Chapter 4 OE Spelling and Pronunciation

 4.1. The growth of literacy and literary culture among the Anglo-Saxons was a consequence of their conversion to Christianity. The Latin alphabet, introduced by missionaries, displaced the Germanic ƒuþark (runic alphabet), which in any event had only been used for brief inscriptions of a magical, monumental, or practical nature and never for the transcription of extended texts. It was in the scriptoria of the early monasteries that writing was done on a large scale for the first time in Anglo-Saxon England. The monks were concerned first and foremost with the creation and transmission of Latin texts, which they had been taught to write by Irish monks. When they started writing their own vernacular language they naturally maintained the same correspondence between sound and symbol to which they were accustomed in writing Latin. As a consequence, OE spelling before Ælfred's reign, and to some extent after it, approached a phonetic rendering of the actual speech of various districts and periods.¹ It is thanks to this situation, where regional or individual variations in pronunciation are directly reflected in writing, that scholars have been able to establish the dialect characteristics and the historical development of OE sounds.

4.2. A number of sounds existed in OE, however, for which the Roman alphabet did not provide since they were not present in the pronunciation of Latin. The missing letters were supplied in a number of ways. From the runic alphabet þ ("thorn") was borrowed and used to represent both interdental spirants: voiced [ð] as in thy and voiceless [θ] as in thigh. Another letter was late invented for the same sounds by "crossing" a d: ð ("eth"). These two letters, þ and ð, are virtual alternatives in OE writing.²

4.3. The other character borrowed from the runic alphabet is Ƿƿ ("wen" or "wynn"), used for the sound [w]. Most modern texts (including this one) substitute w for it to avoid confusion with p, which it closely resembles.

4.4. The Latin diphthong ae, written as a ligature, æ, is used for the simple vowel articulated somewhere between [a] and [ɛ], as in MnE bat. The runic name for this symbol is "ash", OE æsc.

4.5. Every letter written was intended to be pronounced - there were no "silent" letters.³ Doubling of a letter indicates prolongation in its pronunciation.⁴

Consonants

^5 6

4.6. OE b, d, l, m, p, t, w, and x ([ks]) are pronounced as in MnE. Examples: bedd, bed; dol, dull, stupid; lamb, lamb; meolc, milk; pinn, pin; tacan, take; waru, ware; fyxe, vixen.

4.7. It is thought (with some differences of scholarly opinion) that r was trilled, rather than simply retroflex as in MnE. Examples: rāp, rope; byrig, city; fær, journey.

4.8. Three consonant symbols, f, s, and þ/ð, have dual values: they represent voiced sounds when they occur singly (not doubled) between voiced sounds (except when the first is a part of a prefix: e.g., the f in gefoh remains [f]). Everywhere else they represent voiceless sounds.

Examples:
Letter		Sound		Words
f	voiced	[v]		ofer, over; efne, even; hærvest, autumn
ƒ	voiceless	[f]		feld, field; æfter, after; hōf, hoof; Offa, Offa.
s	voiced	[z]		wīse, wise; hæslen, of hazel.
s	voiceless	[s]		saet, sat; hūs, house; ēast, east; acsian, to ask; cyssan, to kiss.
ð	voiced	[ð]5		ōþer, other; hoðma, darkness; weorðan, to become.
þ	voiceless	[θ]		þis, this; bæð, bath; oðþe, or.

4.9. Two letters, g and c, have dual values according to their environment: the original sounds were velar [ɣ,k], but in PrehOE those occurring with front vowels (dental to palatal region) were fronted; those occurring with back vowels (velar region) remained back. (These alternants, like the preceding, exemplify assimilation: this time the position of articulation changed to agree with that of environing sounds.)

Letter	Sound		Words
g	velar	[ɣ]	gān, to go; lagu, law; slōg, struck.
g	palatalized	[j]	gīet, yet; fæger, fair; dæg, day.
c	velar	[k]	caru, care; tacan, to take; hōc, hook.
c	palatalized	[ʧ]	ceaf, chaff; ēce, eternal; dīc, ditch.

