Letters and Sounds
Old English Grammar 1
Chapter 1 · Letters and Sounds
📜 Letters and Sounds
Before any grammar, you need to know what you are looking at on the page. This chapter says what Old English is, shows its alphabet, explains the marks that modern editors add, and gives the main rules for saying a word aloud. It uses the Wikipedia articles Old English and Old English phonology; where those articles do not say something, the chapter says so.
What "Old English" means
| Question | Answer (per the Old English article) |
|---|---|
| How long was it used? | Roughly the 5th to the 12th century; "its usage covered a period of 700 years". Albert Baugh dates it 450 to 1150. |
| Three periods | Prehistoric (c. 450 to 650), Early (c. 650 to 900), Late (c. 900 to 1150) |
| Dialects | Four main: Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon. Mercian and Northumbrian together are called Anglian. |
| Which one is taught? | Most surviving texts follow a written standard based on Late West Saxon, "considered to represent the classical form of Old English". This course teaches that standard. |
| Is West Saxon the ancestor of Modern English? | Not directly. The phonology article says Modern English is "more closely related to the Mercian dialect". |
The alphabet
From the 7th century Old English was written with the Latin alphabet, replacing runes. The article says the remaining 20 Latin letters were supplemented by 4 more, giving 24:
| Letter | Name | Where it came from (per the article) |
|---|---|---|
| Æ æ | ash (from æsc) | A letter named after the word æsc |
| Ð ð | eth (from ðæt) | A modified Latin letter |
| Þ þ | thorn | Borrowed from the futhorc runes |
| Ƿ ƿ | wynn | Also borrowed from the futhorc |
- Runes first. Early inscriptions used the futhorc, which the article describes as a rune set derived from the 24-character Germanic elder futhark, extended by five more runes for Anglo-Saxon vowel sounds.
- Insular g. The article discusses the insular form of g (ᵹ), which modern editions replace with the standard g. Many printed editions also replace wynn (ƿ) with w; the article text I read does not say so, so treat that as common practice, not as the article's claim.
What the editors add
Printed Old English contains marks that are not in the manuscripts. The phonology article says what they are:
| Mark | Example | What the article says |
|---|---|---|
| Dot above a consonant | ċ ġ sċ | Modern editors "may mark the palatal consonants with a dot above the letter". An editorial convention, not a manuscript feature. |
| Macron on the first letter of a long diphthong | ēa, ēo | "Modern editions conventionally mark long diphthongs with a macron on the first letter." |
| Macrons and breves for length | ā, ǣ, ē, ī, ō, ū, ȳ | The article's own transcriptions use them to show length. That ordinary manuscripts do not mark vowel length is my own background knowledge, which I did not verify in the article. |
This course writes long vowels with a macron (hwā, fōt) and palatal consonants with a dot, and says which is which. Remember that a word you meet in a manuscript or a cheap reprint may have neither mark.
Vowels
The phonology article says that, depending on dialect, Old English distinguished five to eight vowel qualities in stressed syllables, and each could be a long or a short monophthong. Its chart lists these pairs:
| Short | Long | Note (per the article) |
|---|---|---|
| i /i/ | ī /iː/ | |
| y /y/ | ȳ /yː/ | front rounded |
| u /u/ | ū /uː/ | |
| e /e/ | ē /eː/ | |
| o /o/ | ō /oː/ | |
| æ /æ/ | ǣ /æː/ | |
| a /ɑ/ | ā /ɑː/ | The article's chart gives /ɑ/ and /ɑː/ for this pair; it does not say which letter they are spelled with, so the letter a is my reading |
| oe /ø/ | /øː/ | Existed only in some dialects; "usually" spelled oe |
- Diphthongs could be short or long. Long ones (ēa, ēo) came mainly from Proto-Germanic *au, *eu and *iu; short ones came from breaking, palatal diphthongisation and back mutation.
- Dialect spellings: Northumbrian had io, while Early West Saxon had ie; the article says the quality of ie is disputed.
- Unstressed vowels were reduced, with a three-way contrast in many texts.
- Lax and tense: the short e, i, y, o, u are sometimes called "lax" and the long ē, ī, ȳ, ō, ū "tense".
