1

Lecture 2. Historical Background and the Dialects of Old English. Old English
Phonetic System

1. Historical watersheds of the OE period

2. The Dialects of Old English and written records
3. The Old English alphabet
4. Old English phonetics: vowel and consonant systems

Old English is the term denoting the form of the English language used in
England for approximately seven centuries (c450–1066 ad). It is a synthetic language
(like Latin) rather than an analytic one (like modern English): it relies on inflections (or
endings) on words to denote their function in the sentence.
We rely for our knowledge of Old English on a relatively small number of
manuscripts which have survived the ravages of time. These manuscripts reflect a
living spoken language which was as familiar to its speakers as modern English is to us
today.
The term Old English, although it identifies a distinctive form of the English
language, covers in fact a wide range of linguistic usages. In a period marked by
enormous changes—political, social, and cultural—it is hardly surprising to find that the
language too was far from stable. This lecture will analyse the Old English language
both in terms of its linguistic characteristics and also in relation to the external factors
which influenced it.
A useful framework within which one might examine the development of the Old
English language is provided by four historical watersheds, each of which had
significant linguistic implications.
 First, the invasion of Britain (in the mid-fifth century) by the Germanic peoples
who became the Anglo-Saxons can be linked to the ensuing dialectal diversity
which came to be so characteristic of this period of the language.
 Second, the coming of Christianity to Anglo- Saxon England in 597 ad made
available the Roman alphabet for Old English writing, where previously only
runes had been available.
 Third, the reign of King Alfred the Great in the West Saxon kingdom (871–99 ad)
created a culture in which Old English became recognized as a language of
prestige and status in its own right.
 Fourth, the Norman Conquest (1066 ad) precipitated developments in the
language which would steer it ultimately towards what we now know as Middle
English.

The Germanic Conquest of Britain. The Dialects of Old English and Written
Records.
The history of the English language really started with the arrival of three
Germanic tribes who invaded Britain during the 5th century AD. These tribes, the
Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, crossed the North Sea from what today is Denmark
 2
and northern Germany. At that time the inhabitants of Britain spoke a Celtic language.
But most of the Celtic speakers were pushed west and north by the invaders – mainly
into what is now Wales, Scotland and Ireland, leaving behind a few Celtic words. Celtic
words survived mainly in place and river names (Devon, Dover, Kent, Trent, Severn,
Avon, Thames). These Celtic languages survive today in the Gaelic languages of
Scotland and Ireland and in Welsh. The Angles came from Englaland and their
language was called Englisc - from which the words England and English are derived.
The invading Germanic tribes spoke similar languages, which in Britain
developed into what we now call Old English. However, Old English was not an
entirely uniform language. The settlement of the various Germanic tribes in different
regions of the country was an important factor in the linguistic diversity which
characterized Old English, since dialectal distinctiveness can be linked to geographical
areas. Four major dialects of Old English emerged, Northumbrian in the north of
England, Mercian in the Midlands, West Saxon in the south and west, and Kentish in
the southeast.
Northumbrian and Mercian are found in the region north of the Thames settled
by the Angles. They possess certain features in common and are sometimes known
collectively as Anglian. But Northumbrian, spoken north of the Humber, and Mercian,
between the Humber and the Thames, each possess certain distinctive features as well.
Unfortunately we know less about them than we should like since they are preserved
mainly in charters (chronicles), runic inscriptions, a few brief fragments of verse, and
some interlinear translations of portions of the Bible. The best known epic poem
“Beowulf”, though came down to us with a significant tinge of Wessex dialect
insertions and is still thought to have been originally composed in Anglian –
Northumbrian.

Part of Beowulf, a poem written in Old English.

