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5
SUPPLEMENT TO THE OLD ENGLISH ROOTS OF
MODERN ENGLISH SPELLING
In this chapter, we consider how the letters of the alphabet were used in spelling
words in Old English. The essential principle, as with all languages for which an
alphabetic writing system is freshly created (as opposed to one that merely evolves
from earlier written forms) is that letters are used to represent speech-sounds as
unambiguously as possible. Exceptions may arise in response to the kind of
difficulties encountered by the designers of the writing system, as described in the
previous chapter. The main exceptions in Old English arise from the difficulty of
determining certain sounds (especially vowels and velar and palatal consonants)
and of finding suitable letters to represent them. As a result, some sounds are spelt
in more than one way (e.g. the fairly free alternation of thorn, Þ, and eth, Ð, for [C]
and [S] as described in History p. 23), and some letters can represent more than
one sound (e.g. C and Ȝ, as described in History, pp. 37, 44). Nevertheless, the types
of ambiguity in Old English sound–symbol correspondence are few enough to be
described quite succinctly, in marked contrast to the myriad variety of Modern
English.
Not only must one remember that Modern English words derive from Anglian
rather than West Saxon Old English, it must also not be forgotten that some wordforms are of Scandinavian origin: thus although Modern English sister is clearly
related to Old English sƿeostor, its direct ancestor is rather a Scandinavian form
systir without Ƿ for /w/. And although the examples of Old English spellings given
in History Chapter 3 nearly all show some similarity to modern spellings, the reader
should not assume that continuous text in Old English bears anything like so close
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a resemblance to continuous text in Modern English. As the two versions of
Cædmon’s hymn (see History p. 21) show, Old English is as much a foreign
language for today’s English speakers as German is, although that too shares some
vocabulary and spellings with Modern English, e.g. Modern German Wind, Modern
English wind.
Further notes on Old English vowels and consonants
(supplementary to History pp. 24–5)
It is paradoxical that devices such as macrons are used in modern editions
of Old English texts, where the spelling itself otherwise indicates the pronunciation
fairly unambiguously and the words are not spoken for practical communication
anyway, but the same need is not perceived for Modern English, where the spelling
is rarely a reliable guide though correct pronunciation is the key to live
communication. Modern English typically uses different patterns of letters to
distinguish the equivalent pairs of vowel values, as seen in the contrasting vowel
spellings of hat/hate, set/seat, sit/sight, cot/coat, rut/root, myth/scythe (the
modern letter names of A, E, I, O, U contrasting as orthographically ‘long’ with their
‘short’ equivalents in cat, met, fit, rot, but). The kind of ambiguity inherent in Old
English spelling is, however, occasionally seen in Modern English, as in bass,
which has a short vowel and rhymes with lass when referring to the fish, but has
the equivalent long value of A (often pronounced as a diphthong) as in base when a
musical term; likewise Modern English spelling does not indicate any difference of
vowel length between put and truth, although in speech they are commonly
distinguished. An important difference between most Old English and Modern
English long vowels is that in Old English the long values were essentially just
lengthened versions of the short values, which is often not the case in Modern
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English; thus the phonetic distance between Old English hara with short A and
hāra with long A is far less than between the short and long A’s of Modern English
bass. Though important changes in vowel quality have often since come about,
short and long vowels have for the most part preserved their original quantity over
the 1,000 years or so from Old English to Modern English; there are exceptions, as
is pointed out passim in History.
A second general observation about Old English spelling has to do with
unstressed vowels, that is to say, the vowels in those syllables which do not carry
the main stress of a polysyllabic word (compare stressed A with unstressed E in
father). Especially in the final syllables of words, these were commonly
distinguished by different vowel letters for distinctive sound values in early Old
English, but in late West Saxon the sounds tended to merge towards the central
vowel schwa, /?/ (as represented by the A in Modern English about or sofa), and
the spellings consequently show increasing confusion and reduction to E. This kind
of variation arose typically before final N in inflectional endings, where the spellings
-AN, -EN, -ON, -UN are all encountered in early Old English, but in the course of time
tended towards the same pronunciation, /?m/. Thus the root find in Old English
occurs variously with -AN in findan (infinitive), -EN in funden (preterite subjunctive
plural), and -ON in fundon (preterite plural). In Middle English these became first
finden, funden, then finde, funde, until the endings were eroded altogether as in
Modern English find, found. A similar phenomenon can be readily demonstrated
from Modern English, where the endings of urban, garden, lemon, Whitsun, certain
(and perhaps even cabin) are differently spelt although similarly pronounced
(commonly as /?m/), and just as in Old English, they are often misspelt (e.g.
*gardin, *certen) because the pronunciation gives no clear guide as to which vowel
letter is required.
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Double consonants in Modern English are generally pronounced no
differently from single consonants, as when in Brittany and Britannic the TT/T and
N/NN
are pronounced alike (the doubling reflects rather the shift of stress from the
first to the second vowel). In Old English, by contrast, the TT of bryttas ‘Britons’
was geminated, and thus pronounced differently from the single T of Bryten
‘Britain’, although the first syllable would have been stressed in both words. This
example of brytt-/bryt- also is another example of how gemination can vary in
different forms of the same root.
Some points of Old English writing marginal to spelling in the narrow sense
which may be noted include the following: Old English did not use capital letters,
but could use various abbreviations, such as the form ‘7’ signifying ‘and’, the runic
letter thorn ‘Þ’ standing for a particle beginning with that letter, and the titulus ‘~’
over a letter such as N to indicate omission of some following letters.
The Old English roots of Modern English spelling
The spelling patterns shown in this chapter of the History and in this supplement
to that chapter are important not only because they constitute the essence of the
Old English writing system, but because, despite often major differences between
the Old English spellings and their modern equivalents, they represent the first
forms from which the later spelling of English was to evolve. Their statistical
importance is shown by the proportion of words of Old English origin in Modern
English text and vice versa, which have been calculated as follows: of the 1,000
most commonly used words in Modern English, some 83% are of Old English
origin, though when the analysis is extended to include large numbers of
uncommon words, the percentage drops to about 30%. Conversely, of the 1,000
most commonly used words in Old English poetry, 55% have survived in
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recognizable form into Modern English, and indeed 76% have survived from the
100 most frequent of those words.
A
The letter A, especially in final unstressed syllables, could in later Old English
times be reduced to the obscure central vowel schwa, as shown above: in addition
to the noun endings listed in History p. 34, note also the infinitive ending of verbs,
as in tredan ‘to tread’, and see further A.3 below.
A.1
Short A
Another example is crabba ‘crab’.
A.2
Long A
Additional examples from the dozens of words in which Old English A leads to
Modern English /?T/: bat ‘boat’ (preserved in French bateau ‘boat’), har ‘hoary’, ȝat
‘goat’, ȝranan ‘groan’, hlaf ‘loaf’, lam ‘loam’, sapan ‘to soap’, ƿad ‘woad’, ȝast ‘ghost’,
ar ‘ore’, hal ‘whole’, ham ‘home’, mal ‘mole (on the skin)’, mara ‘more’, papa ‘pope’,
rap ‘rope’, ta ‘toe’, ƿa ‘woe’, cnaƿan ‘to know’). For both Modern English oar and ore,
the Old English spelling was ar.
The original A is sometimes seen preserved in Scots, with the pronunciation
/d/: e.g. Old English ga > Scots gae ‘go’, Old English aȝen > Scots ain ‘own’, Old
English mara > Scots mair ‘more’, Old English stan > Scots stane ‘stone’.
A.3
Deviations
With hƿa ‘who’, compare Scots wha; note also ƿamb ‘womb’.
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When an Old English noun or adjective had a short vowel in its nominative
case but a long vowel elsewhere, the long value was sometimes extended in Middle
English times to the base form of the word and has been transmitted to Modern
English but without the usual change to OA: thus bara ‘bare’, lam ‘lame’.
With holiday, compare the surname Halliday, in which the original letter A
has been preserved, though given a short value.
As commonly happens, the vowel is short before following word-elements in
compounds, as in names such as Bradford, Bradley.
A number of forms depart from all the general patterns. The normal
development of ƿac (with long A) would have been to Modern English *woak,
pronounced /vt9j/; but the form of its Modern English equivalent, weak, derives
rather from Scandinavian veik.
As noted above in Further notes on Old English vowels and consonants, the
letter A commonly occurs in unstressed final syllables in Old English, as in the
verb-ending -AN (e.g. slidan ‘to slide’, tredan ‘to tread’), where in the course of time
it increasingly lost its A value, being first respelt as E and in most cases finally
disappearing altogether (a further example is Old English drincan, Modern English
drink).
In early West Saxon, short A was often alternatively written O before a nasal
(/l, m/); to the examples given in History, add man(n)/mon(n), maniȝ/moniȝ ‘many’,
nama/noma ‘name’, standan/stondan ‘to stand’; in all these words, A was restored
in the late West Saxon standard and so survived into Modern English. The forms
long, song, etc for Old English equivalents with A have, however, become fixed in
Modern English (contrast Scots lang, sang, thrang), long perhaps also under the
post-1066 influence of French lonc, long.
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Æ
Æ.1
Short Æ
Further examples are Ælfred ‘Alfred’, æppel ‘apple’, æsc ‘ash-tree’ (æsc was also the
name of the letter Æ itself), æt ‘at’, bæc ‘back’, bærlic ‘barley’, cæppe ‘cap’, fæst
‘fast’, ȝlæd ‘glad’, mæst ‘mast’, sæd ‘sad’, smæl ‘small’, ƿæsc ‘wash’.
