The Vowel That English Lost

Comments · 637

• 在逃

  @在逃狐狸 · 3 weeks ago

  As a native Mandarin speaker, the meat–meet merger point is probably the most illuminating part of this video for me. English spelling often looks almost deliberately chaotic from the outside, but if ea and ee once represented genuinely different vowels, then spellings like meat and meet suddenly make much more historical sense.

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• DE

  @derelbenkoenig · 3 weeks ago

  "the noun see, as in the holy see of the Vatican"

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• CA

  @carolinejames7257 · 3 weeks ago

  If someone had told my youthful self, in years long before the internet, that I&apos;d one day sit and listen to an English scholar of linguistics expound on changing vowel qualities in various English dialects over time, and be fascinated by it, I&apos;d have thought them mad. Yet, here &nbsp;we are all the same. <br><br>Thank you, Simon. Kudos.

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• KA

  @KateGladstone · 3 weeks ago

  Of relevance: a town in New York State, whose name is pronounced (and spelled) “Saybrook” was — at the time of its founding &nbsp;— spelled “Seabrook” but apparently &nbsp;pronounced as we pronounce “Saybrook” today.

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• TH

  @TheBigFeen · 3 weeks ago

  Good job Trump gave that clarification, I thought that he was saying ‘yes’ in Spanish.

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• GE

  @georgeosborn3223 · 3 weeks ago

  Every &quot;c&quot; in Pacific Ocean is pronounced differently.

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• TL

  @tlkformerly · 3 weeks ago

  i didnt expect to get jumpscared at the beginning

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• DJ

  @djtfot · 3 weeks ago

  I wonder how many non-linguists see the title of a Simon video like this one and say out loud, &quot;I was just thinking about this the other day!&quot; Because I was actually thinking about the meet-meat merger earlier this week, as one does, on my way to work.

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• H0

  @h0mewrecker · 3 weeks ago

  C? As in the low level programming language?

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• CH

  @charlesjerome4609 · 3 weeks ago

  As someone who&apos;s writing a thesis about a related topic, I am incredibly thankful for your consistent inclusion of sources. Too often, I see a pop account that lacks sources and forces me to spend far too long figuring out how right they are. I needn&apos;t do that with you.<br>Also, thanks for sparking my interest in English&apos;s history to begin with.

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• JU

  @junegwalthney6992 · 2 weeks ago

  Every time I hear Simon changing his accent, I&apos;m extremely impressed, and assume I could never do the same myself. <br><br>But this time, because it was all about vowels, I thought of the children&apos;s song, &quot;Apples and Bananas.&quot; The song is just the phrase &quot;I like to eat apples and bananas,&quot; initially said normally, and then you replace all the vowels (or just the stressed vowels, depending on the version) with the same vowel sound. And not only was this easy and fun to do as a child, I have no problems doing it now. So maybe I have underestimated my own abilities to pay attention to and play with vowels.

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• TH

  @The-Spyglass-9 · 3 weeks ago (edited)

  The dialect around York is pretty neat...also I remember hearing Shakespeare in its &quot;native&quot; English for the first time and it made much more sense especially in the cadences and the rhymes.

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