This was similar to the later process affecting short a, which is known as Anglo-Frisian brightening or First Fronting (see below). The Anglo-Frisian languages underwent a sound change in their development from Proto-West-Germanic by which ā, unless followed by /n, m/ or nasalized, was fronted to ǣ. For detail see Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law. This is the source of such alternations as modern English five, mouth, us versus German fünf, Mund, uns. The processes took place chronologically in roughly the order described below (with uncertainty in ordering as noted).Ībsorption of nasals before fricatives The processes affected especially vowels and are the reason that many Old English words look significantly different from related words in languages such as Old High German, which is much closer to the common West Germanic ancestor of both languages. See also: Phonological history of the English languageĪ number of phonological processes affected Old English in the period before the earliest documentation. The allophony was broken when merged with, the voiced allophone of /f/. Later, non-palatalized became word-initially. Old English retained the allophony, which in case of palatalisation (see below) became. The fricative allophones are sometimes indicated in reconstructed forms to make it easier to understand the development of Old English consonants. The stops occurred:īy West Germanic times, /d/ was pronounced as a stop in all positions. For details of the relevant sound systems, see Proto-Germanic phonology and Old English phonology.ġProto-Germanic /b d ɡ/ had two allophones each: stops and fricatives. The following table indicates the correspondence between spelling and pronunciation transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Sounds are indicated using standard IPA notation. Forms between /slashes/ or indicate, respectively, broad ( phonemic) or narrow ( allophonic) pronunciation.Where phonemic ambiguity occurs in Old English spelling, extra diacritics are used ( ċ, ġ, ā, ǣ, ē, ī, ō, ū, ȳ). Forms in italics denote either Old English words as they appear in spelling or reconstructed forms of various sorts.Various conventions are used below for describing Old English words, reconstructed parent forms of various sorts and reconstructed Proto- West-Germanic (PWG), Proto-Germanic (PG) and Proto-Indo-European (PIE) forms: These included a number of vowel shifts, and the palatalisation of velar consonants in many positions.įor historical developments prior to the Old English period, see Proto-Germanic language. The phonological system of the Old English language underwent many changes during the period of its existence. For the distinction between, / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
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