Specifically, g is fronted to [j] when it comes:

1. before long or short i, e, (̆̆ī̆, ē̆)⁷ and the diphthongs which begin with them: gif, if; gēar, year;
2. between front vowels (̆̆ī, ē̆, ǣ̆): siges, of victory; leger, couch, lair;
3. at the end of a syllable, following a front vowel: hīeg, hay; lægdon, (they) laid;
4. when it had been followed in PrehOE by i or j:⁸ cīegan, to name, call; byrg, of (the) town.

Otherwise g remains velar⁹ (except in the combination cg ­-- see 4.12.­).

Specifically, c is fronted when it comes:
1. before ī, ē, and the diphthongs beginning with ī, ē: ciele, chill; cīdan, to chide¹⁰
2. between ī and a front vowel: rīces, of the kingdom;
3. at the end of a syllable following ̆̆ī: pic, pitch;
4. when it had been followed in PrehOE by ̆̆ī or j:⁸tǣcan, show, teach.

In all other situations, c(or k when that is used) or remains a back sound -- i.e., is pronounced [k]

4.10. the letter n also has two values: it represents ordinary [n] except before c (or k) and g, in which cases it is pronounced [ŋ]. In such combinations the nasal and the following consonant are both pronounced: [ŋk, ŋɣ].

4.11. The letter h has two values: in initial position it is like MnE [h], a light voiceless spirant or simple aspirate; internally and finally, however, it has much stronger spirancy: [x]. This latter value is preserved today in Scots night, night; loch, lake (and may be heard in German ich I; buch, book), but it does not survive in MnE.¹¹

4.12. The cluster sc, originally pronounced [sk], became changed in WS when c was palatalized. It may be pronounced [ʃ].¹² Similarly, the cluster cg (representing palatalized gg) is pronounced [ʤ] as in MnE bridge (<OE brycg).

Vowels

4.13. The short vowels of OE, written i, e, æ, u, o, a, were probably pronounced much the same as the corresponding sounds today: [ɪ, ɛ, æ, υ, ɔ, ɑ] in bit, bet, bat, put, Brit. pot,¹³ Scots or Ger. man.¹⁴. The long vowels should be lengthened in pronunciation:¹⁵ [i:, e:, æ:, u:, o:, ɑ:] as in beet, bait, buy,¹⁶ boot, boat, baah.¹⁷ OE ȳ, y were lost in ME; they are like ī, i but said with the lips closely rounded (cf. Ger.) kühn, keen; küss, kiss).

4.14. The following is a practice list for pronouncing OE vowels:

Letter	Sound	Words
ȳ	[y:]	ȳð, wave; brȳce, useful; þȳ, by that
y	[y]	yrre, anger; byre, youth; ymbe, about
ī	[i:]	īs, ice; bītan, to bite; hī, they
i	[ɪ]	ic, I; biten, bitten; hit, it
ē	[e:]	ēðel, native land; þēs, this; mē, me
e	[ɛ]	eft, again; tellan, to count; here, army
ǣ	[æ:]	ǣr, before; mǣre, famous; sǣ, sea
æ	[æ]	æt, at; hæft, captive; sæd, heavy, sad
ū	[u:]	ūt, out; fūl, foul; þū, thou
u	[υ]	uppe, up; hund, dog; caru, care
ō	[o:]	ōfer; shore; hrōf, roof; tō, to
o	[ɔ]	of, of; from, from; ealo, ale
ā	[ɑ:]	āð, oath; hāma, cricket; wā, woe
a	[a]	ac, but; camp, battle; cuma, visitor.

Diphthongs

4.15. OE diphthongs include some sound combinations which do not survive in standard MnE. Like the vowels, they were paired, long and short. (Note the presence of [Ə], which was not an independent phoneme in OE.)

