The close and mid-height front vowels of English (vowels of i and e type) have undergone a variety of changes over time and often vary by dialect. Developments involving long vowels Until Great Vowel Shift Middle English had a long close front vowel , and two long mid front vowels: the close-mid and the open-mid . The three vowels generally correspond to the modern spellings , and respectively, but other spellings are also possible. The spellings that became established in Early Modern English are mostly still used today, but the qualities of the sounds have changed significantly. The and generally corresponded to similar Old English vowels, and came from Old English or . For other possible histories, see English historical vowel correspondences. In particular, the long vowels sometimes arose from short vowels by Middle English open syllable lengthening or other processes. For example, team comes from an originally-long Old English vowel, and eat comes from an originally-short vowel that underwent lengthening. The distinction between both groups of words is still preserved in a few dialects, as is noted in the following section. Middle English was shortened in certain words. Both long and short forms of such words often existed alongside each other during Middle English. In Modern English the short form has generally become standard, but the spelling reflects the formerly-longer pronunciation. The words that were affected include several ending in d, such as bread, head, spread, and various others including breath, weather, and threat. For example, bread was in earlier Middle English, but came to be shortened and rhymed with bed. During the Great Vowel Shift, the normal outcome of was a diphthong, which developed into Modern English , as in mine and find. Meanwhile, became , as in feed, and of words like meat became , which later merged with in nearly all dialects, as is described in the following section. Meet–meat merger The meet–meat merger or the fleece merger is the merger of the Early Modern English vowel (as in meat) into the vowel (as in meet). The merger was complete in standard accents of English by about 1700. As noted in the previous section, the Early Modern/New English (ENE) vowel developed from Middle English via the Great Vowel Shift, and ENE was usually the result of Middle English (the effect in both cases was a raising of the vowel). The merger saw ENE raised further to