Kentish is known from still scantier remains and is the dialect of the Jutes in the
southeast. The Kentish dialect is relatively poorly represented by the 8 th century glosses
of Bede’s “Ecclesiastical History of the English people”. This history was originally
written in Latin and translated later into a West Saxon dialect. Translations of Psalms
and some old charters (chronicles) are also available.
The only dialect in which there is an extensive collection of texts is West Saxon,
which was the dialect of the West Saxon kingdom in the southwest. Nearly all of Old
English literature is preserved in manuscripts transcribed in this region. The Wessex
dialect is represented best of all - in the number of writings, their volume and in
divergence of styles. King Alfred and his associates contributed by their personal
writings as well as in translations - "Pastoral Care" ("Cura Patoralis"); "World
 3
History" ("Historiarium adversus paganos") which also contains an original text
composed by King Alfred himself, "Consolation of Philosophy"; "Ecclesiastical
History"; the earlier part of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.
Later period in the history is represented by Aelfric's works (they were also
writen in the West-Saxon dialect) - Gospels, Homilies, Lives of Saints, Latin grammar,
Old Testament; Old Saxon Chronicles and Wulfstan's "Homilies ", one of which
"Sermo Lupi ad Anglos" ("The Wulf's Sermon to the English "), written directly after the
Scandinavian conquest and permeated by genuine concern about the fate of the ravaged
country, is especially famous.
The dialects probably reflect differences already present in the continental homes
of the invaders. There is evidence, however, that some features developed in England
after the settlement. The difference between the dialects was found in phonology,
choice of words and in the use of some grammatical forms. With the ascendancy of the
West Saxon kingdom, the West Saxon dialect attained something of the position of a
literary standard, and both for this reason and because of the abundance of the materials
it is made the basis of the study of Old English.

The Old English Alphabet

The system of writing in Old English was changed with the introduction of
Christianity. Before that, the English used the runes - symbols that were very vague,
that might at the same time denote a sound, a syllable or a whole word.

Runes are the 24 letters (later 16 in Scandinavia and 30 or more in Anglo-Saxon

England) of an ancient Germanic alphabet used from the 2d or 3d to the 16th
century. Perhaps derived ultimately from the Etruscan alphabet, the runic alphabet
was used mainly for charms and inscriptions, on stone, wood, metal, or bone. Each
letter had a name, which was itself a meaningful word. The rune f, for instance, could
stand for either the sound "f" or the fehu, "cattle," which was the name given to the
rune.
They were of specific shape, designed to be cut on the wooden sticks, and only
few people knew how to make them and how to interpret them. Runic inscriptions that
came down from the oldest settlers on the isles are few, and the language (as it is
interpreted) is not what might be called Old English – it was rather an ancient language
which might be very close to the languages of other Germanic tribes. Three signs
developed from runes were added to an Old English alphabet.
Though the development of an Old English alphabet was based on the Latin
alphabet, carried to the Anglo-Saxons and Germans in the 7 th century by the Roman
Catholic church. It was one of the most profound effects of the arrival of Christianity in
Britain on the English language. The oldest surviving texts in the English language
written with Latin letters date back to c.700
So the letters of the Old English alphabet were as follows, and they denoted the
following sounds
1. a [a] Зān (go) and (and)
2. æ [æ] ðæt (that)
3. b [b] bān (bone)
4. c [k] caru (care) and [tf] before front vowels cild (child)
 4
5. d [d] dēor (deer; in old times animal)
6. e [e] mete (meat; in old times food)
7. f [f] findan (find) and [v] in intervocal position lufu (love)
8. З was one of the remnants of the runic alphabet called joh (yoke), and it had
several readings
[g] Зān (go) at the beginning of the word before back vowels
[j] Зēar (year) before and after front vowels
[γ] daЗas (days) between two back vowels
9. h [h] hām (home), him (him), huntoð (hunting)
10. i [i] hit (it), him (him), lim (limb)
11. 1 [1] lytel (little), lif (life), lufu (love)
12. m [m] man (man), macian (make)
13. n [n] nama (name), nēah (near)
14. o [o] fōn (catch), mōna (moon)
15. p [p] pera (pear), up (up)
16. r [r] riht (right), rinЗ an (ring), wyrcan (work)
17. s [s] sittan (sit), sinЗ an (sing)
18. t [t] trēo (tree), tellan (tell)
19. ð was developed from the rune thorn [θ] ðæt (that), ðirda (third), ðin (thing);
[ð] in the intervocal position ōðer (other), brōðor (brother)
20. u [u] wudu (wood)
21. w [w] in original Old English texts it was p wynn from the rune meaning joy:
winnan (win), weorðan (become)
22. x [ks] oxa (ox)
23. y [u] fyllan (fill), lytel (little)