Æ.2
Long Æ
Further examples are ær ‘ere’, sæ ‘sea’, slæpan ‘to sleep’.
Anglian had sed for West Saxon sæd; Middle English subsequently retained
the Anglian vowel distinction in e.g. leaden, sede, which in turn produced Modern
English to lead, seed. (See History pp. 176–7 for the action of the Great Vowel Shift;
and compare the different vowels in Modern German leiten ‘to lead’, Saat ‘seed’.)
The two etymologies both spelt Æ in West Saxon are referred to by historians of the
language as Ash 1 (leading to EE) and Ash 2 (leading to EA). Old English long Æ
most often produces Modern English EA, as also in ælc ‘each’, fær ‘fear’, hæþ
‘heath’, læst ‘least’, and the verbs blæcan ‘to bleach’, hætan ‘to heat’, lædan ‘to
lead’, læfan ‘to leave’, mænan ‘to mean’, ræcan ‘reach’, rædan ‘to read’, tæcan ‘to
teach’. The nominative form mæd gave rise to Modern English ‘mead’ (=
‘grassland’), but its oblique case form mædƿe produced Modern English ‘meadow’,
whose EA has the short E value /D/ (compare shade/shadow under EA, History p.
41).
Æ.3
Mutations
The letter Æ and its sound occur in variation with A (or sometimes E) in different
forms of the same word in Old English. For instance, the vowel of dæȝ ‘day’ appears
as A before a back vowel in the plural forms daȝas, daȝa, daȝum ‘days’ but as Æ in
the singular forms dæȝ, dæȝes, dæȝe; similarly, the E of Old English ic secȝe ‘I say’
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alternated with Æ in sæȝð ‘says’ and sæȝde ‘said’; the verb habban ‘have’ had the
past tense form hæfde ‘had’ (also hefde); note also læt ‘slow, late’ and the related
adverb lator. Some Old English forms with short Æ have come down to Modern
English with vowels derived from inflected forms with A, e.g. blæd ‘blade’ (oblique
and plural blad-), hƿæl (oblique and plural hƿal-) ‘whale’. These mutations, with
variations in different dialects, have given rise to other peculiarities in Modern
English: one is the distinction between than/then which constituted a single word
in Old English (similarly Modern English thrash/thresh and Middle English
whan/when).
With regard to Thames, King Alfred wrote Temese, not Tæmese.
B
Further examples of initial B are berc ‘birch’, bolster, burh ‘borough’; of final B cumb
‘coomb’. Final B is usually silent in Modern English; compare climb and its cognate
clamber, and notice also that the B is silent in lamb whereas it is heard before a
vowel in a place-name such as Lambeth, though it appears from the 16th-century
spelling Lameth to have fallen silent even there for a time). (For French-derived
words with silent B after M, see History pp. 93–4.)
Old English crume ‘crumb’, etc: although the adjective numb is not attested
in Old English, its stem (the verb niman ‘to take’) had no B either (compare
num(b)skull). Unlike the words containing silent final B in Modern English, the B in
acumba ‘oakum’ had fallen silent before the advent of printing and was lost from
the written form thereafter; it originally meant ‘off-combings’ of flax. Loss of silent B
is also seen in the 19th-century respelling Bunkum from the American place-name
Buncombe.
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To æmerȝe ‘embers’, etc, add Middle English momele ‘mumble’, and, of
Scandinavian origin, stumle ‘stumble’; similarly 17th-century gamble, probably
cognate with game, and such forms as crumble, fumble, grumble, rumble, tumble).
With English timber, compare German Zimmer ‘room’.
The blurring of the distinction between the labial consonants [b, v, f] in early
Old English texts parallels the use of D – also in Cædmon’s hymn – and G in Old
English to represent fricatives as well as stops, and was also a feature of the Gothic
writing system.
C
C.1
Split values of C
By the generally straightforward standards of Old English spelling, C was one of the
more complex letters, in that it had two main alternative values and some
subsidiary functions. By comparison with the use of C in Modern English, its
pronunciation was nevertheless fairly predictable. In Latin the letter C originated
with the regular value of [j], but its pronunciation later split between velar [k]
before the back vowels A, O, U, and a fronted, palatalized value before the front
vowels E, I, Y; in Italy at least, that palatalized value had by the 5th century become
[sR], i.e. the value of Modern English CH (compare the value of C before front vowels
in modern Italian cello, cioccolata). The same split between [j] and [sR] developed in
the sound patterns of C in Old English, and the letter C came to be used for both
values as in Italianate Late Latin. However, the distinction between its two
functions was rather less systematic in Old English, where the form cin for instance
could represent either kin or chin, pronounced as in Modern English. We can only
speculate how this dual value of C arose in Old English: perhaps the designers of
the writing system were already confronted by the two sounds in English (or in a
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key dialect of it), but adopted a single letter for both on the Italian-Latin model; or
perhaps the split only emerged fully after C had been adopted for early Old English
/j/ in all positions. The lack of separate runes for the two values in the inherited
common Germanic futhark lends support to the second of these possibilities,
especially as new runes were added to the English futhorc at a later date to make
that distinction. (We may also note the survival of the northern dialect forms birk,
kirk with /k/ beside standard birch, church.) At all events, the two different values
of C were not systematically distinguished in Old English manuscripts. No doubt
the problem for Old English readers was slight, as they would normally recognize
the words and know what pronunciation to give them, but modern readers are in
greater need of guidance, and some modern editions therefore place a dot over
palatalized C, thus: Ċ.
C.2
C
pronounced /k/
With regard to cƿen ‘queen’, early manuscripts occasionally used Latinate QU for CǷ;
see under W, History p. 61, for further examples of Old English CǷ).
The /j/ value for C is particularly striking before N, where it is silent in
Modern English: further examples are cnaƿan ‘know’, cnedan ‘knead’, cniht ‘knight’,
cnittan ‘knit’, cnott ‘knot’, cnucian ‘knock’, cnyll ‘knell’. In a few special cases this
initial /j/ before N is still pronounced in Modern English, as when the prefix A- has
allowed the /j/ of acknowledge to remain sounded (indeed it is reinforced by the
double spelling as CK), although it is silent in knowledge; in the case of Canute, the
insertion of A (contrast Scandinavian Knut) eases articulation of the consonant
cluster /jm/ by turning it into a full syllable (compare French canif beside Old
English cnif ‘knife’). Modern English now uses silent K instead of C before N, and QU
instead of CǷ.
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Further examples of C = /j/ before and after A, O, U are acan ‘ache’, calf.
C.3
C
leading to Modern English CH
Further examples of the palatalized value of C, typically leading to Modern English
CH,
are ceap ‘cheap’, (a)ceocan ‘choke’, ceosan ‘choose’, cidan ‘chide’, cirice ‘church’,
cyrin ‘churn’.
CHA-:
some awkwardness arose before Æ, which as a front vowel would
palatalize C, although it could occur as a mutation from the back vowel A which
would leave the C unpalatalized. In practice the Æ was therefore often written EA,
thereby leaving no doubt about the need to palatalize the preceding C, but since
short Æ generally leads to A in Modern English, forms with CHA- result, an
otherwise unusual spelling for a word of Old English origin. The case of Modern
English chary illustrates the point: its root is that of Modern English care, Old
English caru, with velar C, but the adjective chary is presumed to derive from the
genitive of caru, whose A is fronted to Æ, giving cære and hence, for the adjective,
ceariȝ, with palatalized C. Other examples are ceaf ‘chaff’ (also cæf), cealc ‘chalk’
(also cælc).
Further examples of the palatalized value in final position are crycc ‘crutch’,
finc ‘finch’, hæc ‘hatch’; sƿelc ‘such’, and similarly non-finally in bealcian ‘belch’,
(a)cƿencan ‘quench’, ƿince ‘winch’.
Further examples of geminated medial palatalized C are bicce ‘bitch’, ȝicce
‘itch’, ƿæcca ‘watch’; all these have lost their endings and produce final -TCH in
Modern English.
In two cases Old English palatalized C derived not from /j/ but, it is
believed, from the assimilation of T to a following glide: early Old English fetian
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became fecc(e)an ‘fetch’, and ortȝeard (first syllable from Latin hortus ‘garden’,
second syllable > Modern English ‘yard’) became orceard ‘orchard’.
With regard to bishopric, with an unexpected final C, note that more
expected spellings for the ending such as -RICH(E) and -RYCH(E) are found in Middle
and Early Modern English.
C.4
Exceptions and variations
Sometimes C is unexpectedly found pronounced /j/ before a front vowel, as in
þancian ‘thank’, cepan ‘keep’, cin ‘kin’.
The value of C in a Modern English spelling often shows which value C had
in the equivalent Old English word, but there are some apparent anomalies. Old
English bæc ‘back’ was pronounced with final /sR/ after the front vowel Æ; but
when Æ later merged with A, final /j/ was restored, as in modern back.
Just as ciecen ‘chicken’ should have given Modern English *chichen, Old
English ceace ‘cheek’ should, by the normal pattern of development, have given rise
to Modern English *cheech.
To bake/batch, etc, add care/chary, cock/chicken, cool/chill, crook/crutch,
milk/milch, nock/notch (possibly), seek/beseech, snack/snatch (possibly),
stark/starch, stick/stitch, and note the threefold split of the toponymic suffix CEASTER,
CESTER
giving predominantly northern -CASTER (Doncaster, Lancaster), midlands -
(Leicester, Towcester), and southern -CHESTER (Chichester, Dorchester). Note
also ache, with a pronunciation corresponding to that of the verb bake but a
spelling more resembling that of the noun batch; Old English forms were æce for
the noun and acan for the verb.
