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and, in the case of the vowels that were already high vowels,
into diphthongs. The movement of the one type of low back

vowel to a mid front vowel is taken as supporting evidence by
both sides.

Why the Vowels Shifted equally controversial (possibly
even more controversial) is the explanation for why the Great

Vowel Shift happened. In one sense the name, coined by the

great linguist Otto Jesperson (he was Danish, but is still possibly
the greatest English linguist who ever lived), is misleading, as it

tends to suggest rapid or immediate change. And indeed, the

Shift occurred at lightning speed for a linguistic event: It is
usually dated from approximately 1500 to 1600, and

traditionally has been seen as occurring mostly from 1500 to
1550 (although newer linguistics textbooks hedge a bit and

spread it out over the 1500 to 1600 period). The traditional view,
which has not been overturned so much as questioned, was that

the Shift occurred over the course of a generation. But why? A

number of theories have been proposed. At the time of the Shift,
a major demographic change was affecting England. There was

mass immigration from the north to the south of England after
the Black Death and a similar shift in living patterns from rural

to urban environments. Although the plague [pleig] had spread
more rapidly in cities and towns, these began to grow rapidly in

size while many villages were completely abandoned.

Linguists theorize that the sudden arrival in the south of
many individuals with northern accents or the arrival of many

rural dwellers in urban areas triggered, somehow, a major

pronunciation change.
Another related theory is that the rise of the Middle Class

in London required the creation of a common dialect. Because
there was continual growth in the importance of trading and

commerce from the end of the fourteenth through the sixteenth
centuries, people needed to be able to communicate more clearly

in English. Thus a new kind of English pronunciation evolved

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