Consonants
| Topic | The rule (per the phonology article) | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Long consonants | Short and long consonants contrast, usually between vowels. Long consonants are written with doubled letters. | banan (slayers) versus bannan (summon) |
| f, þ/ð, s | /f θ s/ are voiced to [v ð z] between voiced sounds when the preceding syllable had some stress; otherwise they are voiceless. This difference was generally not marked in spelling. | The spelling gives no clue; you apply the rule |
| c and g | Velar or palatal depending on context. Before stressed i, eo, ie, io: palatal. Before stressed a, o, u: velar. | Editors mark the palatal ones ċ, ġ |
| sc | "Always palatal [ʃ] at the start of a stressed syllable." | sċ at the start of a stressed syllable |
| h | [h] word-initially, [x] after vowels or in clusters, [xx] as a geminate. A palatal allophone [ç] after front vowels is "often assumed". | One letter, several sounds |
🔎 Typing the Letters
I looked up the characters with Python's Unicode names; the table is my own record of that check.
| Character | Code point | Unicode name |
|---|---|---|
| æ | U+00E6 | LATIN SMALL LETTER AE |
| ð | U+00F0 | LATIN SMALL LETTER ETH |
| þ | U+00FE | LATIN SMALL LETTER THORN |
| ƿ | U+01BF | LATIN LETTER WYNN |
| ᵹ | U+1D79 | LATIN SMALL LETTER INSULAR G |
The dotted consonant ċ is two code points (the letter c and a combining dot above) when written in decomposed form, and a long vowel such as ā is the letter with a macron: ā, ǣ and ȳ have their own named characters in Unicode (LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH MACRON, and so on). That is why a search for sċip can fail if one copy uses the decomposed dot and the other the single character, a problem met in Computational Linguistics 1.
🗣️ In Use
One pair from the article, to practise the doubling rule.
① One letter or two?
One n is short and two are long, so the second word is held longer. Both words are the article's examples, with its glosses.
📋 Quick Reference
| Topic | Remember |
|---|---|
| Dates and standard | c. 450 to 1150; Late West Saxon is the standard; Mercian is closer to Modern English |
| Alphabet | 20 Latin letters plus æ ð þ ƿ = 24 |
| Editors' marks | ċ ġ sċ (dots); macrons for length; not in manuscripts |
| Length | Short and long vowels and consonants; long consonants doubled |
| Voicing | /f θ s/ voiced between voiced sounds (rule, not spelling) |
| c, g, sc | Palatal before stressed i, eo, ie, io; velar before stressed a, o, u; sc palatal [ʃ] at the start of a stressed syllable |
✏️ Try It Yourself
Say the answer first, then click to check.
1. How many letters does the Old English alphabet have, according to the article?
Show answer
24: the remaining 20 Latin letters plus four more.
2. Name the four letters that were added, and say which two came from runes.
Show answer
æ (ash), ð (eth), þ (thorn) and ƿ (wynn). Thorn and wynn came from the futhorc runes.
3. A printed text has ċ in a word. Is that dot in the manuscript?
Show answer
No. Per the article it is a convention modern editors may use to mark the palatal pronunciation.
4. What is the difference in sound between banan and bannan, and how is it written?
Show answer
The second has a long n, written as a doubled letter. The article gives the pair with the meanings "slayers" and "summon".
5. Does the choice of þ or ð tell you whether the sound is voiced?
Show answer
No. Both could represent either the voiceless or the voiced "th". The article says the voicing difference was generally not marked in spelling.
6. A c comes before a stressed i. Palatal or velar? And before a stressed a?
Show answer
Palatal before a stressed i; velar before a stressed a, o or u.
7. What sound does sc have at the start of a stressed syllable?
Show answer
Always palatal [ʃ] (the "sh" sound), according to the article.
8. When are /f/, /θ/ and /s/ voiced?
Show answer
Between voiced sounds, when the preceding syllable had some stress; otherwise they are voiceless.
9. Which dialect does this course teach, and is it the direct ancestor of Modern English?
Show answer
The Late West Saxon standard. It is not the direct ancestor: the article says Modern English is more closely related to Mercian.
10. How do modern editions mark long diphthongs such as ēa?
Show answer
With a macron on the first letter, per the phonology article.