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With þencan/þencean compare the distinction with the different values of C
in Modern English applicable (velar, as /j/) and noticeable (palatalized, as /r/, with
following ‘diacritic’ E).
The alternation of C/K is seen in Modern English, with C before the back
vowel of cat, but K before the front vowel of kitten. When the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
for the year 519 refers to the pair of princes Certic and Kynric, the distinction
between the values /sR/ and /j/ is evident. Cases of ambiguity in Old English are
resolved in Modern English, which prefers spellings with K for the phonetic value
/j/ before front vowels, as in Kent, kill, kin, kind, king, kiss, kitchen, kite, kith.
Modern English CH in henchman appears to have arisen not from Old
English C but by assimilation of the consonants from the second syllable of Old
English hengest (‘stallion’).
The Old English combinations CG and SC are discussed under G and S
respectively (see History pp. 46 and 55–6).
D
Additional examples are deaf, doȝȝa ‘dog’, dypt ‘dipped’, bindan ‘to bind’.
With an intrusive D not found in Old English: thunder < þunor (compare
German Donner). Such words have acquired an intrusive D not present in Old
English for phonetic reasons, similar to those that led to the insertion of B after M
in thimble, etc (see under B), as a consonantal glide, the natural product of the
adjustment of speech organs releasing a continuant consonant before a vowel
(thus, tongue-release after L and N producing D, and lip-release after M producing
B).
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Just as medial and final D varied between the values of /c/ and /C/ (modern
voiced TH), we may note that Welsh uses DD for /C/ and D for /c/ (e.g. in
eisteddfod).
To fæder ‘father’, etc, add þider ‘thither’, ƿeder ‘weather’, hƿider ‘whither’.
E
The ending -EN occasionally survives into Modern English (e.g. ac ‘oak’, acen
‘oaken’).
E.1
Short E
Further examples are betst ‘best’, ebba ‘ebb’, ecȝ ‘edge’, elm, helm ‘helmet’, hen,
sellan ‘to sell’, settan ‘to set’, steppan ‘to step’, tellan ‘to tell’, ƿest ‘west’. Mixture of
dialects resulted in King Alfred’s Temese being written with A, pronounced /D/, as
Modern English Thames.
Further examples of short E preceded N in Old English > modern I: ȝrennian
‘grin’, menȝian ‘mingle’, senȝean ‘singe’.
Like the Modern English pluralization of man as men, A in Old English mann
alternated with E in plural menn.
A further variation is seen in tredan ‘to tread’; for secȝan ‘to say’, ƿeȝ ‘way’,
see Chapter 6, AI.5 below
E before R could have short (here ‘army’, compare Modern English Hereford)
or long (her ‘here’) values, but in both cases we have to assume a more or less
standard Old English value for E as /D/ and /d9/ respectively, and not a centralized
value as /29/ in Modern English her. Further examples of Old English ER > Modern
English AR include ferre > far, herfest > harvest, sterre > star, and similarly with EOR
in beorcan > to bark, ceorfan > carve, deorc > dark, deorling > darling, dƿeorȝ >
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dwarf, steorfan > starve, and leading to EAR in hercnian > hearken (beside hark),
heorte > heart, herð > hearth. The Modern English alternatives shard/sherd, with
differently pronounced vowels, show this change still unresolved. The change is
heard, but not spelt, in certain English place-names, such as Berkeley, Berkshire,
Cherwell, Derby, Hertford, though other spellings (e.g. surnames, or American
variants) show the change, as in Barclay, Darby, Hartford, while other American
pronunciations keep the original value of ER, as when Derby is pronounced /!c29ah/.
See History p. 103 for examples of similar changes in words derived from French,
e.g. ferme > farm.
E.2
Long E
Long E in the plurals fet ‘feet’, ȝes ‘geese’, teð ‘teeth’ occurred as mutation (compare
mann/menn) from long O in singular fot ‘foot’, ȝos ‘goose’, toð ‘tooth’. Similar in Old
English were bec as the plural of boc ‘book’, though Modern English has the
regularized plural books, not *beek or *beech (despite Modern English EE in the
cognate bece ‘beech’), and brec ‘breeches’ (but no modern form survives
corresponding to Old English singular broc.
Additionally, E was sometimes used, as noted under C above, simply to
indicate the palatalization of a preceding C or G, thus secan ‘seek’ was also written
secean, and secȝan ‘say’ also as secȝean.
EA
The precise sound-value of Old English EA is uncertain, but it may have been close
to Modern English ‘air’. In a number of words it coincides with modern EA, but with
changed pronunciation as shown by Old English eare, which had a value closer to
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the vowel of Modern English ‘air’ than to ‘ear’. Old English EA was reduced to E, etc
in the Middle English period; EA was restored in Early Modern English.)
A further example in the range of other Modern English vowels from Old
English EA is sceamu ‘shame’. Examples of Old English -LEAS > Modern English
-LESS: freondleas ‘friendless’, hlafordleas ‘lordless’, ƿifleas ‘wifeless’.
The EA digraph could mutate to another vowel under certain conditions, as
when eald ‘old’ became IE in ieldra ‘older’ (compare Modern English old, elder).
EO
The digraph EO also represented a diphthong, pronounced higher than Old English
EA,
perhaps closer to the vowel of Modern English payer. EO had both short and
long values. Further examples of the development of its long value to Modern
English EE are creopan ‘creep’, deor ‘deer’, feoh ‘fee’, fleot ‘fleet’, freosan ‘freeze’, ȝleo
‘glee’, hreod ‘reed’, seon ‘to see’, seoþan ‘to seethe’, steor ‘steer’ (= bull).
Further examples of Modern English EA with various pronunciations are
deor ‘dear’, eorl ‘earl’, heop ‘heap’, seole ‘seal’ (= animal).
Modern English sister with a short I corresponds to Old English sƿeostor but
is derived rather from the Scandinavian form systir; Middle English suster and
soster derive from Old English variants.
The digraph EO is also found in numerous other words where it alternates
with E, EA, O, etc, depending, for instance, on dialect and grammatical function (e.g.
freosan ‘to freeze’, freas ‘froze’).
F
F.1
F
for both [f] and [v]
Old English F represented the sounds [f] and [v], for which Modern English has the
two letters F and V. (Welsh also lacks the letter V, spelling the above two sounds
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respectively as FF, F: e.g. ffilm, ‘film’, carafan ‘caravan’.) Separate letters were not
needed for [f, v] in Old English because the sounds were not contrastive: i.e. there
were no pairs of words like Modern English fat/vat which would be confused if the
sounds were not distinguished. This pattern, whereby voiced and voiceless values
of fricatives were given the same spelling in Old English, affected not only F, but
also S and TH.
F.2
Voiceless F
Additional examples are fæðm ‘fathom’, fæt ‘fat’, fann ‘fan’, feoƿer ‘four’, feþer
‘feather’, ficol ‘fickle’, finȝer ‘finger’, forȝitan ‘forget’, frost. Double F may be reduced
from triple F, as in offal < off+fall.
F.3
Voicing of F
The sound [v] in Old English could not be written as V in Anglo-Saxon times,
because the Roman alphabet had not yet acquired the letter V as a consonant letter
distinct from the vowel U (though the latter is occasionally seen in Old English in
medial positions as an alternative to F). There is here a parallel with the nondistinction between voiced/voiceless pronunciation of S and TH in both Old English
and Modern English (e.g. a house, to house /g@Tr+g@Ty/, a mouth, to mouth
/l@TS+l@TC/), with the difference that Modern English spelling has separate
letters to distinguish the separate speech-sounds /f, v/ where Old English did not
have. Additional examples of medial F in Old English are anfilte ‘anvil’, cofa ‘cove’,
drifan ‘to drive’, dufe ‘dove’, efen ‘even’, efese ‘eaves’, fefer ‘fever’, ȝeliefan ‘to
believe’, ȝiefan ‘to give’, hefiȝ ‘heavy’, heofon ‘heaven’, hræfn ‘raven’, hyfe ‘hive’, ifiȝ
‘ivy’, læfan ‘to leave’, lifer ‘liver’, lufian ‘to love’, ofen ‘oven’, sceofl ‘shovel’, scufan ‘to
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shove’, seofon ‘seven’, seolfor ‘silver’, sife ‘sieve’, steorfan ‘to starve’, stofa ‘stove’,
ƿafian ‘to wave’, ƿefan ‘to weave’, ƿifel ‘weevil’.
To tƿelf/tƿelfe ‘twelve’ add luf/lufe/lufu ‘love’; similarly ȝlof > glove. The Old
English use of F in related voiced and voiceless contexts is described by some
linguists as ‘morphophonemic’, meaning consistent spelling that does not
correspond to consistent pronunciation, and this they see as an important feature
of English orthography. In one notable set of words, however, Modern English
abandons the morphophonemic spellings of Old English (as in singular ƿulf ‘wolf’
with F pronounced [f], but plural ƿulfas with F pronounced [v]), and writes F for
voiceless values in the singular (wolf) and V for voiced values in the plural (wolves).
Some other Modern English forms show similar F/V, /f, v/, alternations by analogy
with these Old English patterns, although not all of them originated in Old English:
behove/behoof, believe/belief, bereave/bereft, drive/drift, five/fifth, give/gift,
leave/left, love/lief, prove/proof, relieve/relief, save/safe, scarf/scarfs/scarves,
shelf/shelves, stave/staff, strive/strife, thrive/thrift, twelve/twelfth, waive/waif,
weave/weft.
