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The Early Modern English (EModE) period is when English transformed from a language of enormous dialectal variation into one approaching a recognisable standard. It is the period of Shakespeare, the King James Bible, the first dictionaries and grammars, and intense debate about what English should be. For A-Level English Language, this period is crucial because it illuminates the processes of standardisation and codification that produced the language we use today.
The Great Vowel Shift (GVS) was a systematic change in the pronunciation of long vowels that occurred between approximately 1400 and 1700, fundamentally altering the sound system of English.
The GVS is the single most important phonological change in the history of English. During the shift, all long vowels moved their place of articulation upward in the mouth, and the two highest vowels (/iː/ and /uː/) "broke" into diphthongs:
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