Great is one of the few common English words in which "ea" is pronounced /eɪ/ (ay). Why is this pronunciation associated with this spelling?
As an aside, I remember from researching for my answer to a previous question that a Middle English spelling of great was grete. Was it ever pronounced that way?
Best Answer
First, I don't quite agree with this statement:
Break and steak are pretty common, and both have the /eɪ/ sound.
That aside, this goes back to the Great Vowel Shift, which is the cause of many of the peculiarities of English spelling. The linked Wikipedia article gives plenty of information, but the short version is that while most words with "ea" shifted to the /i/ sound, as in beak, some didn't, possibly because of the influence of the consonant following "ea". Great, break, and steak all have plosive consonants after the vowel; the "r" in bear and swear pulls the sound of "ea" in those words a different way.
And yes, I know, beak also has a plosive consonant, and fear ends in an "r". Changes in natural language are rarely consistent or easily explained, and this is one case where we just have to accept the fact that some words changed their pronunciation in a certain way and others, for whatever reasons, either stayed the same or changed in other ways. In other words, to quote Seth Lerer in his lectures on the History of English (2008):