F.4
Lost F in Modern English
Over a long period of time it is common for the forms of many words to evolve by
loss of some of their sounds, letters, and even whole syllables. Losses from different
positions in words are described by different terms: aphaeresis or aphesis for loss
of initial elements, syncope for medial losses, apocope for loss of final elements.
Many Old English words have been thus reduced in subsequent centuries, a
number of them losing F from medial syllables by syncopation. A dramatic example
of the process continuing over a thousand years is provided by the Old English
word hæfde which in Middle English had become hadde, only to shrink further to
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Modern English had, with the ultimate reduction to the single letter ’d in colloquial
speech (e.g. they’d). Other instances of syncopation involving F include hæfð >
hath, heafoc > hawk, heafod > head, hlafdiȝe > lady, hlafmæsse > lammas, hlaford
> lord, ƿifman > woman.
Spelling with F or V
F.5
With Modern English vane, vat and Old English fana, fæt, compare German Fahne
‘flag’, Fass ‘barrel’. Valhalla, Valkyrie, Viking were all spelt with W, i.e. Ƿ, in Old
English.
One may conclude that Old English managed with the one letter F for both the
voiced and voiceless sounds because the position of the letter made its value clear,
and the few Latin loanwords interfered only marginally with this system. Modern
English is a vastly richer and far less homogeneous language than Old English, but
by using F/V with a high degree of consistency to distinguish voiced and voiceless
values, it must be judged to have achieved a quite satisfactory way of representing
the sounds concerned. In Modern English, too, the few anomalies (such as of,
hoofs/hooves) are isolated and hence marginal to the system as a whole.
G
G.1
Forms and sound values in Old English
The Old English scribal form of G derived not from Roman capital G, but from a
cursive variant (taken from Irish scribes) which we shall here represent by the open
form <Ȝ> (in Middle English given the name yogh), although it assumed slightly
different forms at different times through the centuries. It was not until after 1066
that the continental (Caroline minuscule) closed form <g> began to be widely used
in English.
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Our purpose in this section is to categorize the values of G in terms of the
Modern English spellings they typically led to, because G in Old English often does
not correspond to G in Modern English.
G.2
Survival as /g/ into Modern English
Further examples of initial G are ȝarleac ‘garlic’, ȝaderian ‘to gather’, ȝamen ‘game’,
ȝalȝa ‘gallows’, ȝast ‘ghost’, ȝleƿan ‘to glow’, ȝod ‘god, good’, ȝroƿan ‘to grow’, ȝrund
‘ground’.
Further examples of Old English NG are hanȝian ‘to hang’, hrinȝ ‘ring’, hunȝor
‘hunger’, sinȝan ‘to sing’, strenȝþ ‘strength’, þinȝ ‘thing’, ƿrinȝan ‘to wring’.
G.3
G leading to Modern English Y , and complete loss of G
Further examples are ȝærƿe ‘yarrow’, ȝe ‘ye’, ȝeoc ‘yoke’, ȝeol ‘yule’, ȝeoluc ‘yolk’,
ȝeoȝuð ‘youth’, ȝeon ‘yon’, ȝiellan ‘to yell’, ȝiernan ‘to yearn’, ȝierstandæȝ ‘yesterday’,
ȝiet ‘yet’, and syllable-initially beȝeondan ‘beyond’. To ȝif, etc add ȝipesƿic ‘Ipswich’,
and with is-ȝicel compare Old Icelandic jökull ‘icicle’. ȝim ‘gem’ might have
undergone the same process but French gemme intervened after 1066 to give
Modern English gem rather than *im.
With ȝelice ‘alike’ compare Modern German gleich, and with ȝenoȝ ‘enough’
Modern German genug.
G.4
Scandinavian preservation of G
To ȝietan and ȝiefan, add beȝinnan ‘to begin’. The critical anomaly of the Modern
English forms get, give, begin arises from conflict with the later French-derived
palatal value for G as /cY/ before front vowels, as in gem, gin. Norman French
offered a solution to this ambiguity with the insertion of U, so that the spellings
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showed the velar /f/ value of G, as in guile. This solution was
eventually (by the 16th century) also adopted for some words of probable
Scandinavian origin, Modern English guess (no Old English equivalent) and guest
(Old English ȝest), but to be consistent by this pattern, get, give, begin would also
need to be written with GU, as *guet, *guive, *beguin; that, however, is not attested.
Modern English guilt (Old English ȝylt) looks a similar case, but the UI may reflect
the Old English Y (compare UI in build, probably from Old English byldan), rather
than U-insertion to indicate velar G, /f/. The word ȝyld ‘guild/gild’ has the option
in Modern English of following the model of guest, with U, or of get, without U.
Analogy of the ‘hard’ /f/ pronounced before O in ȝold may explain the retention of
simple G in the cognate verb to gild (rather than *guild or *yild). Velar /f/ in gird,
girl, girth occurs in the distinctive string GIR-. (See History p. 29 for further
examples of /f/-spellings in Scandinavian-derived words.)
Strikingly anomalous are two identically spelt place-names: Gillingham in
Kent with G = /cY/ as in Old French, and Gillingham in Dorset with G = /f/ as
though influenced by Scandinavian speech, though both names appear to have a
normal Old English pedigree. Possibly different dialect influences (West Saxon,
Kentish) explain the discrepancy.
G.5
Medial and final G and H leading to Modern English GH
The voiced velar fricative /F/ resembles a voiced /g/. The closeness to /g/ is
important, as the two letters G, H are found as alternatives in the Old English
spelling of many words, with H becoming dominant in the late West Saxon
standardized orthography.
With Old English hæȝol, læȝde, næȝ(e)l, ræȝ(e)n, sæȝde, etc, compare Modern
German equivalents retaining the old Germanic G: Hagel ‘hail’, legte ‘laid’, Nagel
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‘nail’, Regen ‘rain’, sagte ‘said’, etc. Add to examples ƿæȝ(e)n ‘wain’ (the cognate
wagon was a later import, from Dutch wagen, again retaining the Germanic G).
To examples of G in final position, add hƿæȝ ‘whey’.
G.6
Palatalized G leading to Modern English DG
Some of these words have velar G, /f/, in modern northern dialect, e.g. brig, mig,
rig for bridge, midge, ridge.
A rare case where the /cY/ value has persisted into Modern English from a
single rather than a geminate G is the verb senȝan ‘to singe’; the form sencȝan is
also attested.
G.7
Clarifying the ambiguity of G
As with the ambiguous velar and palatal values of C, Old English writers seem to
have been dissatisfied with the ambiguity of G. They sometimes clarified the palatal
value before a back vowel by inserting a ‘diacritical’ E or I, as in secȝean ‘to say’,
sorȝian ‘to sorrow’, and in Middle English times a ‘diacritical’ U could be introduced
to show the hard velar value /f/ before a front vowel, as in guest. A much more
effective distinction would have been to have a separate letter for the different
values, and that was also made possible in Middle English by the use of the two
letter forms, continental <g> for the velar stop /f/, and Old English <ȝ> for the
fricatives /j/ and /F/.
H
H.1
Use of H in Old English
Further examples include habban ‘to have’, haccan ‘to hack’, hal ‘whole’, haliȝ
‘holy’, hamor ‘hammer’, hand, heafod ‘head’, heah ‘high’, heard ‘hard’, hefiȝ ‘heavy’,
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henep ‘hemp’, heofon ‘heaven’, heop ‘heap’, heorþ ‘hearth’, herinȝ ‘herring’, hindrian
‘to to hinder’, hop ‘hoop’, horn, hure ‘whore’, hyd ‘hide’ (= skin of animal), hyl ‘hill’;
hlafdiȝe ‘lady’, hlaford ‘lord’, hleahtor ‘laughter’, hleapan ‘to leap’, hlid ‘lid’, hliehhan
‘to laugh’, hlinian ‘to lean’, hnappian ‘to take a nap’, hreaƿ ‘raw’, hreoƿ ‘rue’, hrycȝ
‘ridge’. Though lost in hrinȝ > ‘ring’, the initial H is still seen in the distantly related
word harangue (< French and medieval Latin, ultimately from Old German hring).
Further examples of HW > WH are hƿa ‘who’, hƿænne ‘when’, hƿær ‘where’,
hƿæt ‘what’, hƿæte ‘wheat’, hƿæðer ‘whether’, hƿeol ‘wheel’, hƿeop ‘whip’, hƿil ‘while’,
hƿisprian ‘whisper’. We may note the differing fate of this initial H in other Germanic
languages, lost from some cognates of, for example, Modern English white (Dutch
wit, German weiss, Swedish vit) but surviving in others (Danish hvid, Norwegian
hvit).
It may be that when H precedes L, N, R, W in Old English, it should be
regarded as representing an aspirate; alternatively, it has been suggested it may
only indicate a voiceless pronunciation of the following L, N, R, W which are
otherwise voiced in English. Clearly /g/ has a common tendency to fall silent in the
development of languages (it did in Latin), and it was easy to elide before another
consonant in English, as happened in Middle English. Some accents do maintain
/gv/ in Modern English, and the reversed letter sequence, WH, has been
everywhere retained in the spelling.