The stress in the Old English was dynamic, and shifted to the first syllable.
Originally in common Indo-European the stress was free; the stress in the Old English
words was always on the first syllable (verbs with prefixes, however, had the stress on
the root vowel). The nouns having the same prefix had the stress on the first syllable
too: and swarian - 'andswaru.
The Old English orthographical system (OE writing) seems in general to have
been closely linked to phonemic representation: every letter indicated a separate sound.
This principle, however, was not always observed. Some OE letters indicated two or
more sounds, even distinct phonemes, e.g. З stood for different phonemes: [g], [j], [γ].
The introduction of the Roman alphabet which was brought to England with the
Christian mission had enormous linguistic implications for Old English, and indeed
paved the way for the kind of visionary project to translate Latin works into the
vernacular.

Old English Phonetics

Old English Vowel System
The system of vowels in Old English included short and long vowels
(monophthongs) a æ e i o u y å – a æ e i o u y. Sound å is a special short sound met
 5
only before nasals in closed syllables, e.g. monn (a man). Besides there are four short
and four long diphthongs: ea eo ie io – ea eo ie io.

Specific features of the vowel system of that period

1) There was an exact parallelism between long vowels and the corresponding short
vowels.
2) The length of the vowel was a phonemic quality. The words having long and
short vowels differed in meaning: Ʒod (god) - Ʒōd (good), west (west) - wēst
(waste), for (preposition for) - fōr (past tense of the verb fāran - go).
3) Old English vowel phonemes can be traced back to Common Germanic
phonemes. For example, OE monophthongs are, as a rule, a further development
of some Common Germanic monophthongs: (OE [æ] dæз from Common
Germanic [a] dags). Some OE monophthongs developed from Common
Germanic diphthongs: OE [a] ras (wrote) from Common Germanic [ai] rais.
4) Some of the OE vowels had counterparts in other Indo-European languages. So,
for instance, such sounds as i, u can be found in similar words in other Germanic
and non-Germanic Indo-European languages: Old English niman (Ukr. знімати);
Old English sunu (Lat. sunus). But the majority of sounds deviated from the way
they were pronounced in other languages.
5) Various changes occurred in the Old English phonology. These can be called
spontaneous, independent, and assimilative, influenced by the surrounding
sounds.
Assimilative changes are the changes that occurred in the language in specific
surroundings - the sound might change when it was preceded or followed by some other
sound or sound cluster. There are two types of assimilation - regressive and
progressive assimilation. If a sound influences the preceding sound, the assimilation is
regressive, if it influences the following it sound - it is called progressive assimilation.
Both types of assimilation are found in Old English.
An example of assimilative changes is vowel mutation or umlaut – the change
of one vowel to another caused by the influence of a vowel in the following syllable. It
leads to complete change of the vowel quality.
Types of mutations are:
1) palatal mutation (i-umlaut). The essence of this change is that a back sound,
a, o or u, changes its quality if there is a front sound i or j in the next syllable.
Especially frequent are the changes in the roots of the verbs influenced by the i-sound
of the suffix of the infinitive –ian. The vowel was fronted and made narrower so as to
approach the articulation of i.
a > æ; a > e sandian - sendan (to send)
namnian - nemnan (to name)
talian - tælan - tellan (to tell)
ā>æ lārian - læran (to learn, to teach)
hālian - hælan (to heal)
o > oe > e ofstian - efstan (to hurry)
dohter - dehter (dative case of daughter)
ō > oe > ē wōpian - wēpan (to weep)
 6
dōmian - dēman (to deem, to judge)
u>y fullian - fyllan (to fill)
ū>y cūðian - cyðan (to announce)

2) Back, or Velar Mutation (u-umlaut)

The formula of mutation here reminds very much that of palatal mutation, but the
difference is that the syllable that influenced the preceding vowel contained a back
vowel – a, o or u. It results in the change of the root vowel into a diphthong. Not all the
dialects had this mutation, and the process was not universal.
i > io hira - hiora (their);
silufr - siolufr (silver)
e > eo hefon - heofon (heaven)
efor - eofor (boar)
a > ea saru - searu (armour)

3) Mutation before h (h-mutation)

It is change of the root vowel caused by the influence of the sound h. Sounds a
and e that preceded h underwent several changes, mutating to diphthongs ea, ie and
finally were reduced to i/y: - naht - neaht - niht - nieht - nyht (night).
The words with such mutation are not very numerous, still we cannot ignore them
altogether. It is observed in the past tense of the verb ma an (may) meahte - miehte -
mihte - myhte and several other words.