¹⁸

Letter	Sound	Words
ēa	[æ:ə]	ēage, eye; gēar, year; fēa, few
ea	[æə]	eald, old; fealu, fallow, yellow
ēo/īo	[e:ɔ, i:ɔ]	ēoh, yew tree; nēod, desire; bēo, be
eo/io	[ɛɔ, ɪɔ]	eom, am; seolc, silk; teoru, tar
īe	[i:ə]	īeðe, easy; hīene, frail; hīe, she
ie	[ɪə]	hiera, their; ieldo, old age

4.16. OE words are accented or stressed according to two rules:

1. Simple words, and words with inflectional or derivational suffixes, are stressed on the first syllable. Especially in poetry, some of these suffixes may receive a secondary stress.
2. Compound words include substantive compounds and verbal compounds. Substantive compounds (except those beginning with ge-, be-, and for-, which are weak-stressed) take primary stress on the first component and secondary stress on the second.

Examples:góld-smìð, mónn-cỳnn, swīð́-mṓd, sélf-wìlles, ónd-swàru, bī́-gòng, fóre-wèard, mís-dǣ̀d tṓ-wèard, ýmb-hwỳrft; but note: ge-bód, be-góng, for-wýrd.

Verbal compounds are stressed on the base or root syllable, hence the prefix is weak-stressed

Examples: a-rī́san, be-hā́tan, for-lǣ́tan, ge-bíddan, mis-fáran, ofer-cúman, tō-wéorpan, wið-stóndan, ymb-síttan.

FOOTNOTES

¹In the ninth century, however, largely through Ælfred's influence, OE spelling tended to become more consistent, and after his time - even more after Ælfric's - the language had a more or less standard spelling. Toward the end of the OE period, nevertheless, irregularities in spelling show that pronunciation is changing

²During the ME period ð disappeared; þ continued into the sixteenth century.

³Silent letters merely testify to the fact that pronunciation changes more quickly than spelling. Even after sounds have ceased to be pronounced, traditional spelling may continue to use the letters which formerly represented them.

⁴In MnE consonants are long only in compound words such as headdress, cattail, sheeppen. Other doubled letters are pronounced short, like single letters.

⁵Note that though the letter ð is written in manuscripts for both voiced and voiceless sounds, as a phonetic symbol it is used only for the voiced sound.

⁶In becoming palatalized, k probably passed through the sequence [k > kj > tj > ʧ].

⁷Exception when e was the result of i-umlaut (see Ch 11), the preceding g was not palatalized.

⁸The i or j which caused umlaut (and before which g or c was fronted) was changed or disappeared before the time of historic OE. (See Ch 11.)

⁹Spirant [ɣ] tended to close to become the stop [g].

¹⁰Before front vowels resulting from i-umlaut, however, c remained unpalatalized [k]. Examples: cemban < *kabjan, to comb; cyning < *kuning, king. See footnote 7 above.

¹¹Initally in the clusters hl-, hn-, hr-, hw-, the consonants that follow h are devoiced by assimilation to it: [hl̥- hn̥- hr̥- hw̥-].
Similarly, the other clusters fn-, fl-, fr-, þr-, were probably pronounced [fn̥- fl̥- fr̥- θr̥-].

¹²In becoming palatalized, sk probably passed through the sequence [sk > skj > sxj > sj > ʃ ].

¹³As said in British "Received Pronunciation" (RP): a short, rounded, mid-back vowel.

¹⁴A short, unrounded, low-central vowel.

¹⁵The "long" vowels of OE have commonly become diphthongs today, especially [e:, o:], which usually are [eɪ, oυ] as in day and low; but also [i:, u:], which are often [ij, uw] as in me, you (though several other variants are in use).

¹⁶The OE sound [æ:] or [ɛ:] survives only locally, not in Standard English. See diagram 4 (Chap 3).

¹⁷In MnE dialects, especially those where postvocalic r is lost: in English "RP", eastern New England, and the south Atlantic coast.

¹⁸ In EWS manuscripts the etymological distinctions between ē̆o and ī̆o were not preserved: in effect, they were written alternatively: ēo or īo and eo or io, though ē̆o forms appear more frequently than ī̆o forms. the sound [ɔ] probably varied with [ə] allophonetically in ē̆o/ī̆o.

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