H.2
Old English H leading to Modern English GH, etc
The letter H was never silent in Old English. Examples of -BURY in place-names are
Aylesbury, Banbury, Salisbury. Harbour has lost the final consonant of burh
entirely, except in the place-name Market Harborough; compare Modern German
Herberge ‘shelter’). A further example of H > GH is sloh ‘slough’ (= mire); furh
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produced Modern English furrow and the first syllable of furlong; seah/sæh
produced Modern English saw (= past tense of ‘see’).
Further examples of Old English H before T or Þ are cniht ‘knight’, feohtan ‘to
fight’, flyht ‘flight’, fyrhto ‘fright’, hiehþo ‘height’, liht ‘light’, mihte ‘might’, niht
‘night’, pliht ‘plight’, riht ‘right’, sihþ ‘sight’, sohte ‘sought’, tæhte ‘taught’, þohte
‘thought’.
Two more examples of gemination of Old English H, which has no parallel in
Modern English, are tiehhian ‘to tug’ and pohha ‘pouch’. (We may reflect on the
appropriateness of such a rare Old English spelling, HH, leading to such an
unusual Modern English form as laugh.)
In addition to fah and scoh, note feoh ‘fee’.
I
I.1
Vowel quantity
In very many cases, the short and long values of Old English I correspond to Ivowels having the values /H/ (as in bit) and /`H/ (as in bite) in Modern English.
I.2
Short and long values
Further examples of Old English short I are bicce ‘bitch’, cƿic > ‘quick’, ȝif ‘if’, hit ‘it’,
hlid ‘lid’, hrinȝ ‘ring’, lim ‘limb’, rib, riden ‘ridden’, risen, scip ‘ship’, sittan ‘to sit’, stil
‘still’, þinȝ ‘thing’, timber, tƿiȝ ‘twig’, ƿice ‘wick’. Short I before R, as in birce ‘birch’,
must be assumed to have its value /H/ as in Modern English spirit, not /29/ as in
birch, and is the value self-evidently present in brid for Modern English ‘bird’, with
its reversal of RI to IR: see under R (History p. 53) for further examples of such
metathesis.
To the examples of Old English long I add bliðe ‘blithe’, bridel ‘bridle’, drifan
‘to drive’, fif ‘five’, ȝelice ‘like’, hƿil ‘while’, ifiȝ ‘ivy’, is ‘ice’, pin ‘pine-tree’, ridan ‘to
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ride’, risan ‘to rise’, siðe ‘scythe’, tid ‘tide’, tima ‘time’, ƿid ‘wide’, ƿif ‘wife’, ƿin ‘wine’,
ƿis ‘wise’.
I.3
Length variation
Further examples of length variation in related pairs of words are ride/ridden,
rise/risen, smite/smitten; grip/gripe, behind/hinder.
There are a number of cases where Old English short I has become Modern
English long I, and vice versa, but the letter I is retained nevertheless. Short I
becomes long in bindan ‘to bind’, blind, cild ‘child’, climban ‘to climb’, findan ‘to
find’, hindan ‘behind’, ic ‘I’, milde ‘mild’, niȝon ‘nine’, niȝoða ‘ninth’, niht ‘night’, ƿilde
‘wild’, ƿindan ‘to wind’ (the noun wind also became long – compare Shakespeare As
You Like It , II.vii.174–5: ‘blow, blow, thou winter wind/thou art not so unkind …’ –
but reverted to short by analogy with windmill, windy, etc). Vowel shortening has
occurred in blis ‘bliss’, fiftene ‘fifteen’, ȝripan ‘to grip’, stif ‘stiff’, ƿisdom ‘wisdom’.
As noted under E (see History pp. 39–40), several Old English forms with E
followed by N are spelt with I in Modern English: grin, link, mingle, singe, string,
think; similarly rid from hreddan. But England, English, pretty did not change their
spelling in that way although they are now pronounced as if spelt with short I.
The letter I also occurred in Old English in some diphthongs (IE, IO), but
generally as alternatives to or precursors of other vowel spellings. As they do not
lead on to any particular Modern English spelling patterns, they are not further
discussed here or in the History.
J
The letter J in Old English times was not yet distinct from I. The beginnings of its
modern value can be inferred from a spelling such as Hierusalem for modern
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Jerusalem. Something like the modern value of J (where now spelt DG) was however
spelt CG in Old English in words such as ecȝ ‘edge’, as described under G in the
History p. 46.
See History Chapter 5 for the main development of J, in words of French
origin.
L
Further examples are Lunden ‘London’; ƿlæc ‘luke-warm’.
L
could be written syllabically at the end of a word after another consonant
in other old Germanic languages (Gothic, Old Norse) just as in Old English: another
example is spatel/spatl ‘spittle’.
Against the Modern English spellings with final -LE (e.g. middle rather than
middel), the exceptional -EL form of nickel reflects the late date (18th century) of its
borrowing from German.
M
One further example is miriȝ ‘merry’.
With Old English æmtiȝ, æmete > Modern English empty, ant, compare
Hamtun > Modern English Hampton (with the loss of -TON-, also HAMP- in
Hampshire) and the abbreviations Hants, Northants from Hampshire,
Northamptonshire. This has not occurred in either emmet (a Modern English dialect
form of ant) nor in German Ameise ‘ant’; in these, the medial vowel has been
retained and the M thus kept separate from the following consonant.
With sempstress/seamstress, compare Hampstead (London) beside
Hamstead (Birmingham).
See N (History p. 51) for the switch from N to M.
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N
N.1
Distribution of N in Old English
A further example is nead ‘need’.
Modern English nightingale acquired its medial N much later – Old English
had forms like nectæȝalæ (compare Modern German Nachtigall).
The use of syllabic N in *hymn is not attested – a vowel letter was always
inserted to give full value to the final N, as in Old English hymen, ymmon, etc; the N
of Modern English hymn probably did not fall silent until the 15th century.
The Modern English verbs fasten, harden, thicken (‘to make fast, hard, thick’)
have their -EN from Old English, but many other verbs were later formed on the
same model, such as blacken, broaden, darken, flatten, frighten, happen, hearten,
listen, madden, redden, threaten; the stems of hasten, moisten are not even of Old
English descent, having come from Old French.
N.2
Subsequent loss of N
The basic form seldan (compare Modern German selten) was altered to seldum by
analogy with the -UM dative plural ending of other words such as hwilum ‘whilom’
(< hwil ‘while’) to become Modern English seldom.
By far the most important pattern of N, /n/-loss from Old English, however,
affected the final unstressed inflections of nouns, adjectives and verbs. Often the
Modern English form will simply represent the original root without an inflectional
suffix (e.g. brinȝan ‘to bring’), but in other cases an inflected or suffixed form with N
has become the Modern English standard. Sometimes alternative forms of words
have persisted into Modern English, one with the former -N suffix, the other
without. Typically, one of the forms has an archaic or poetic flavour which the
other does not, but there is no regularity as to whether the form with or without the
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suffix seems the more archaic. In addition to druncen ‘drunk, drunken’, we find
eald ‘old, olden’, mæȝden ‘maid, maiden’, oft ‘oft, often’ (this -N originated in Middle
English), open ‘open, ope’.
O
Additional examples of short O are folȝian ‘to follow’, ȝod ‘god’, hoppian ‘to hop’, oxa
‘ox’; and of long O leading to OO: foda ‘food’, fot ‘foot’, ȝeloma ‘loom’, ȝod ‘good’, ȝos
‘goose’, hod ‘hood’, hof ‘hoof’, hop ‘hoop’, hrof ‘roof’, mod ‘mood’, mona ‘moon’, rot
‘root’, sona ‘soon’, tol ‘tool’; similar, though spelt with OE in Modern English, is scoh
‘shoe’ (shoo and similar spellings were seen in Middle and Early Modern English;
the spelling shoe is first seen in the 16th century; note also the archaic plural
shoon with OO).
Some words have, however, moved from short to long O or vice versa between
Old English and Modern English. Short O has been lengthened in bodian ‘bode’,
cofa ‘cove’, fola ‘foal’, folc ‘folk’, ȝold ‘gold’, hol ‘hole’, hopian ‘to hope’, hosa ‘hose’,
mot ‘mote’, nosu ‘nose’, open, stofa ‘stove’, ȝeoc ‘yoke’. Conversely, Old English long
O
is pronounced short in Modern English in blostm ‘blossom’, foddre ‘fodder’, softe
‘soft’.
OE
The digraph OE, ligatured as Œ, was used for a while in some Old English dialects,
but has left no particular mark on Modern English. Examples of its use include:
cƿœn as an alternative for cƿen ‘queen’, œxen for oxen.
R
In precisely what manner R was pronounced, for instance whether trilled as often
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in modern Scots or retroflex as in modern American, is uncertain.
Additional examples in different positions are ƿeorc ‘work’, ƿord ‘word’.
R
is used syllabically in the Graeco-Latin loanword for Modern English
theatre as þeatr.
S
S.1
Voiced and voiceless values distinguished by position
Additional examples are sprinȝ ‘spring’, storm; bysiȝ ‘busy’, ceosan ‘to choose’,
losian ‘to lose’, risan ‘to rise’, þusend ‘thousand’. The word answer, Old English
andsƿaru, with /s/ in Modern English, is not an exception, as it is a compound
made up of and+sƿaru, and the S is therefore pronounced voicelessly as though in
initial position.
S.2
Subsequent loss of orthographic voiced ~ voiceless distinction
As seen from the above examples, in general Modern English pronounces words of
Old English origin with S voiced as /z/ or voiceless as /s/ just as Old English did,
although the two values are now considered separate speech-sounds. However, the
way Old English and Modern English make the distinction in spelling, especially in
final position, differs significantly, with the Old English values of S clearly indicated
by their position, where Modern English uses a range of different spellings
containing a serious element of ambiguity (as when the voiceless S in loose is not
graphically distinguished from the voiced S in lose).
