Great Vowel Shift - Other Languages

Other Languages

German and Dutch also experienced sound changes resembling the first stage of the Great Vowel Shift. In German, by the 15th or 16th centuries, long had changed to, (as in Eis, 'ice') and long to (as in Haus, 'house'), though some dialects resist those changes to this day (Alemannic, Limburgish, Ripuarian and most varieties of Lower German). In Dutch, the former became (ijs), and the latter had earlier become, which then became (huis). In German, there also was a separate, which became, via an intermediate similar to the Dutch. In the Polder Dutch pronunciation, the shift has actually been carried further than in Standard Dutch, with a very similar result as in German and English.

Dutch and German have, like English, also shifted common Germanic * to (German) or (Dutch), as in Proto-Germanic *fōt- 'foot' > German Fuß, Dutch voet (as well as the rare secondary * to in German and in Dutch). However, this similarity turns out to be superficial on closer inspection. Given the huge differences between the structures of Old English vowel phonology on one side, and that of Old Dutch and Old High German on the other, this is hardly surprising. While there is no indication that English long vowels other than did anything but move up in tongue-body position, Dutch and German appear to have been raised through a process of diphthongisation.

In the very earliest longer, connected Old High German and Old Dutch texts (9th cent.), the vowel is already largely written -uo-. That is, it had broken into a nucleus with a centering glide. This complex nucleus smoothed in Middle High German and Middle Dutch, becoming the of Modern German and the of Modern Dutch around the same time as the long high vowels began to diphthongize.

The of Modern German has a variety of sources, the oldest of which is Proto-Germanic *aw, which smoothed before /t d r x/ (so rot 'red', Ohr 'ear', Floh 'flea', etc.) Elsewhere the sound was written -ou- in OHG. In Old Dutch, this sound had become -o- everywhere, explaining the difference in words such as Dutch boom and German Baum.

While English has, at large, kept its orthography from before the vowel shift, German and Dutch have adapted their orthographies to the changes. Therefore, pronunciation of German and Dutch words is largely predictable from the written form still today, unlike English words. Unpredictable pairs, such as "wind" vs. "find", or "weak" vs. "break" vs. "head" do not occur in either of the two languages.

Norwegian and Swedish also experienced something similar to the Great Vowel Shift in their back vowels, although the results were different. As in early modern English, (spelled å, and the cognate of English oa as in "boat") shifted to, while the long o had chain-shifted to (cf. English "oo"). But instead of diphthongising, the older was fronted to . Danish has not undergone these changes in the back vowels, but instead the front vowels have been affected. As in early modern English, long a, shifted to (short a is now, like in standard English), while long e, has moved toward, clashing with long i.