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The bad–lad split is a phonological split of the Early Modern English short vowel phoneme /æ/ into a short /æ/ and a long /æː/. This split is found in some varieties of English in England and Australia. In Modern English, a new phoneme, /ɑː/, developed that did not exist in Middle English.
the short vowels indicated in Old English spelling as a , æ and ea ; the long equivalents ā , ēa , and often ǣ when directly followed by two or more consonants (indicated by ā+CC, ǣ+CC, etc.); occasionally, the long vowel ē when directly followed by two consonants, particularly when this vowel corresponded to West Saxon Old English ǣ ...
A table specifically covering the vowel history from Old English to Modern English, providing particular detail about the Modern English developments. A table specifically focusing on the history of Middle English diphthongs, covering the period from Old English to Modern English. This table only describes the changes in accented syllables.
Diagram of the changes in English vowels during the Great Vowel Shift. The Great Vowel Shift was a series of pronunciation changes in the vowels of the English language that took place primarily between the 1400s and 1600s [1] (the transition period from Middle English to Early Modern English), beginning in southern England and today having influenced effectively all dialects of English.
The following chart shows the primary developments of English vowels in the last 600 years, in more detail, since Late Middle English of Chaucer's time. The Great Vowel Shift can be seen in the dramatic developments from c. 1400 to 1600.
The following table shows the 24 consonant phonemes found in most dialects of English, plus /x/, whose distribution is more limited. Fortis consonants are always voiceless, aspirated in syllable onset (except in clusters beginning with /s/ or /ʃ/), and sometimes also glottalized to an extent in syllable coda (most likely to occur with /t/, see T-glottalization), while lenis consonants are ...
Old English had the short vowel /y/ and the long vowel /yː/, which were spelled orthographically with y . They contrasted with the short vowel /i/ and the long vowel /iː/, which were spelled orthographically with i . By Middle English, the two vowels /y/ and /yː/ merged with /i/ and /iː/ and left only the short–long pair /i/–/iː/.
In some modern English accents, significant pre-L breaking occurs when /l/ follows certain vowels (/iː/, /uː/, and diphthongs ending [ɪ] or [ʊ]). Here the vowel develops a centering offglide (an additional schwa) before the /l/. This may cause reel to be pronounced like real, and tile, boil and fowl to rhyme with dial, royal and vowel.