The change from the voiceless to voiced value of final S is most easily seen in
a group of very common words, where it is thought that their unstressed position
in most utterances led to a more lax (lenis) pronunciation, which entailed voicing.
Thus where Old English his was pronounced as Modern English hiss, today its final
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is voiced to give /gHy/. Voicing similarly came to affect is and ƿæs ‘was’, as well as
the post-Old English forms as, has, and, occasionally in non-standard Modern
English, us. In general it appears that final S became voiced where it terminated an
unstressed syllable, but tended to remain voiceless in stressed syllables, as in
Modern English this, thus and, usually, us.
S.3
Grammatical functions of final S in Modern English
In Modern English final S proliferates in several major grammatical functions: as a
standard plural ending for nouns (e.g. days); as a standard possessive ending for
nouns in both singular (e.g. day’s) and plural (e.g. days’); and as a standard
ending for the 3rd person singular of the present tense of verbs (e.g. hears). In Old
English this final grammatical S was much less widespread. Only a minority of
nouns formed their plurals with S (e.g. daȝas ‘days’, but synna ‘sins’). Only some
masculine and neuter nouns formed their singular possessives with S (dæȝes
“day’s”, but synne “sin’s”). No nouns had S for the possessive plural (e.g. daȝa
“days’ ”, synna “sins’ ”); and verbs did not have S-inflections (e.g. hierþ ‘heareth’ =
‘hears’), at least in southern dialects (-S is attested in Northumbrian).
For many speakers, dose and doze are distinguished not only in writing but
by a contrast between /r/ and /y/, but for others the two words are homophonous.
S.4
Distinguishing /r/ and /y/ in Modern English
Old English bræs ‘brass’ and bræsen ‘brazen’ are clearly connected whereas one
incidental consequence of the change from S to SS and Z in Modern English brass
and brazen respectively is that readers are less likely to be aware that
brass/brazen are linked. A similar pattern of S/Z variation is seen in Modern
English wise/wizard.
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There are also some cases where the Modern English voiced /z/ derives from
an inflected Old English form, rather than the base form given here with voiceless
final S: fyrs ‘furze’, ƿos ‘ooze’.
S.5
Inconsistent final -SE, -CE, -ZE in Modern English
The Old English spellings clearly show that the S in cyse is voiced, since it occurs
medially, while in fleos, ȝes the S is voiceless since it occurs word-finally; but by
spelling geese like cheese rather than as geece like fleece (or alternatively, by not
writing cheese as cheeze to match freeze), Modern English makes confusion of the
indication of the voiced and voiceless values. Particular difficulty (with consequent
frequent misspelling) is caused by the verb to lose contrasting with the adjective
loose and the verb to choose (past tense chose); here the forms ooze and goose
could have provided less ambiguous models (e.g. perhaps looze, chooze); but we
here also note that the S of gooseberry is generally voiced as /y/ before the voiced
stop B (though in some people’s pronunciation it is /r/ as in goose), though it is
respelt ZZ in gozzard ‘gooseherd’.
SC
The phonological development of SC from /rj/ in early Old English to later /R/, as
spelt SH in Modern English, is similar to the development of Late Latin and
subsequently Italian, whereby SC also came to be pronounced /R/ before front
vowels (e.g. in Italian crescendo). It is not clear how, if at all, the developments in
Late Latin and Old English are related: the parallel is probably just coincidental,
rather than Old English taking an existing sound–symbol correspondence from
Late Latin. Modern German Bischof ‘bishop’ (< Old High German biscof) also has
/R/.
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It is often the case that Modern English words of Germanic origin beginning
with the sound /rj/, whether spelt with SC or SK, are of Scandinavian origin, their
Old English cognates having been respelt in Middle English times with SH. It is this
split between words of Old English and Scandinavian origin that gives rise to pairs
of words which today have different meanings, different pronunciations and
different spellings, although they ultimately derive from a common Germanic root:
e.g. shell/scale (perhaps also shale), and (more remotely) shore/score.
T
Further examples are tacen ‘token’, tade ‘toad, tæhte ‘taught’, tanȝe ‘tongs’, tid
‘tide’, tiȝian ‘to tie’, timber, tite ‘tit’, toð ‘tooth’, stranȝ ‘strong’.
Þ, Ð (TH)
TH.1
Voiced/voiceless values distinguished positionally, not alphabetically
When Old Norse adopted thorn and eth from English for the western Scandinavians
after about 1200, separate functions were gradually developed for the characters, Þ
for voiceless TH, and Ð for its voiced equivalent, a distinction maintained in
Icelandic to the present day (as in það ‘it, that’, þið ‘you (pl.)’).
Additional examples are þeoh ‘thigh’, þicce ‘thick’, þinne ‘thin’, þinȝ ‘thing’,
þistel ‘thistle’, þorn ‘thorn’, þræd ‘thread’, þranȝ ‘throng’, þraƿan ‘to throw’, þreo
‘three’, þrietian ‘to threaten’, þrines ‘threeness’ (= ‘trinity’), þrote ‘throat’, þuma
‘thumb’, þunor ‘thunder’, þursdæȝ ‘Thursday’, þusend ‘thousand’, þurh ‘through’.
Eth was more usual than thorn in final position. Additional examples are
hafð ‘hath’, hælð ‘health’, heorð ‘hearth’, hæð ‘heath’, lenȝð ‘length’, lað ‘loth’, myriȝð
‘mirth’, monað ‘month’, muð ‘mouth’, norð ‘north’, að ‘oath’, pæð ‘path’, smið ‘smith’,
strenȝð ‘strength’, suð ‘south’, teð ‘teeth’, toð ‘tooth’, treoƿð ‘truth’, uncuð ‘uncouth’,
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ƿeorð ‘worth’, ȝeoȝuð ‘youth’. Further later examples of final -TH are sloth, stealth,
troth, wealth, width. All these are of Germanic origin, but they were joined by faith,
adapted from Latin via Norman French, and later by words of Greek derivation,
such as megalith and myth.
Voiceless final eth (and thorn) also occurred in the standard Old English
inflection in the present tense of verbs, not merely for the third person singular in
place of Modern English S – hierð ‘heareth, hears’ – but also in the plural of many
verbs – hierað ‘(we/you/they) hear’.
TH.2
Voicing and devoicing of Old English TH in Modern English
Like bequeath, betroth has a final /C/ where by the spelling /S/might be expected;
a pronunciation with /S/ is also heard.
Although voicing of TH is normal in medial position in Modern English as in
Old English, Old English did have the possibility of showing an exceptional medial
voiceless value by geminating the letter concerned as ÞÞ or ÐÐ (or even ÞÐ or ÐÞ):
cyþþo ‘kith’, moþþe/moððe/moþðe/moðþe ‘moth’, sceððan (‘to scathe’ = ‘injure),
ƿræððu ‘wrath’. (We see here a parallel with voiceless geminated F as in pyffan ‘puff’
and S in cyssan ‘kiss’.) In all these instances Modern English has either kept the
voiceless value but lost the Old English ending, or (in the case of unscathed, which
is probably a Scandinavian-derived form anyway) kept the medial position but
voiced the TH.
Although Modern English never doubles TH, Middle English could: e.g.
moththe ‘moth’. Similar to the anomalous brothel is the name Ethel, also with
voiceless medial TH.
Further examples of words with voiced medial TH (phonologically final in
Modern English) are liðe ‘lithe’, siðe ‘scythe’, soðian ‘to soothe’, ƿriðan ‘to wreathe,
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writhe’, and, from a different Old English form, teoȝoða ‘tithe’. Examples of medial
TH
with (mostly) short vowels and a following -ER in Modern English are leaðor
‘lather’, leðer ‘leather’, niðer ‘nether’, norðern ‘northern’, oðer ‘other’, hraðer ‘rather’,
suðern ‘southern’, ƿeðer ‘wether’.
TH.3
TH
alternation with other spellings
Comparison with Modern German is instructive with regard to the changed TH/D
values: German D normally corresponds to Modern English TH (German Dank, Ding,
drei, kleiden, Süden, English thank, thing, three, clothe, south) but corresponding to
German Bürde, Mord we have English burden, murder. Similarly German T normally
corresponds to Modern English D (German Tier, tragen, Futter, bieten, English deer,
drag, fodder, bid) but corresponding to German Mutter, Vater, Wetter we have
English mother, father, weather.
The resemblance between brothel and bordel is fortuitous: the two words are
in origin unrelated (respectively < Middle English broþel < Old English broðen
‘degenerate’ and < Old French bordel ‘cabin, brothel’).
In Modern English worship (Old English ƿeorðscip = ‘worthship’) the TH has
been eroded, while it has been added in smother < Old English smorian (compare
Modern German schmoren), Middle English smeorðren, smoðren.
In the Modern English forms hustings, nostril, a former thorn (compare
Scandinavian husþing, Old English nosþyrl ‘nose-hole’) has become T, perhaps to
facilitate articulation of the consonant string with preceding S.
Runic Þ is also found in Old English transliterating Graeco-Latin TH, as in
þeatr for Modern English theatre.
U
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U.1
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Short values and spelling changes
Further examples of U = /U/ are bucca ‘buck’, dumb, hundred, pluccian ‘to pluck’.
