Old English phonology

Old English phonology

Consonants

Consonants

Gemination

Fricative voicing

Gemination

Fricative voicing

Exceptions to voicing

Exceptions to voicing

Origins of /f, θ, s/

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, 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.
Old English had a distinction between short and long consonants, at least between vowels, and a distinction between short vowels and long vowels in stressed syllables. It had a larger number of vowel qualities in stressed syllables than in unstressed ones. It had diphthongs that no longer exist in Modern English, with both short and long versions.

The inventory of consonant surface sounds of Old English is shown below. Allophones are enclosed in parentheses.

Notes:
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.

There was a contrast between short consonant sounds, such as the in banan 'slayers', and long consonant sounds, such as the in bannan 'summon': long consonants were represented in writing with double consonant letters. Long consonants are also called geminate consonants from the Latin word geminus 'twin, double'.
Geminate consonants occurred only in restricted positions: typically in the middle of a word after a stressed short vowel and before a vowel or sonorant, as in cynnes 'kin' or bettra 'better'. 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 some of 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 bedd and bed '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 weġ 'way', pronounced, and weċġ '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 *b and showed alternation with the geminate. The change of intervocalic *b to had the effect of eliminating former minimal pairs between versus. The fricative came to be lost when single between voiced sounds: since only long remained in this position, its length was no longer contrastive. Spellings with single for original are sometimes seen, e.g. hlæhað, croha. 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.

The three phonemes, which all belong to the phonetic category of fricatives, had different pronunciations depending on the context. 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. However, certain alternative spellings existed for some sounds.
The pronunciation of as versus was generally predictable from context. The voiced allophones were used between voiced sounds 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 eorðe 'earth' and fæþm '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:

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. Examples include the Old English words strengþu 'strength' and hālsian 'to take an oath', from Proto-West-Germanic *strangiþu and *hailisōn, with loss of the medial unstressed vowel *-i-. These words may have been pronounced and, with voiceless and.

A piece of evidence for fricatives being voiceless in this context is the verb blētsian 'to bless', which contains the same suffix -sian attached to the root of blōd '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 anfilt or anfealt evolved from Proto-West-Germanic *anafalt-, and Old English sīþe evolved from Proto-West-Germanic *sigiþī, with loss of the unstressed vowels *-a- and *-i- 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 cærse.
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 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 or .

In contexts where other fricatives became voiced, Proto-Germanic *x 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 *ɡ, 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. 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 sċ 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 *f, 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 *, a fricative allophone of the phoneme *b. Proto-Germanic *b 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 :

PG *stabaz > OE stæf
PG *habdē > OE hæfde 'had', but PG *habjaną > OE habban 'to have'

In contrast, the Old English phonemes and generally descend only from Proto-Germanic voiceless *θ and *s. Proto-Germanic * regularly developed in all positions into the Old English stop, as in fæder from Proto-Germanic *fadēr. Proto-Germanic *z regularly developed to Old English . 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:

snīþan, snāþ, snidon, sniden from 'cut'
frēosan, frēas, fruron, froren from 'freeze'

Examples of Old English verbs that leveled the consonant to only or only :

wrīþan, wrāþ, wriþon, wriþen , versus 'wrap, twist'
lesan, læs, lǣson, lesen , versus 'gather'

Approximant