LECTURE 4

THE SOUND SYSTEM OF OLD ENGLISH

1.THE PRONUNCIATION OF OLD ENGLISH

OE script used the six vowel symbols a, e, i, o, u, y, and the seventh one was æ,
called “ash”. All of these could represent both long and short vowels. The probable
pronunciations represented by the symbols are shown in Table 1. The pronunciations
are those of West Saxon.

Table 1. The vowels sounds of Old English, Early West Saxon

Symbol Pronunciation Resembling the vowel of

a [a] French la, German mann

æ [æ] RP hat
e [ε] French elle, German Bett
i [ι] English pin
o [] English law (shortened)
u [u] English put
y [y] French cru, German Hütte
ā [α:] English far
æ [æ:] London English bad
ē [e:] German zehn
ī [i:] English tree
ō [o:] German wo
ū [u:] English food
y [y:] German führen

All the symbols represent pure vowels, not diphthongs. To represent diphthongs,
the Anglo-Saxons used diagraphs (sequences of two symbols): ea, eo, io and ie, that
can be both short and long. Cf.:

ēa, ēo, īo, īe

ĕa, ĕo, ĭo, ĭe
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Old English script normally used 16 consonant symbols, which in modern

editions are usually reproduced as b, c, d, f, g, h, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, þ, ð and w. For w the
scribes used the runic symbol “wynn”, and for g they used and some modern editions
retain these.
OE had no symbol v: the symbol f was used to represent both [f] and [v]. The
reason is that, in Old English, [f] and [v] were members of the same phoneme. When
this phoneme occurred within a word (initially or finally) before a voiced sound, and
was not doubled, it was pronounced [v]; in all other positions it was pronounced [f]:

[f]: fæder, fīf “five”, hæft “handle”, etc.

[v]: giefan “to give””, seofon “seven”, lifde “he lived”.

There were two other such pairs in OE. There was symbol s, but no normally a
symbol z, and for a similar reason: [s] and [z] were members of the same phoneme.
The rules for their distribution were exactly the same as for [f] and [v]. The third pair
that behaved in this way were the voiceless [θ] and the voiced [ð]. To represent these
phoneme, the scribes used two symbols: the runic symbol þ, called “thorn” and the
symbol ð, called “eth”. They did not however used one of these symbols for the
voiceless sound and the other for the voiced, but used them indiscriminately.
The letter k was not normally used, [k] being represented by c.

NOTE I: All Old Germanic consonants can be both short and long.
Long consonants are called geminates, they are shown in texts through
doubling.
NOTE II: In all West Germanic languages almost any consonant could
be geminated (doubled) before a following j, and before other
consonants as well. In addition to simple consonants we also have to
reckon with the doubles pp, tt, kk. This distinction is important, as the
geminates were affected quite differently by the consonant shift than the
singles were.
NOTE III: At the end of the word and before consonants geminates
become short consonants. Cf.: rinnan – ran, essan – as, etc.
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SOUND CHANGES IN OLD ENGLISH

Old English shows certain phonological developments of its own compared with
the other Germanic languages. The PG diphthongs were changed in OE. For example:

PG ai > OE ā: Gothic stains; OE stān

PG au > OE ēa: ON draumr; OE drēam

In prehistoric Old English a number of combinative sound-changes took place.

One with far-reaching effect was front mutation or – i-umlaut. This was a series of
changes to vowels which took place when there was an i, ī or j in the following
syllable. Subsequently, the i, ī or j disappeared, or changed to e, but their original
presence can be established by examining the cognate words in other languages. Front
mutation, e.g. accounts for the difference in vowel between PDE dole and deal. In OE
they are dāl “portion” and dælan “to divide”, in which the æ is due to front mutation.
The change from ā to æ was a movement to a closer and more frontal vowel, and
this is the general direction of the changes caused by front mutation: it was obviously a
kind of assimilation, the affected vowels being moved to a place of articulation nearer
to that of the following vowel or j. Thus ū became fronted to y, a change which
accounts for the different vowels of mouse and mice; the original plural form was
*mūsiz, but the i caused the ū to change to y; then the ending *-iz was lost, giving the
OE plural mys.
Similarly, front mutation changed short u to y; this change is reflected in the
different vowels of PRE full and fill, which in Old English were full and fyllan (<
earlier *fulljan). Other pairs or words illustrating the front mutation of u to y are OE
fox “fox” and fyxen “vixen”.
Front mutation changed ō to ē, and this accounts for the different vowel of PDE
food (OE fōd) and to feed (OE fēdan). Other such pairs in Present-Day English are
doom and deem, goose and geese, tooth and teeth, blood and bleed, book and beech.
Finally front mutation changed short a, æ, o, which all became e; modern pairs
illustrating these changes include man and men, Canterbury and Kent, long and
length, tale and tell.

Other combinative changes in prehistoric English caused the diphthongization of

pure vowels, often with different results in different dialects.
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Breaking or Fracture
Breaking affected vowels before /l/ + consonant, /r/ + consonant, and /h/. So West
Saxon and Kentish have the forms ceald “cold, earm “arm”, and eahta “eight”. The
Anglian dialects, however had unbroken vowels in many positions, as in cald, æhta, etc.
Compare: ā ō ǎ

1. Diphthong [ea] was developed from [æ] – positional variant of the phoneme [a]

before l + consonant >ea :

sealt < sælt < salt “salt”;
healdan < hældan < haldan “to hold”;

before r + consonant
wearm < wærm < warm
scearp < scærp < scarp “sharp”

before h
seah < sæh < sah “he saw”
meahte < mæhte < mahte “might”

2. Diphthong [eo] was developed from [e]

before l + velar [k] or [h]

meolcan < melcan “to milk”
sealh < selh “seal”

before r + consonant
heorte < herte “heart”
steorra < sterra “star”

before h
feoh < feh “cattle”
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VELAR UMLAUT or BACK MUTATION

At a later date than front mutation there was a third type of diphthongization
called velar, which was caused by an unstressed back vowel in the following syllable,
when only a single syllable intervened; this process accounts for the diphthongs in
such forms as heofon “heaven”. It occurred extensively in Kentish and Anglian, but in
West Saxon is found only before a limited number of consonants. The exact dates of
these sound changes are unknown, but they must have taken place sometime between
the fifth century and the middle of the eighth century.

[a] > [ea]: caru, cearu

[e] > [eo]: fela, feola; heofon < hefon, etc.

PALATAL DIPHTHONGIZATION

Another prehistoric change was the diphthongization of some front vowels after
initial [j] and palatalized [k’], as in West Saxon geaf “he gave”, giefan “to give”, gēar
“year”. The change also took place in Northumbrian in some positions, but not in
Kentish and Mercian before front mutation.

[e] > [ie]: Mercian gefan “give”, West Saxon giefan;

Mercian sceld “shield”, West Saxon scield

[æ] > [ea]: Mercian gæf “he gave”, West Saxon geaf;
Mercian scæl “shall”, West Saxon sceal;

[a] > [ea]: Mercian cald “cold”, West Saxon ceald;

REDUCTION OF UNSTRESSED SYLLABLES

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e/i o/u

This scheme shows that difference between e and i was solely a difference
between positional variants of the same vowel phoneme, just as the difference
between o and u is the difference between positional variants of s ingle labial velar
vowel, whereas a was a special phoneme relative to e/i and o/u. For the archaic Old
English the following scheme of unstressed syllables is presented:

i u

æ å

In the classical Old English period i and æ merged in e/i, and å basically
generated the phoneme a, but in some cases it merged with o/u (worold < *weråld)