U.2
Long U and quantity changes
Further examples are lus ‘louse’, muð ‘mouth’, mus ‘mouse’, neahȝebur ‘neighbour’,
nu ‘now’, prud ‘proud’, ure ‘our’, ut ‘out’ (note the cognate short U = /U/ in utter).
Modern English you, in which the OU is not pronounced /@T/, descends from
a different vowel in Old English, eow. (See History p. 188.)
V
A separate letter V had not yet come into existence in Old English times. As in
Latin, the letter U could be written with the shape V, but in Old English the sound
[v] was represented (medially, where it occurred) by the letter F, as described under
F. (See History p. 42.)
W/Ƿ
W.1
Evolving sound–symbol correspondences
Old English had the speech-sound /w/, but the letter W was not at that time
established. But as by the 7th century initial prevocalic U was coming to be
pronounced [v] in Latin (uideo/video), which was the preeminent language of
(ecclesiastical) literacy, to use U for /w/ in English must have seemed increasingly
awkward; hence the growing recourse during the 8th century to the runic letter
wyn, Ƿ.
W.2
Word-initial W
Further examples of initial W/ƿ are ƿa ‘woe’, ƿac ‘weak’, ƿad ‘woad’, ƿadan ‘to wade’,
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ƿal ‘wall’, ƿamb ‘womb’, ƿandrian ‘to wander’, ƿæcan ‘to wake’, ƿæccan ‘to watch’,
ƿæfan ‘to weave’, ƿæflan ‘to waffle’, ƿæȝn ‘wain’, ƿæscan ‘to wash’, ƿæsp ‘wasp’, ƿæt
‘wet’, ƿæter ‘water’, ƿæx ‘wax’, ƿeald ‘weald’ (= forest), ƿealƿian ‘to wallow’, ƿearm
‘warm’, ƿecȝ ‘wedge’, ƿeder ‘weather’, ƿeb ‘web’, ƿeȝ ‘way’, ƿell ‘well’, ƿeoc ‘week’,
ƿeodian ‘to weed’, ƿeorþ ‘worth’, ƿeosul ‘weasel’, ƿepan ‘to weep’, ƿeriȝ ‘weary’, ƿest
‘west’, ƿeste ‘waste’, ƿid ‘wide’, ƿielisc ‘Welsh’, ƿifmann ‘woman’, ƿiliȝ ‘willow’, ƿin
‘wine’, ƿind ‘wind’, ƿinter ‘winter’, ƿis ‘wise’, ƿiscan ‘to wish’, ƿið ‘with’, ƿodnesdæȝ
‘Wednesday’, ƿolde ‘would’, ƿundor ‘wonder’, ƿord ‘word’, ƿudu ‘wood’, ƿuduƿe
‘widow’, ƿul ‘wool’, ƿyrm ‘worm’.
Further examples of initial WR/ǷR are ƿræstlian ‘to wrestle’, ƿrencan ‘to
wrench’, ƿreoþ ‘wreath’, ƿrinclian ‘to wrinkle’, ƿrinȝan ‘to wring’, ƿryhta ‘wright’.
Although related to wrack and wreak (both < Old English), Modern English wreck
is from Anglo-Norman wrec/wrek/warec (< Old Norse). The name of the fish, the
wrasse, derives, not from Old English, but from Cornish (g)wrach.
An unusual development is seen in Modern English righteous whose Old
English form rihtƿis with syllable-initial in the suffix -ǷIS would normally have
produced Modern English rightwise; compare likewise, somewise, etc. The
unstressed suffix was progressively obscured in Early Modern English, with forms
such as -WOS, -UOUS eventually leading to -EOUS, with the initial /w/ totally eroded
and the Franco-Latin derived spelling -OUS adopted (compare virtuous from Latin
virtuosus, French vertueux). Compare the similar development of wrongous <
Middle English wrangwis.
W.3
W after consonants
Further examples of CǷ, etc are cƿencan ‘to quench’, cƿeorn ‘quern’; Modern English
qualm may not be directly related to Old English cƿealm ‘death’. (Paradoxically,
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where English substituted QU for earlier CǷ, Swedish moved in the opposite
direction in 1906, substituting KV for former QU.)
In a few cases Modern English writes WH where this is not justified by the
Old English etymon: ƿeoluc shows initial Ƿ without H for Modern English ‘whelk’,
and indeed forms without H (e.g. wilk) are found into the mid-19th century.
An additional word with initial SW dating back to Old English is sƿeord
‘sword’.
W.4
W after vowels
Final Ƿ occurs less often in Old English than W in Modern English.
With clew/clue, etc compare the surname Stewart/Stuart (< steward < Old
English stiȝƿeard; the Stewart kings and queens are descended from the family of
the hereditary Stewards of Scotland, who took their family name from their title).
In the case of saƿol ‘soul’, the medial Ƿ has been elided, the two Old English
vowels with their intermediate Ƿ-glide merging into a diphthong which finally
became Modern English /?T/.
The letter Ƿ was not geminated in Old English, nor is W doubled in Modern
English.
X
The variants ƿeaxan, ƿeacsan, ƿeahsan suggest some uncertainty about the precise
sound-value and spelling function of X; indeed, while some modern scholars give it
the value /jr/, others suggest the pronunciation /gr/ for it in Old English.
Standard Modern English to ask does not have X (despite a dialect form ax), but
many Old English variants did, as among ascian, acsian, ahsian, axian, ahxian,
ahxsian, axsian.
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Modern English pox is derived from pocks, the plural of pock, < Old English
poc (compare the Modern English spelling sox for socks); forms with X occur as
early as Middle English. Cox is an abbreviation of coxswain < cockswain, the sailor
in charge of a cock-boat; the spelling with X established itself in the 19th century.
Y
Y.1
Values of Y
In Modern English the letter Y has two vowel values, as in myth, my, and a
consonant (or semi-vowel) value, as in yes. All three of these values of Y can also be
rendered by I, as in mill, mile, onion. In Old English the letter Y originally had none
of these values, but represented /y/. Its sound merged in successive dialects
mostly with the values of I, until by Middle English it ceased to have a distinctive
sound value of its own at all. Although its sound values are largely interchangeable
with those of I in Modern English, it is particularly associated with the semi-vowel
value heard in yes, and demonstrates certain positional preferences (as a letter it
predominates word-finally). In late Old English this came to be the case too, with
the important difference that Y was always a vowel and never had the Modern
English semi-vowel value.
Dotted Y: Y commonly came to be written with its right-hand branch arching
over towards the left, so giving it a marked resemblance to such letters as Ƿ, Þ and
P,
but the dotted form was more open at the top and perhaps risked confusion with
U.
Y.2
Variability of Y
One cannot say that the use of Y in the spelling of Old English words anticipates its
use in Modern English words. Indeed, depending on date and dialect, Old English
words themselves were often written with vowel letters other than Y. For instance
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Old English ƿyrm ‘worm’ also occurred as ƿeorm and ƿurm, while ƿearm ‘warm’ also
occurred as ƿyrm (the confusion of this particular pair of words is also seen in
Modern English, in that worm has the vowel value most often spelt ER, while warm
has the vowel value normally spelt OR; compare term, form, arm).
Not showing the foul/filth mutation in Modern English, we have the Old
English pair þurst ‘thirst’ (noun), þyrstan ‘to thirst’; the noun form was early
assimilated to the form of the verb (Orm, for example, has þirrst and, with
metathesis, þrisst).
Y.3
Y
developing to I
Although the original Old English sound value of Y has mostly merged with I in
Modern English, it has been preserved with the fronted value /y/, written as Ü, in
many Modern German cognates: compare bridge (German Brücke), cripple
(Krüppel), kitchen (Küche), to kiss (küssen); further examples from Old English are
dyn ‘din’, fyllan ‘to fill’ (Modern German füllen), ȝyrdan ‘to gird’ (gürten), hyll ‘hill’
(Hügel), lytel ‘little’ (German dialect lützel), pytt ‘pit’ (Pütt ), synn ‘sin’ (Sünde),
þyrstan ‘to thirst’ (dürsten).
With Old English cu ‘cow’, cye ‘cows’ compare German Kuh, Kühe; with
hyden ‘to hide’, compare German hüten.
In a few cases long and short values were reversed. Old English short Y
became Modern English long I in ȝecynde ‘kind’, ȝemynd ‘mind’, and Old English
long Y developed to Modern English short I, as cyððo ‘kith’, fylð ‘filth’, þymel
‘thimble’, ƿyscan ‘to wish’ (compare German wünschen).
Modern German forms corresponding to some of the examples on p. 63 of
the History are crycc ‘crutch’ (German Krücke), dystiȝ ‘dusty’ (dünstig), yfel ‘evil’
(übel), ƿyrm ‘worm’ (Gewürm), ƿyrȝan ‘worry’ (würgen), ƿyrt ‘wort’ (Gewürz).
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Z
The letter Z has been introduced in place of voiced S in a number of Modern English
words descended from Old English (see under S for discussion of the patterns
concerned). The inconsistency with which Z was substituted is demonstrated by the
pair dizzy, busy: a notorious anomaly of Modern English spelling results from the
failure to apply the same procedure to both words to produce *bizzy.
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Typical and atypical Modern English developments of Old
English spellings
Letter(s) Long A
Short A
Old
bat, stan, ta. crabba,
English
fram, land,
brad,
man.
cildhad,
Long Æ
clæne, fær,
læst, læfan, fæder.
mænan, sæ,
tæcan.
hƿa, sƿapen, bara, lam,
ƿac.