2. Breaking (fracture). This is the process of formation of a diphthong from a simple

short vowel when it is followed by a specific consonant cluster
a + r+cons, 1+cons. => ea
æ + h+cons. => ea
e + h final => eo
a > ea
hard > heard (hard); arm > earm (arm); half > healf (half); warm > wearm (warm)
e > eo
hairto, herte > heorte (heart); erl > eorl (earl); fehhtan > feohtan (fight)

3. Diphthongization after palatal consonants. It is a process which turned a

monophthongs into diphthongs after palatal consonants [sk], [k] and [j] in spelling c, sc,
j:
a > ea skal – sceal (shall); scacan –sceacan (shake); scamu – sceamu (shame)
ā > ēa skaggwon – scēawian (to show)
e > ie jefan – jiefan (give); jetan – jietan (get)
æ > ea jæf – jeaf (gave); jæt – jeat (gate)
æ > ēa jær – jēar (year)
o > eo scort – sceort (short)

4. Contraction of vowels. It happened when the consonant h, placed between two

vowels, was lost. As a result, two vowels met and collided into one long vowel.
 7
a + h + vowel > ēa slahan – slēan (slay)
e + h + vowel > ēo sehen – sēon (see)
i + h + vowel > ēo tihan – tēon (accuse)
o + h + vowel > ō fohan – fōn (catch)

5. Lengthening of vowels. It happened before the clusters nd, ld, mb

fīndan (find); cīld (child); clīmban (climb). If there was a consonant after this cluster the
vowel was not lengthened: cildru (children)
Further development of the sound system led to diphthongization of long vowels,
and that explains the exception in the rules of reading the sounds in the closed syllables
in the present-day English (the words like climb, find, bold, told, comb)

6. Gradation or ablaut – grammatical interchange of vowels in different forms of the

verb and in word-formation. This was frequently found in making past tenses and
participles of some verbs, e.g. fīndan – funden (past participle) (find)

Old English Consonant System

The Old English consonant system consisted of some 14 consonant phonemes
denoted by the letters p, b, m, f, t, d, n, s, r, 1, þ (ð), c, 3, h.

The consonant system in Old English manifested the following peculiarities

1. The relatively small number of consonant phonemes — only 14 phonemes.
2. The absence of affricates and fricative consonants which we now find in the
language such as [t∫] [d3], [∫], [3].
3. Dependence of the quality of the phoneme upon its environment in the word.
If the first two points require no particular explanation, the last point calls for a special
comment. Among the 14 consonant phonemes that existed in Old English there were at
least four that gave us positional variants which stand rather wide apart. These are
phonemes denoted by the letters f, þ (ð), s, 3.
The phonemes denoted by the letters f, þ (ð), or s are voiced or voiceless
depending upon their phonetic position. They are generally voiced in the so-called
"intervocal position" that is between vowels and voiceless otherwise. For example: hlaf
[f] (bread) — hlaford [v] (lord)
The system of consonant phonemes that we observe in Old English involves
certain peculiarities that are typical of the majority of Germanic dialects which set them
(those Germanic dialects and Old English among them) apart from the majority of the
Indo-European languages. Those peculiarities were mainly accounted for by two
linguists — Jacob Grimm and Karl Verner, hence they are generally referred to as
"Grimm's law" (or the First Germanic Consonant Shift) and "Verner's Jaw".

