Litlovers Blog You Say Potato. I say Po...

It's coming! No, wait! It's already here. By my reckoning, we're in the midst of the next GREAT VOWEL SHIFT. Well, maybe not "great," but a vowel shift, nonetheless.I'm referring to the pronunciation of the letters e and a—not the long forms as in meet or mate, but the short forms, met or mat.You might ask, what's the Great Vowel Shift? Starting in the 1400s and into the 1700s, vowel sounds in England underwent a shift. No one knows exactly when or where or why, but the end result was a noticeable change in vowel pronunciation.A few examples: