I love reading about the history of the English language. If I have 20 minutes to fill in my rhetoric class, I can give an impromptu lecture on that history, which I title (to myself) as “Why the English Language Is Like a Club Sandwich.” But never having formally worked with the International Phonetic Alphabet in a linguistics class, I never felt that I truly comprehended the “Great Vowel Shift” that marks part of the transition from Middle to Early Modern English.<\/p>\n
Thanks to the Web, this site<\/a>, by Melinda Mezner<\/a> of Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, makes it all comprehensible. Read the IPA text, listen to the sounds. After that, the diagrams<\/a> might make more sense. Warning: lots of small sound files to download.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I love reading about the history of the English language. If I have 20 minutes to fill in my rhetoric class, I can give an impromptu lecture on that history, which I title (to myself) as “Why the English Language Is Like a Club Sandwich.” But never having formally worked with the International Phonetic Alphabet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,4],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-england","tag-scholarship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-V","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5187,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5187","url_meta":{"origin":57,"position":0},"title":"The Secret to Spelling in English","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 7, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"It is understanding how the Great Vowel Shift moved pronunciation away from spelling \u2014 and how that older spelling was fixed and fossilized by the 15th-century introduction of printing. Three quick items: 1. A 10-minute radio discussion of the Great Vowel Shift, from the CBC's Sunday Edition. 2. A website\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7027,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7027","url_meta":{"origin":57,"position":1},"title":"Good Butter and Good Cheese . . .","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 4, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"If you take a class in the history of the English language, you probably learn the phrase, \"Good butter and good cheese is good English and good Friese.\" This video takes it a little farther: can a speaker of Old English and a speaker of Friesian talk about the cow\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7677,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7677","url_meta":{"origin":57,"position":2},"title":"Massive 2015 Year-End Link Dump! Something for Everyone!","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 28, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Some of the links that I saved that never turned into blog posts . . . \u2022 The Internet loves quizes, so \"What Kind of Witch Would You Be?\" (answer: hearth witch). I always suspect that the answer is based on just one question, while the others are there just\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.theoutdoorwire.com\/image_archive\/2210514.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1285,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1285","url_meta":{"origin":57,"position":3},"title":"Writing English as a First Language","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Some writing is bland because it does not take chances. Other writing is bland because of poor technique.William Zinsser deals with the second in this talk to international students in the Columbia University journalism school: \"Writing English as a Second Language.\"Actually, writing\u2014as opposed to speaking\u2014is a \"second language.\" That is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":74,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=74","url_meta":{"origin":57,"position":4},"title":"Lose Yourself Here","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 3, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"The Internet Sacred Text Archive is an amazing place. Recent additions include the complete corpus of Anglo-Saxon poetry, in Old English, of course. (Time to dig out my undergraduate copy of Bright's Old English from Prof. Harper's class.) Thanks to Language Hat for the link. You were wondering if they\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":817,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=817","url_meta":{"origin":57,"position":5},"title":"Where are the Irish-speakers–in Ireland?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 10, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Now and again among North American Pagans, I run into an earnest student of Gaelic.When M. and I honeymooned in Ireland (back when the Celtic Tiger was still a kitten), I learned to puzzle out the signage and to go through the door marked \"Fir.\"But outside of Co. Kerry, I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Celts\"","block_context":{"text":"Celts","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=celts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}