, originally the same word; with with in many varieties of English vs. pith with . The status of the sources in Chaucer's Middle English is as follows: The first three sources (borrowing, dialect mixture, analogy) were already established. As indicated by versification, the loss of final was normal in Chaucer's time before a vowel-initial word and optional elsewhere; it is assumed that it is a poetic relic and that the loss of final was already complete in spoken English (a similar situation to Modern French; see e muet). The reduction of double consonants was apparently about to occur. The sandhi effects on unstressed function words occurred somewhat later, in the transition to Modern English. The strongest distinction was between and because of the large number of borrowings from Old French. It is also the only distinction that is consistently indicated in spelling, as and respectively. sometimes appears as , especially in borrowings from Greek and sometimes as . Both and are spelled . Vowels Monophthongs Middle English had a distinction between close-mid and open-mid long vowels but no corresponding distinction in short vowels. Although the behavior of open syllable lengthening seems to indicate that the short vowels were open-mid in quality, according to Lass, they were close-mid. (There is some direct documentary evidence: in early texts, open-mid was spelled , but both and were spelled .) Later, the short vowels were in fact lowered to become open-mid vowels, as is shown by their values in Modern English. The front rounded vowels existed in the southwest dialects of Middle English, which developed from the standard Late West Saxon dialect of Old English, but not in the standard Middle English dialect of London. The close vowels and are direct descendants of the corresponding Old English vowels and were indicated as . (In the standard dialect of Middle English, the sounds became and ; in Kentish, they became and .) may have existed in learned speech in loanwords from Old French, also spelled , but, as it merged with , becoming in Modern English, rather than , it can be assumed that was the vernacular pronunciation that was used in French-derived words. The mid-front rounded vowels likewise had existed in the southwest dialects but not in the standard Middle English dialect of London. They were indicated as . Sometime in the 13th century, they became unrounded and merged with the normal front