Great Vowel Shift

You know how sometimes words sound different when your parents or teachers say them than how you say them? Well, that's kind of what happened a long time ago in English. It's called the Great Vowel Shift.

A really long time ago, like thousands of years, people spoke a different version of English. But over time, the way people spoke started to change. One of the biggest changes was how people said their vowels.

Before the Great Vowel Shift, people said their vowels differently. For example, the word "bite" used to sound like "beet" and the word "mouse" used to sound like "moose." But over time, people started to say their vowels in a different way.

During the Great Vowel Shift, people started to say their vowels higher up in their mouths. So instead of saying "beet" they started saying "bite." And instead of saying "moose" they started saying "mouse."

This change happened slowly over hundreds of years. But eventually, it affected lots of words and the way people spoke English changed a lot.

So now we say "bite" and "mouse" instead of "beet" and "moose" like people did a really long time ago. It's like a secret code that changed over time and now we all speak a new version of English!