Middle English

The changes that occurred to vowels in ME were as follows:

1. Quantitative:

Reduction – weakening and disappearance of unstressed vowels. As far as the stress was mainly on the root the vowels in prefixes and suffixes got weak and underwent reduction. In unstressed position only two vowels were left – [ə] and [i]. They had never been contrasted.

E.g. ME tale [‘ta:l ə ], body [‘bod i ]

In NE sound [ə] (schwa) was dropped at the end of the words but the letter e was left in spelling to show the length of the preceding vowel.

Shortening – all long vowels became short before consonant clusters (NB!! except [ld, nd, mb] – before these clusters vowels remained long or if a vowel was short it became long)

E.g.

Other Consonant Clusters
OE	ME
fīftiζ	fi ft y (fifty)
fēdde	fe dd e (fed)
wīsdom	wi sd om (wisdom)

Lengthening (12^th – 13^th c.) – short vowels became long:

· before clusters [ld, nd, mb];

· in 2-syllable words, only to [e, o, a] in open stressed syllable

E.g.

Clusters [ld, nd, mb]	2-syllable words
OE	ME	OE	ME
cild	chī ld (child)	mete	mēte (meat)
findan	fī nd en (find)	open	ōpen (open)
climban	clī mb en (climb)	talu	tāle (tale)

2. Qualitative:

The system of vowels in ME were no longer symmetrical as it was in OE

Short Vowels

· [y] changed to [i] e.g. OE hyll – ME hill (hill);

· [æ] changed to [a] e.g. OE w æ s – ME was (was).

As a result:

i

e

a

o

u