Old English phonology is the pronunciation system of Old English, the Germanic language spoken on Great Britain from around 450 to 1150 and attested in a body of written texts from the 7th–12th centuries. Its reconstruction is necessarily somewhat speculative, but features of Old English pronunciation have been inferred based on the sounds used in modern varieties of English (including dialects), the spellings used in Old English literature, analysis of Old English poetry, and comparison with other Germanic languages.
Some words were pronounced differently in different dialects of Old English. The dialect called West Saxon is the best documented in surviving texts, and so is commonly treated as a default reference in descriptions of Old English, even though it is not a direct ancestor of the modern English language (which is more closely related to the Mercian dialect).
Old English had a distinction between short and long (doubled) consonants, at least between vowels (as seen in "sun" and "son", "to put" and "to steal"), and a distinction between short vowels and long vowels in stressed syllables. It had a larger number of vowel qualities in stressed syllables ( and in some dialects ) than in unstressed ones (). It had diphthongs that no longer exist in Modern English (such as ), with both short and long versions.
Consonants The inventory of consonant surface sounds (whether allophones or phonemes) of Old English is shown below. Allophones are enclosed in parentheses.
+ Consonants Labial Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal Nasal () () Stop () () Fricative () () () () () Lateral () Approximant () (ʍ)
Notes: are categorized as palatal by , as postalveolar by . is categorized as alveolar by , as postalveolar by . is categorized as labial by , as round velar by .
The following consonants were generally both spelled and pronounced approximately as in modern English: . Others are described at Help:IPA/Old English and discussed below.
Gemination
Old English had a contrast between short and long consonant sounds. For example, short in 'slayers' was distinguished from long in 'summon'. Long consonants were written with double consonant letters. Long consonants are also called geminate consonants (or just "geminates") from the Latin word 'twin, double'.
Geminate consonants could occur only in certain positions in a word. They were typically found in the middle of a word after a stressed short vowel and before a vowel or sonorant, as in 'kin' (genitive) or 'better'. In pronunciation, they were split between the preceding and following syllable, as in 'puff' and 'dog'.
Geminates were shortened next to other consonants, at the end of a word, or after an unstressed vowel. In writing, however, double consonant letters were sometimes used in these contexts by analogy to inflected forms, or as etymological spellings. It is likely that early on, short and long consonants did contrast in word-final position, but even early texts show variation in spelling in this position: e.g. between and 'bed', pronounced something like .
It appears that geminate consonants could cause a preceding long vowel to be shortened, although this change may have been sporadic or the long vowel may have been subject to analogical restoration in some cases.
The short-long contrast was distinctive for most consonant phonemes. Minimal pairs can be cited for long and short , and also for and assuming that phonetic , are phonemically analyzed as , . Sometimes and are instead analyzed as separate phonemes, in which case neither has a distinctive length contrast. The affricate was always phonetically long between vowels; it could also occur after or at the end of a word. There seems to have been no merge between and at the end of a word, so there was a distinction in pronunciation between 'way', pronounced , and 'wedge', pronounced or . The approximant was always short. The fricative could be short or long, but geminate was fairly marginal. In the context of verb conjugation, intervocalic singleton often originated from Proto-Germanic and showed alternation with the geminate . The change of intervocalic to had the effect of eliminating former minimal pairs between versus . The fricative (spelled ) came to be lost when single between voiced sounds: since only long remained in this position (in words such as , ), its length was no longer contrastive. Spellings with single for original are sometimes seen, e.g. , . Length was not distinctive for the phoneme , which originated from a cluster and was probably always phonetically long when it came between vowels within a word, and phonetically short in word-initial or word-final position.
Fricative voicing The three phonemes , which all belong to the phonetic category of fricatives, had different pronunciations depending on the context (allophones). One set of allophones, transcribed as , were phonetically voiceless. The other set of allophones, transcribed as , were phonetically voiced. The difference between and was generally not marked in Old English spelling. The sounds were both written with the letter , the sounds were both written with the letter , and the sounds were both written with the letters and . (Both and could represent either the voiceless or voiced version of the phoneme : the two letters were not used in Old English to distinguish between the allophones .) However, certain alternative spellings existed for some sounds (e.g. was sometimes written , as in Latin).