The First Consonant Shift (Grimm’s Law)

Voiceless fricatives appeared in Germanic languages as a result of the First
Consonant Shift (Grimm’s Law).
In 1822 a German philologist, Jacob Grimm, formulated an explanation that
systematically accounted for the correspondences between certain consonants in the
 8
Germanic languages and those found for example in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin.
According to Grimm, the quality of some sounds (namely plosives) changed in all
Germanic languages while the place of their formation remained unchanged. Thus,
voiced aspirated plosives (stops) bh, dh, gh lost their aspiration and changed into pure
voiced plosives b, d, g, voiced plosives became voiceless p, t, k and voiceless plosives
turned into voiceless fricatives f, θ, h.
bh, dh, gh → b, d, g Sanskrit bhrata → Goth brōðar, Old English brōðor (brother)
b, d, g → p, t, k Latin granum → Goth kaurn, Old English corn
p, t, k → f, θ, h Latin pater → Goth fadar, Old English fædar (father)
There are some exceptions to Grimm’s Law: p, t, k did not change into f, θ, h, if
they were preceded by s (tres – ðreo, but sto – standan).

Verner’s Law
Certain apparent exceptions to Grimm’s Law were subsequently explained by
Karl Verner. It was noted that if an Indo-European voiceless stop was preceded by an
unstressed vowel, the voiceless fricative which developed from it in accordance with
Grimm’s Law became voiced, and later this voiced fricative became a voiced plosive
(stop). That is:
IE PG OE
p–v– b
t– ð– d
k–γ– g
Latin pater has a Germanic correspondence fadar, fædar because the stress in the word
was on the second syllable, and so voiceless plosive was preceded by an unstressed
vowel.
Verner’s Law explains why some verbs in Old English changed their root
consonant in the past tense and in the Participle II – originally, these grammatical forms
had the stress on the second syllable. Hence the basic forms of such verbs as snīðan
(cut) were snīðan – snāð – snidon – sniden.

Changes in Consonants

1. Voicing and devoicing of fricatives – it is caused by the position of a fricative sound

in a word. A careful study of the OE sound system has revealed that a set of letters f, s
and þ (also known as ð) stood for two sounds each: a voiced and voiceless consonant.
That is f – [f ] [v]; s – [s] [z]; þ (ð) – [θ] [ð].
A fricative is read as voiceless initially and finally, but it becomes voiced
intervocally and also between a vowel and a voiced consonant.
e.g. [f] – fāran (travel); of (of) [s] – seon (see) [θ] – ðæt (that)
[v] – ofer (over) [z] – rīsan (rise) [ð] – ōðer (other)

2. Rhotacism – transformation of IE sound [z] into G sound [r]

e.g. wesun – weren (now were, but was)
maiza – māra (now more, but most)
This process was in North and West Germanic, but not in Gothic (East Germanic).
 9
e.g. Goth. softiza – OE softra (softer)

3. Palatization of consonants (or softening) – touched only some consonants c [ḱ’], sc

[sḱ’], cЗ [kǵ’]. They were palatalised or softened before front vowels e, i, y. In the
course of time towards the end of the OE period the palatal consonants developed into
sibilants and affricates.
c [k’] → [t∫] cild (child) In Early OE it was pronounced [k’ild]. In the late OE [t∫ild]
sc [sk’] → [∫] sceal (shall)
cЗ [kg’] → [dЗ] brycЗ (bridge)
Back [γ] sound before palatal consonants turned into [j] – Зear (year)

4. Loss of consonants in certain position. Besides h that was lost in intervocal

position, the sounds n and m were lost before h, entailing the lengthening of the
preceding vowel:
bronhte – brōhte (brought) onðer – ōðer (other)
fimf – fif (five) munð – mūð (mouth)
The nasals were not lost in German, so the corresponding German words are fünf, ander
and Mund.
Other examples of similar loss were the loss of ‫ ־‬before d and n; the vowel was
lengthened, too: mæ‫־‬den – mæden (maiden);

5. Metathesis of r. In several OE words the following change of the position of

consonants takes place:
cons. + r + vowel > cons. + vowel + r
ðridda – ðirda (third)
brunnan – burnan (burn)
brenna – beorn (burn)
Metathesis of sounds is observed also with other sounds:
ascian – axian (ask)
wascan – waxan (wash)

6. West Germanic germination of consonants

In the process of palatal mutation, when j was lost and the preceding vowel was short,
the consonant after it was doubled (geminated):
fullian – fyllan (fill) salian – sellan (sell) talian – tellan (tell)