This relates to the verbs make and take. Both very common words in the English language, but they are not as related as their spelling and pronunciation might suggest.
Make has developed from the Old English verb macian and even further back West Germanic dialect forms such as makon and makia.
Take, on the other hand, has developed from the Old Norse verb taka.
In Standard English, both make and take are pronounced with a diphthong /ei/. A diphthong is a sound that moves from one vowel sound to another, hence the "diph" meaning two: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphthong
The diphthong in make and take starts with the vowel sound /e/ as in "bet"and moves (or glides as linguists put it) to end up at the vowel sound in /i/ as in bit, so we get /meik/ and /teik/. This is the case for Standard English, not so everywhere! And it wasn't always like this. Make and take used to be pronounced much more like the Old English and Old Norse forms, but the vowel sounds changed over time. Have a look at this link to the Great Vowel Shift: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift it's a bit technical, but interesting nonetheless.
Interestingly, the vowel sound in macian was somewhere between the /a/ in "car" in Standard English and "car" in the Warrington dialect. The other Germanic languages also developed their word for make from the same root:
To make:
- German - machen
- Dutch - maken
To take
- Danish - tage
- Icelandic - taka
- Norwegian - ta
- Swedish - ta
So, how do you pronounce make and take?
Personally, I pronounce make in the same way as Standard English, but I pronounce take as /tek/.What this means is that my pronunciation of make is the most modern pronunciation, but my pronunciation of take is much older.
