exceptions to this rule.
[101]
Tag questions
asking for information are said to carry rising tones
(e.g. "They
are coming on Tuesday, /AREN'T they?") while those asking for confirmation have
falling tone (e.g. "Your name's John, \ISN'T it.").
The pronunciation system of English has undergone many changes throughout the history of
the language, from the
phonological system of Old English
, to
that of Middle English
, through
to that of the present day.
Variation between
dialects
has always been significant. Former
pronunciations of many words are reflected in their spellings, as
English orthography
has
generally not kept pace with phonological changes since the Middle English period.
The English consonant system has been relatively stable over time, although
a number of
significant changes
have occurred. Examples include the loss (in most dialects) of the [ç] and
[x] sounds still reflected by the ⟨gh⟩
in words like night and
taught, and the splitting of voiced
and voiceless allophones of fricatives into separate phonemes (such as the two different
phonemes represented by ⟨th⟩
). There have also been many
changes in consonant clusters
,
mostly reductions, for instance those that produced the usual modern pronunciations of such
letter combinations as ⟨wr-⟩, ⟨kn-⟩ and
⟨wh-⟩
.
The
development
of vowels
has been much more complex. One of the most notable series of
changes is that known as the
Great Vowel Shift
, which began around the late 14th century.
Here the [iː] and [uː] in words like
price and
mouth became diphthongized, and other long
vowels became higher: [eː] became [iː] (as in
meet), [aː] became [eː] and later [eɪ] (as in
name),
[oː] became [uː] (as in
goose), and [ɔː] became [oː] and later [oʊ] (in RP now [əʊ]; as in
bone).
These shifts are responsible for the modern pronunciations
of many written vowel
combinations, including those involving a
silent final ⟨e⟩
.
Many other changes in vowels have taken place over the centuries (see the separate articles
on the
low back
,
high back
and
high front
vowels,
short A
, and
diphthongs
). These various
changes mean that many words that formerly rhymed (and may be expected to rhyme based
on their spelling) no longer do.
[102]
For example, in
Shakespeare
's time, following the Great
Vowel Shift,
food,
good and
blood all had the vowel [uː], but in modern pronunciation
good has
been shortened to [ʊ], while
blood has been shortened and lowered to [ʌ] in most accents. In
other cases, words that were formerly distinct have come to be pronounced the same –
examples
of such mergers include
meet–meat
,
pane–pain
and
toe–tow
.
History of English pronunciation
Controversial issues