In this video, I examine the historical ‘MEET-MEAT’ contrast in English, and the ways in which some dialects have managed to retain it to some extent into modern times. Vowel contrasts and mergers are a big topic in historical linguistics, and I’ve tried to use this one as a bit of an ‘in’ to the concept in general. I’m hoping it will also appeal to learners of English, as it clarifies one of the many idiosyncrasies of the spelling system - the difference between ‘ee’ and ‘ea’ spellings despite their identical pronunciation in a lot of word pairs.