [e] in Scottish English
. The history of happy tensing is difficult to pin down; the fact that it is uniformly present in South African English
, Australian English
, and New Zealand English
implies that it was present in southern British English already at the beginning of the 19th century. Yet it is not mentioned by descriptive
phoneticians
until the early 20th century, and even then at first only in American English
. The British phonetician Jack Windsor Lewis believes that the vowel moved from [i] to [ɪ] in Britain the second quarter of the nineteenth century before reverting to [i] in Britain towards the last quarter of the twentieth century.
vowel /eː/ (usually spelled ea, as in meat, peace, sea, receive). The merger is complete outside the British Isles and virtually complete within them. Some speakers in Northern England distinguish /iː/ or /əi/ in the first group of words and /ɪə/ in the second group. Old-fashioned varieties of Hiberno-English
and the West Country dialects
preserve the Early Modern English /iː/–/eː/ contrast, for instance piece ≠ peace ≠ pace, but it is rare in these accents nowadays. A handful of words (such as break, steak, great) escaped the merger in the standard accents and thus have the same vowel as words like brake, stake, grate in almost all varieties of English. The word threat rhymes with neither meat nor great, due to early shortening (see "Bred–bread merger" below), although all three words once rhymed.
In some dialects that preserve the distinction, things are more complicated than simply all words in the meat set having /ɪə/. In those accents, some (but not all) words in the meat set actually have a sound resembling /ɛɪ/ as in eight. In Alexander (2001), a book about the traditional Sheffield
dialect, the spelling "eigh" is used for the vowels of eat and meat but the spelling "eea" is used for the vowels of team and cream. However, a 1999 survey in Sheffield found that the /ɛɪ/ pronunciation is almost extinct.
The words team and cream, which have /ɪə/ in the traditional Yorkshire accents, have original long vowels, going back to Old English tēam and Old French creme respectively, while eat (< OE etan) and meat (< OE mete) have vowels that were originally short but lengthened by Middle English open syllable lengthening. This is the origin of the Yorkshire distinction.
In accents with the distinction, the vowel /ɪə/ is usually represented by the spellings ea and eCe, as in neat and complete, and the vowel /ɛɪ/ is usually represented by the spellings ei and ey, as in receive and key, and the vowel /iː/ is usually represented by the spellings ee, ie and iCe as in feet, thief and suite, as well as plain e in the monosyllabic words be, he, me, she, the (when stressed), we and ye.
and Singaporean English where the phonemes /iː/ and /ɪ/ are both pronounced /i/. As a result, pairs like "mitt" and "meet", "bit" and "beat", "bid" and "bead" etc. are homophones.
and Singaporean English where the phonemes /ɛ/ and /æ/ are both pronounced /ɛ/. For some speakers, this only occurs in front of voiceless consonants, so that pairs like "met", "mat", "bet", "bat" are homophones, but "bed", "bad" or "med", "mad" are kept distinct. For others, it occurs in all positions.
where /eɪ/ and /ɛ/ are both pronounced /ɛ/. As a result, the words "met" and "mate" are homophonous as /mɛt/.
that caused Middle English /ɛː/ to be shortened in some words. As a result, "bred" and "bread" became homophones as /brɛd/ which were previously distinguished as /brɛd/ and /brɛːd/. The shortening of /ɛː/ occurred mostly before /d/ and /ð/, and sometimes elsewhere.
and American English
as well as other varieties; although it is far more common in the former, as some Americans do not have the phoneme /ɪə/ in their speech. The words which have the /iːə/ to /ɪə/ may vary depending on dialect. Dialects that have idea smoothing usually also have the diphthong /ɪə/ in words like "beer", "deer" and "fear" which are pronounced /bɪə/, /dɪə/ and /fɪə/ in those dialects. Some northern English accents have /ɪː/ instead of /ɪə/ in all words affected by idea smoothing, and some have /ɪː/ for the first vowel in words such as period, serious, etc. but then /iːə/ for the second vowel.
(Wells Pg. 500). As a result, bit and bet are homophones as /bɪt/.
Close vowel
A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the...
front
Front vowel
A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...
vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s of English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
have undergone a variety of changes over time, which may vary from dialect to dialect.
Weak-vowel merger
The weak-vowel merger is a phonemic merger of /ə/ (schwaSchwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...
) with unstressed /ɪ/ (sometimes written as /ɨ/, and occasionally called "schwi" by analogy with "schwa
Schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...
") in certain dialects of English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. As a result of this merger the words abbot and rabbit rhyme; in accents without the merger they are distinct. The merger is complete in the Southern Hemisphere
Southern Hemisphere
The Southern Hemisphere is the part of Earth that lies south of the equator. The word hemisphere literally means 'half ball' or "half sphere"...
accents and Hiberno-English
Hiberno-English
Hiberno-English is the dialect of English written and spoken in Ireland .English was first brought to Ireland during the Norman invasion of the late 12th century. Initially it was mainly spoken in an area known as the Pale around Dublin, with Irish spoken throughout the rest of the country...
and variable in General American
General American
General American , also known as Standard American English , is a major accent of American English. The accent is not restricted to the United States...
