Many scholars have held that in late Middle English, in the London dialects from which Standard English grew there existed a vowel /y:/ developed from various native sources and/or used as a substitute for Old French or Anglo-Norman /y/. The aim of this article is to accurately review the relevant evidence adduced by E. J. Dobson and other scholars in favour of a variation between early Modern English /y:/ and /iu/ with a view to offering conclusions based on a direct presentation of the original sources. It will be shown that even the early writers on orthography and pronunciation who correctly describe a sound [y] (as they knew it from French, Scottish and Northern English, as well as from other languages) cannot be adduced as evidence for the existence of a vowel /y:/ in early Modern English.

许多学者认为，在中古英语晚期，在标准英语起源的伦敦方言中，存在一个元音 /y:/ 从各种本土来源发展而来和/或用作古法语或盎格鲁-诺曼语 /y/ 的替代品。本文的目的是准确回顾 EJ Dobson 和其他学者提出的支持早期现代英语 /y:/ 和 /iu/ 之间变化的相关证据，以期在直接呈现原文的基础上得出结论来源。将表明，即使是早期的正字法和发音作者正确地描述了一个声音 [y]（正如他们从法语、苏格兰语和北方英语以及其他语言中知道的那样），也不能作为存在的证据。早期现代英语中的元音 /y:/。