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Old English
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In Old English
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A
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Cot–caught merger
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This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.
Old English phonology is necessarily somewhat speculative since Old English is preserved only as a written language. Nevertheless, there is a very large corpus of the language, and the orthography apparently indicates phonological alternations quite faithfully, so it is not difficult to draw certain conclusions about the nature of Old English phonology.
Old English had a distinction between short and long (doubled) consonants, at least between vowels (as seen in sunne "sun" and sunu "son", stellan "to put" and stelan "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 – /iyueoæɑ/ and in some dialects /ø/ – than in unstressed ones – /ɑeu/. It had diphthongs that no longer exist in Modern English, which were /io̯eo̯æɑ̯/, with both short and long versions.
and 28 Related for: Old English phonology information
§ Brackets and transcription delimiters. OldEnglishphonology is necessarily somewhat speculative since OldEnglish is preserved only as a written language...
transcription delimiters. Englishphonology is the system of speech sounds used in spoken English. Like many other languages, English has wide variation in...
⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. The phonological system of the OldEnglish language underwent many changes during the period of its...
development of the phonology of English over time, starting from its roots in proto-Germanic to diverse changes in different dialects of modern English. In the following...
delimiters. This article describes those aspects of the phonological history of the English language which concern consonants. Reduction of /hw/ – to...
Old English". Language. 35 (4): 575–597. doi:10.2307/410597. JSTOR 410597. Hogg, Richard M. (2011). A grammar of OldEnglish. Volume 1, Phonology. Malden...
related to OldEnglish and Old Frisian. Thus, anyone looking at Old Saxon phonology will recognize some typical West-Germanic phonological features also...
phonological history of English as well as the articles on OldEnglishphonology and Middle Englishphonology. The vowel changes over time can be seen in the following...
and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. Middle Englishphonology is necessarily somewhat speculative, since it is preserved only as...
media help. Australian English (AuE) is a non-rhotic variety of English spoken by most native-born Australians. Phonologically, it is one of the most...
certain whether Old English words such as niht (modern night) were pronounced with [x] or [ç], [ç] is likely (see OldEnglishphonology). Despite the phonetic...
and transcription delimiters. The phonological history of the English language includes various changes in the phonology of consonant clusters. The H-cluster...
symbols, see Help:IPA. Scholars have attempted to reconstruct the phonology of Old Chinese from documentary evidence. Although the writing system does...
North American English regional phonology is the study of variations in the pronunciation of spoken North American English (English of the United States...
and transcription delimiters. The phonology of Welsh is characterised by a number of sounds that do not occur in English and are rare in European languages...
human languages. The word "phonology" (as in "phonology of English") can refer either to the field of study or to the phonological system of a given language...
Rohirric language. Modern OldEnglish orthography adds additional diacritics above certain letters to show specific phonological features. These distinctions...
The phonology of the open back vowels of the English language has undergone changes both overall and with regional variations, through Old and Middle English...
particularly those from Old French. For a table showing the development of the Middle English diphthongs, see Middle Englishphonology (diphthong equivalents)...
of OldEnglish spoken in the Anglian Kingdom of Northumbria. Together with Mercian, Kentish and West Saxon, it forms one of the sub-categories of Old English...
OldEnglish metre is the conventional name given to the poetic metre in which English language poetry was composed in the Anglo-Saxon period. The best-known...
than the first were unstressed and were subjected to greater amounts of phonological weakening. Starting around that year, the Classical Latin stress system...
playing this file? See media help. This article covers the phonological system of New Zealand English. While New Zealanders speak differently depending on their...
features of OldEnglishphonology; see Phonological history of OldEnglish § Palatalization and Germanic umlaut § I-mutation in OldEnglish for more information...
symbols. Words of Old Norse origin have entered the English language, primarily from the contact between Old Norse and OldEnglish during colonisation...
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