.
This merger is not usually stigmatized. Dictionaries usually represent the distinction and not the merger.
| Homophonous pairs |
|---|
The following end differently for speakers without the merger:
- ribbon, cabin
- carrot, merit
Kit–bit split
The kit–bit split is a split of EMEEarly Modern English
Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period to 1650. Thus, the first edition of the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare both belong to the late phase of Early Modern English...
/ɪ/ found in South African English
South African English
The term South African English is applied to the first-language dialects of English spoken by South Africans, with the L1 English variety spoken by Zimbabweans, Zambians and Namibians, being recognised as offshoots.There is some social and regional variation within South African English...
, where kit [kɪt] and bit [bət] do not rhyme. It is not clear whether this is a true phonemic split, since the distribution of the two sounds is predictable: [ɪ] is used adjacent to velars
Velar consonant
Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
(kiss, gift, lick, big, sing, kit), after /h/ (hit), word-initially (inn), generally before /ʃ/ (fish), and by some speakers before /tʃ, dʒ/; [ə] is used elsewhere (limb, dinner, limited, bit). Nevertheless because of the phonetic similarity of the two vowels in a word like dinner [ˈdənə], they may belong to the same phoneme /ə/, while the vowel of kiss, big, hit, inn etc. belongs to the phoneme /ɪ/.
The kit–bit split is perhaps the most distinctive feature of South African English, as many of its other features are also found in New Zealand English
New Zealand English
New Zealand English is the dialect of the English language used in New Zealand.The English language was established in New Zealand by colonists during the 19th century. It is one of "the newest native-speaker variet[ies] of the English language in existence, a variety which has developed and...
. In New Zealand English, however, a centralized realization of /ɪ/ as /ə/ is general: there is no split and the vowels of kit and bit are pronounced identically.
Because of the centralized realization of the vowel /ɪ/ in some words in South African English, South Africans are often stereotyped as pronouncing "woman" and "women" the same way, as "women" has the vowel [ə]. In reality, they are distinct in South African English. "woman" is /wʊmən/ and "women" is /wəmən/, so they are distinct and never confused.
Pin–pen merger
Nasal consonant
A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
s [m], [n], and [ŋ]. The merged vowel is usually closer to [ɪ] than to [ɛ] (examples include: kin-ken, bin-ben, and him-hem). The merger is widespread in Southern American English
Southern American English
Southern American English is a group of dialects of the English language spoken throughout the Southern region of the United States, from Southern and Eastern Maryland, West Virginia and Kentucky to the Gulf Coast, and from the Atlantic coast to most of Texas and Oklahoma.The Southern dialects make...
, and is also found in many speakers in the Midland region immediately north of the South, and in less densely populated inland areas of the Western United States
Western United States
.The Western United States, commonly referred to as the American West or simply "the West," traditionally refers to the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. Because the U.S. expanded westward after its founding, the meaning of the West has evolved over time...
, particularly in Bakersfield, California
Bakersfield, California
Bakersfield is a city near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley in Kern County, California. It is roughly equidistant between Fresno and Los Angeles, to the north and south respectively....
. It is also a characteristic of African American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English —also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular , or Black Vernacular English —is an African American variety of American English...
.
Although this merger was not complete in the South even in fairly recent times, there is very little variation throughout the Southern States in general, except that Savannah
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Today Savannah is an industrial center and an important...
, Austin
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
, Miami, and New Orleans are excluded from the merger. The area of consistent merger includes southern Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
and most of the South Midland, and extends westward to include much of Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
.
The northern limit of the merged area shows a number of irregular curves. Central and southern Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
is dominated by the merger, but there is very little evidence of it in Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
, and northern Kentucky
Kentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...
shows a solid area of distinction around Louisville
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...
.
In the west, there is sporadic representation of merged speakers in Washington, Idaho
Idaho
Idaho is a state in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans". Idaho was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state....
, Kansas
Kansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
, Nebraska
Nebraska
Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
, and Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
. But the most striking concentration of merged speakers in the west is around Bakersfield, California
Bakersfield, California
Bakersfield is a city near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley in Kern County, California. It is roughly equidistant between Fresno and Los Angeles, to the north and south respectively....
, a pattern that may reflect the trajectory of migrant workers from the Ozarks
The Ozarks
The Ozarks are a physiographic and geologic highland region of the central United States. It covers much of the southern half of Missouri and an extensive portion of northwestern and north central Arkansas...
westward.
