[Sca-cooks] Pronunciation

[Jane Williams]

Jane Williams <jane at williams.nildram.co.uk> wrote :

> > You see, there was this thing called the Great Vowel Shift,
> > that truly did change vowel tones considerably.
>
> Now that sounds fascinating! Tell me more?

Snce then Google has told me more, and it really is fascinating (or I'm easily amused). May well help with reading old texts.

"The Great Vowel Shift was a massive sound change affecting the long vowels of English during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries"

Short explanation relevant to Chaucer here:
http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/vowels.html

and a full site about it, with sound files, here:
http://www.furman.edu/~mmenzer/gvs/index.htm