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A comment on Great Vowel Shift. Parent comment

Re:Great Vowel Shift by thaumasiotes on Friday April 06, 2018 @11:02PM (#16779171)
> In English, most vowel letters end up being diphthongs, and speakers have trouble pronouncing vowels without putting a diphthong-like "curve" to the end of the vowel.

This is overstated. I'll repeat that same sentence with diphthongs replaced by underscores:

In English, m_st v_wel letters end up being diphthongs, and speakers have trouble pron__ncing v_wels with__t putting a diphthong-l_ke "curve" to the end of the v_wel.

And "pronouncing" and "without" use digraphs for the diphthong. But even counting them, or double-counting them, or counting the "e" in like as also "being a diphthong", that doesn't look like "most vowel letters" to me.

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Re:Great Vowel Shift by lobster_johnson on Friday April 06, 2018 @11:38PM (#16779259)
The point wasn't to pedantically count diphthongs, it's the idea that English is biased towards them in a way that Germanic languages aren't, and which affects their pronouncation if left uncorrected. If it helps, replace "most" with "many".

This all depends on dialect, of course. Words like "ride" can occur both as diphthong (/ɹaɪd/) and monophthong (/ɹa:d/). Southern American dialects have things like vowel breaking that further puts a spin on vowels.

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