The pin–pen merger is one of the most widely recognized features of Southern speech. A study of the written responses of Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
veterans from Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
, together with data from the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States and the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle South Atlantic States, show that the merger was at a very low level through the first sixty years of the 19th century, but then rose steeply to 90% in the middle of the 20th century.
Outside the South, the majority of North American English
North American English
North American English is the variety of the English language of North America, including that of the United States and Canada. Because of their shared histories and the similarities between the pronunciation, vocabulary and accent of American English and Canadian English, the two spoken languages...
speakers maintain a solid distinction in perception and production, though there are in almost every region of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
—and even a few places in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
—a certain number of speakers that perceive the pairs of words as close or pronounce them acoustically closely.
The pin–pen merger also appears in slightly different form in the forms of English spoken in Counties Cork
County Cork
County Cork is a county in Ireland. It is located in the South-West Region and is also part of the province of Munster. It is named after the city of Cork . Cork County Council is the local authority for the county...
and Kerry
County Kerry
Kerry means the "people of Ciar" which was the name of the pre-Gaelic tribe who lived in part of the present county. The legendary founder of the tribe was Ciar, son of Fergus mac Róich. In Old Irish "Ciar" meant black or dark brown, and the word continues in use in modern Irish as an adjective...
, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
.
People that have the merger will often use terms like ink pen and stick pin to make a clear distinction between the two words that are otherwise homophonous.
| Homophonous pairs |
|---|
Happy tensing
Happy tensing is the process in which final laxTenseness
In phonology, tenseness is a particular vowel quality that is phonemically contrastive in many languages, including English. It has also occasionally been used to describe contrasts in consonants. Unlike most distinctive features, the feature [tense] can be interpreted only relatively, that is, in...
[ɪ] becomes tense [i] in words like happy. Happy tensing is absent from many varieties of British English
British English
British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
and, traditionally at least, from Southern American English
Southern American English
Southern American English is a group of dialects of the English language spoken throughout the Southern region of the United States, from Southern and Eastern Maryland, West Virginia and Kentucky to the Gulf Coast, and from the Atlantic coast to most of Texas and Oklahoma.The Southern dialects make...
. Other realizations of the final vowel are also possible, such as [e] in Scottish English
Scottish English
Scottish English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. It may or may not be considered distinct from the Scots language. It is always considered distinct from Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language....
. The history of happy tensing is difficult to pin down; the fact that it is uniformly present in South African English
South African English
The term South African English is applied to the first-language dialects of English spoken by South Africans, with the L1 English variety spoken by Zimbabweans, Zambians and Namibians, being recognised as offshoots.There is some social and regional variation within South African English...
, Australian English
Australian English
Australian English is the name given to the group of dialects spoken in Australia that form a major variety of the English language....
, and New Zealand English
New Zealand English
New Zealand English is the dialect of the English language used in New Zealand.The English language was established in New Zealand by colonists during the 19th century. It is one of "the newest native-speaker variet[ies] of the English language in existence, a variety which has developed and...
implies that it was present in southern British English already at the beginning of the 19th century. Yet it is not mentioned by descriptive
Descriptive linguistics
In the study of language, description, or descriptive linguistics, is the work of objectively analyzing and describing how language is spoken by a group of people in a speech community...
phoneticians
Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...
until the early 20th century, and even then at first only in American English
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
. The British phonetician Jack Windsor Lewis believes that the vowel moved from [i] to [ɪ] in Britain the second quarter of the nineteenth century before reverting to [i] in Britain towards the last quarter of the twentieth century.
Meet–meat merger
The meet–meat merger is the merger into the vowel /iː/ (as in meet, piece, see, believe) of the Early Modern EnglishEarly Modern English
Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period to 1650. Thus, the first edition of the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare both belong to the late phase of Early Modern English...
vowel /eː/ (usually spelled ea, as in meat, peace, sea, receive). The merger is complete outside the British Isles and virtually complete within them. Some speakers in Northern England distinguish /iː/ or /əi/ in the first group of words and /ɪə/ in the second group. Old-fashioned varieties of Hiberno-English
Hiberno-English
Hiberno-English is the dialect of English written and spoken in Ireland .English was first brought to Ireland during the Norman invasion of the late 12th century. Initially it was mainly spoken in an area known as the Pale around Dublin, with Irish spoken throughout the rest of the country...
and the West Country dialects
West Country dialects
The West Country dialects and West Country accents are generic terms applied to any of several English dialects and accents used by much of the indigenous population of South West England, the area popularly known as the West Country....
preserve the Early Modern English /iː/–/eː/ contrast, for instance piece ≠ peace ≠ pace, but it is rare in these accents nowadays. A handful of words (such as break, steak, great) escaped the merger in the standard accents and thus have the same vowel as words like brake, stake, grate in almost all varieties of English. The word threat rhymes with neither meat nor great, due to early shortening (see "Bred–bread merger" below), although all three words once rhymed.