The pronunciation of as versus was generally predictable from context. The voiced allophones were used between voiced sounds (between vowels, between a vowel and a voiced consonant, or between voiced consonants) so long as the immediately preceding syllable had some degree of stress. For example, the phoneme was pronounced as the voiced sound in the words 'earth' and 'fathom', which can be phonemically transcibed as , and phonetically transcribed as , . The voiceless allophones were used next to voiceless consonants, at the beginning and end of words, after unstressed syllables, and at the start of the second elements of compound words.
In accordance with these rules, the allophones and alternated in many pairs of related words or word-forms, such as the following:
Fricative voicing alternations Phoneme Allophone Example word Phonemic transcription Phonetic transcription Translation 'calf, young cow' 'calves' 'blacksmith' 'blacksmiths' 'house' (noun) 'to house'
Exceptions to voicing
There may have been some exceptions to the distribution of and according to these rules.
One category of potential exceptions is words where the fricative originally stood after an unstressed vowel, but the vowel was lost (a sound change called syncope). Examples include the Old English words 'strength' and 'to take an oath', from Proto-West-Germanic and , with loss of the medial unstressed vowel . These words may have been pronounced and , with voiceless and . A piece of evidence for fricatives being voiceless in this context is the verb 'to bless', which contains the same suffix attached to the root of 'blood'. The replacement of voiced with voiceless suggests that in this word was a phonetically voiceless sound. On the other hand, there is evidence that some word-medial fricatives did become voiced after syncope. Old English or evolved from Proto-West-Germanic , and Old English evolved from Proto-West-Germanic , with loss of the unstressed vowels and respectively. The modern English forms of these words, anvil and scythe, are pronounced with the voiced fricative sounds and .
Another category of potential exceptions is words where original geminate became shortened, such as (derived from by metathesis of to ).
Despite the evidence for some exceptions to the voicing of word-medial to in Old English, it is not clear that voiced and voiceless fricatives contrasted in this context. Some scholars have argued that the contrast had already become phonemic (if marginally so) in Old English whereas , citing the absence of minimal pairs, argues that they were not lexically contrastive segments and so should be analyzed as allophones during Old English, even if their distribution was not determined solely by phonology.
The Old English fricative voicing rule did not apply to the fricatives (spelled ) or (spelled , often written in modern editions). In contexts where other fricatives became voiced, Proto-Germanic came to be lost entirely in Old English, though before it was lost it caused certain sound changes such as breaking of preceding vowels. Old English did possess a voiced velar fricative sound , which developed from Proto-Germanic , but is usually analyzed as a separate phoneme from : the sounds were normally distinguished in spelling, with written as and as , although some unetymological interchange of these spellings occurs, especially in word-final position (where the sounds seem to have merged into one phoneme by late Old English). The fricative seems to have instead been phonemically identified in Old English with the plosive , also written . The fricative developed later than other fricative sounds, as it evolved from the West Germanic cluster . It is likely that was pronounced as geminate between vowels, and possibly also at the end of a word after a short vowel. In Old English poetry, between vowels seems to have been treated metrically like a cluster rather than like a single consonant.
Origins of /f, θ, s/ The Old English phoneme descended in some cases from Proto-Germanic , which became between voiced sounds as described above. But also had another source. In the middle or at the end of words, Old English was often derived from Proto-Germanic * (also written ), a fricative allophone of the phoneme . Proto-Germanic became Old English only at the start of a word, after , or when geminated. In other contexts, it became Old English , pronounced either as or based on its position (the originally voiced fricative was devoiced before voiceless sounds or in final position): PG > OE PG > OE 'had', but PG > OE 'to have'
In contrast, the Old English phonemes and generally descend only from Proto-Germanic voiceless and . Proto-Germanic * (a fricative allophone of , sometimes derived by voicing of in the context of Verner's Law) regularly developed in all positions into the Old English stop , as in from Proto-Germanic . Proto-Germanic (which existed only as the Verner's Law counterpart of ) regularly developed to Old English (a sound change called rhotacism). As a result, some Old English verbs show alternations between and or between and , although in others this alternation was leveled, resulting in or throughout.
Examples of Old English verbs that retained inherited – or – alternations: from 'cut' from 'freeze'
Examples of Old English verbs that leveled the consonant to only or only : , versus 'wrap, twist' , versus 'gather'
Velar consonants
The voiceless velar plosive was typically spelled . The sound alternated in some circumstances with the voiceless palatal affricate , also spelled .