In some dialects that preserve the distinction, things are more complicated than simply all words in the meat set having /ɪə/. In those accents, some (but not all) words in the meat set actually have a sound resembling /ɛɪ/ as in eight. In Alexander (2001), a book about the traditional Sheffield
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...
dialect, the spelling "eigh" is used for the vowels of eat and meat but the spelling "eea" is used for the vowels of team and cream. However, a 1999 survey in Sheffield found that the /ɛɪ/ pronunciation is almost extinct.
The words team and cream, which have /ɪə/ in the traditional Yorkshire accents, have original long vowels, going back to Old English tēam and Old French creme respectively, while eat (< OE etan) and meat (< OE mete) have vowels that were originally short but lengthened by Middle English open syllable lengthening. This is the origin of the Yorkshire distinction.
In accents with the distinction, the vowel /ɪə/ is usually represented by the spellings ea and eCe, as in neat and complete, and the vowel /ɛɪ/ is usually represented by the spellings ei and ey, as in receive and key, and the vowel /iː/ is usually represented by the spellings ee, ie and iCe as in feet, thief and suite, as well as plain e in the monosyllabic words be, he, me, she, the (when stressed), we and ye.
| Homophonous pairs |
|---|
Mitt–meet merger
The mitt–meet merger is a phenomenon occurring in Malaysian EnglishMalaysian English
Malaysian English , formally known as Malaysian Standard English , is a form of English used and spoken in Malaysia as a second language...
and Singaporean English where the phonemes /iː/ and /ɪ/ are both pronounced /i/. As a result, pairs like "mitt" and "meet", "bit" and "beat", "bid" and "bead" etc. are homophones.
Met–mat merger
The met–mat merger is a phenomenon occurring in Malaysian EnglishMalaysian English
Malaysian English , formally known as Malaysian Standard English , is a form of English used and spoken in Malaysia as a second language...
and Singaporean English where the phonemes /ɛ/ and /æ/ are both pronounced /ɛ/. For some speakers, this only occurs in front of voiceless consonants, so that pairs like "met", "mat", "bet", "bat" are homophones, but "bed", "bad" or "med", "mad" are kept distinct. For others, it occurs in all positions.
Met–mate merger
The met–mate merger is phenomenon occurring for some speakers of Zulu EnglishZulu English
Zulu English is a variety of the English language spoken almost exclusively in South Africa among native speakers of Zulu. This variety is heavily influenced by the phonology and lexicon of the Zulu languages....
where /eɪ/ and /ɛ/ are both pronounced /ɛ/. As a result, the words "met" and "mate" are homophonous as /mɛt/.
Bred–bread merger
The bred–bread merger is process that occurred in Middle EnglishMiddle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
that caused Middle English /ɛː/ to be shortened in some words. As a result, "bred" and "bread" became homophones as /brɛd/ which were previously distinguished as /brɛd/ and /brɛːd/. The shortening of /ɛː/ occurred mostly before /d/ and /ð/, and sometimes elsewhere.
Idea smoothing
Idea smoothing is a process that occurs in many dialects where bisyllabic /iːə/ becomes the diphthong /ɪə/ in certain words, leading to pronunciations like /vɪəkəl/, /θɪətə/ and /aɪdɪə/ for "vehicle", "theatre/theater" and "idea" respectively. This is not restricted to any one variety of English; it happens in both British EnglishBritish English
British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
and American English
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
as well as other varieties; although it is far more common in the former, as some Americans do not have the phoneme /ɪə/ in their speech. The words which have the /iːə/ to /ɪə/ may vary depending on dialect. Dialects that have idea smoothing usually also have the diphthong /ɪə/ in words like "beer", "deer" and "fear" which are pronounced /bɪə/, /dɪə/ and /fɪə/ in those dialects. Some northern English accents have /ɪː/ instead of /ɪə/ in all words affected by idea smoothing, and some have /ɪː/ for the first vowel in words such as period, serious, etc. but then /iːə/ for the second vowel.
Bit–bet merger
The bit–bet merger is a merger of /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ (both sounding like [ɪ]) occurring for some speakers of Newfoundland EnglishNewfoundland English
Newfoundland English is a name for several accents and dialects thereof the English found in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Most of these differ substantially from the English commonly spoken elsewhere in Canada...
(Wells Pg. 500). As a result, bit and bet are homophones as /bɪt/.
See also
- Phonological history of the English languagePhonological history of the English languageThe phonological history of English describes changing phonology of the English language over time, starting from its roots in proto-Germanic to diverse changes in different dialects of modern English....
- Phonological history of English vowelsPhonological history of English vowelsIn the history of English phonology, there were many diachronic sound changes affecting vowels, especially involving phonemic splits and mergers.-Great Vowel Shift and Trisyllabic laxing:...