Short Æ
æppel,
dæȝ, sæȝde,
smæl, ƿæter,
camb, lanȝ,
dæd,
hƿæt, ƿæsc,
stranȝ,
slæpan.
æniȝ,
ƿamb.
ærende.
Typical boat, stone, crab, land,
Modern
toe.
man.
English
equivalents
clean, fear,
Other
Modern
English
spelling
s/sound
values
deed, sleep
broad,
bare, lame,
childhood,
comb, from,
apple,
least, leave, father.
mean, sea,
teach.
day, said,
small,
who, swoop, long, strong,
water, what,
weak.
wash, any.
womb.
(errand.)
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Letter(s) B
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C with
C with
CN, CW
consonant front
s and back vowels
vowels
clif, cradel, ceosan, cild, cƿen, cnif,
deaf, dohtor,
cearfull,
cyse, benc,
drincan,
dumb,
corn, curs,
rice,
dust, bodiȝ,
acumba,
acan, raca,
orceard.
ȝeendod.
habban,
sac, boc.
hæcc, dic,
modor.
Old
bed, blis,
English
climban,
ȝodsib.
cnott
D
feccan.
(lim,
(spinel,
slumere.)
Cent, cepan,
þunor.)
cyning.
freondlice.
Typical bed, bliss.
Modern
English
equivalents
Other
Modern
English
spelling
s/sound
values
cliff, cradle, choose,
queen, knife, deaf,
careful,
knot.
child,
corn, curse. cheese,
daughter,
drink, dust,
bench, rich
body,
orchard.
ended.
climb, dumb, ache, rake,
hatch, ditch,
mother.
oakum,
fetch.
sack, book.
have,
gossip.
(limb,
slumber.)
(spindle,
Kent, keep,
king.
(friendly.)
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thunder.)
The History of English Spelling
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Letter(s) Long E
Short E
Long EA
Short EA
Old
elm, helpan, beacen,
heard,
ȝrene,
English
eastan, leaf, sceaft.
metan, scep, lenȝð.
stream,
sped, fet,
teð, þe.
strenȝ,
ȝear.
enȝlisc,
Long EO
beo, beor,
creopan,
freosan,
bearn,
earnian,
hreod, seon,
treoƿ.
he, me, ƿe,
prettiȝ,
bread,
seah,
her, ƿeriȝ.
beran,
eaȝe,
wearm.
brecan,
suffix -leas
feoƿer,
etan, feld,
(e.g.
freond,
ƿeȝ,
wifleas).
heop,
cneoƿ,
sceotan,
hereberȝe.
þeof.
Typical green, meet, elm, help,
Modern
sheep,
length.
English
equispeed, feet,
valents
teeth, thee
beacon,
Other
he, me, we,
Modern
here, weary.
English
spelling
s/sound
values
string,
bread, eye,
bairn, earn, knew, four,
English,
suffix -less
saw, warm. friend, heap,
east, leaf,
creep,
stream,
freeze, reed,
year.
see, tree.
pretty, bear, (e.g.
break, eat,
hard, shaft. bee, beer,
wifeless).
field, way,
harbour.
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shoot, thief.
The History of English Spelling
Letter(s) Short EO
Old
ceorfan,
English
eorðe,
Companion Material
F
Voiced F
© 2011 Upward & Davidson
G before
G before
consonant front
s and back vowels
vowels
ȝarleac,
ȝear, ȝeard,
fæder, fisc,
cealfas,
fleax, frost,
deofol, efen, ȝlæs, ȝnætt, ȝeolo, ȝese,
feohtan,
fyr, æfter,
hærfest,
ȝold, ȝræs,
heorte,
offrian,
ofer, stofa,
ȝut,
seolh,
cealf.
tƿelfe, yfel.
froȝȝa,
sƿeord,
sƿeostor,
enȝlisc,
fnæsian.
fana, fers,
fyxen.
ƿeorc.
heafod.
ȝiellan, ȝiet.
ȝif, ȝyccan,
is-ȝicel.
hrinȝ,
ȝelice,
hunȝor,
ȝeboren.
lenȝð,
sinȝan.
Typical carve, earth,
Modern
fight, heart,
English
equiseal, sister,
valents
sword, work
father, fish, calves, devil, garlic, glass, year, yard,
flax, frost,
even,
gnat, gold,
yellow, yes,
fire, after,
harvest,
grass, gut,
yell, yearn,
offer, calf.
over, stove,
frog, stag,
yet, yawn.
twelve, evil
English,
ring, hunger,
vane, verse,
length, sing.
vixen.
Other
Modern
English
spelling
s/sound
values
sneeze.
(head.)
if, itch,
icicle.
(alike, born.)
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The History of English Spelling
Letter(s) Scandinavian G
Old
ȝietan,
English
ȝiefan,
Companion Material
Medial G
with back
vowels
aȝan, laȝu,
daȝ.
næȝl, reȝn,
druȝað,
ȝest, ȝyld.
Medial G
Final G
with front with back
vowels
vowels
fæȝer,
ploȝ, boȝ,
fuȝel folȝian. mæȝden,
beȝinnan.
© 2011 Upward & Davidson
sæȝde.
neaȝan,
Final G
with front
vowels
dæȝ, hƿæȝ,
pleȝan,
driȝe, bodiȝ,
ȝenoȝ, troȝ.
haliȝ, maniȝ,
dƿeorȝ.
byrȝan.
mearȝ.
deaȝ, eaȝe.
ƿeȝan.
Typical get, give,
Modern
begin.
English
equivalents
Other
guest,
Modern
g(u)ild.
English
spelling
s/sound
values
owe, law,
fair, maiden, plough,
fowl, follow. nail, rain,
said.
day, whey,
bough,
play, dry,
dough.
body, holy,
many, bury.
drought,
enough,
neigh,
trough.
weigh.
dwarf.
marrow.
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dye, eye.
The History of English Spelling
Letter(s) Palatized
CG
Old
brycȝ,
English
cycȝel, ecȝ,
Companion Material
H before
vowels
hand,
H before
HW > WH
H after
consonant
vowels
s
hlaf,
hƿær, hƿæt, heah, þruh,
herinȝ,
hleahtor,
hƿæðer,
bohte,
hlid, hlud.
hƿeol,
dohtor, flyht,
hƿeop, hƿit,
heihþo, liht,
hƿy.
tæhte.
hƿa.
hliehhan.
hecȝ, hrycȝ. hindrian,
horn, hund,
senȝan.
© 2011 Upward & Davidson
hyl.
hnecca,
hnut.
bycȝan,
hit, hem.
hræfen,
licȝan,
secȝan.
hal, hure.
hrinȝ, hrof,
burh, furh,
hrycȝ.
seah.
(ancor)
fah, sceoh.
Typical bridge,
Modern
cudgel,
English
equiedge, hedge,
valents
ridge.
hand,
loaf,
where,
herring,
laughter, lid, what,
high,
through,
hinder, horn, loud.
whether,
hound, hill.
wheel, whip, daughter,
neck, nut.
bought,
white, why. flight,
raven, ring,
height, light,
roof, ridge.
taught.
laugh.
Other
(dialect)
Modern
brig.
English
spelling
s/sound singe.
values
buy, lie,
it, ’em.
who.
borough,
furrow, saw.
whole,
whore.
foe, shoe.
(anchor)
say.
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The History of English Spelling
Companion Material
Letter(s) Long I
Short I
Old
bridel, fif, is, bicce,
English
lif, min,
brinȝan,
K
Kent,
L
land, lytel,
kyninȝ.
plume, hlid,
blis, fiften,
ȝif, lim,
(cetel, sacc)
meolc, help,
riden, risen,
sellan,
scip, timber.
middel/midl
ȝripan, stif,
ƿisdom.
M
mann,
modor, mys,
ƿlispian,
ridan, risan, cildra, fisc,
tima, ƿis.
© 2011 Upward & Davidson
lamb, smæl,
ƿyrm,
bos(u)m,
.
birce, brid.
sƿimman.
cealc,
blind, cild,
ƿealcan,
climban,
folc, scolde,
niȝon, niht.
healf, palm.
hƿilc, sƿilc,
ælc, mycel.
Typical bridle, five,
Modern
ice, life,
English
equimine, ride,
valents
rise, time,
wise.
bitch, bring, Kent, king.
land, little,
children,
plum, lid,
fish, if, limb,
lisp, milk,
ridden,
help, sell,
risen, ship,
middle.
timber.
man,
mother,
mice, lamb,
small,
worm,
bosom,
swim.
Other
bliss, fifteen, birch, bird.
(kettle,
Modern
grip, stiff,
English
blind, child, sack.)
spelling wisdom.
climb, nine,
s/sound
values
night.
chalk, walk,
folk, should,
half, palm.
(which,
such, each,
much.)
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The History of English Spelling
Letter(s) N
Old
nama, niht,
English
nu, snaƿ,
corn, þanc,
Companion Material
Long O
foda, ȝos,
Short O
coc, doȝȝa,
hrof, mona,
folȝian, ȝod, pluccian,
cneo, ȝnæt,
boc, fot, hod.
blod, flod.
reȝ(e)n,
hymen,
spinnan.
butan,
holen, min,
seldan,
flor.
P
panne,
R
ridan, ȝrene,
duru, ƿord,
prut,
fæder,
oxa, corn,
sp(r)ecan,
steorra.
morȝen.
apa, help,
rot, to, scoh. hoppian,
sinȝan,
fæstnian,
© 2011 Upward & Davidson
heop, æppel,
fola, folc,
clyppan.
ȝold, hol,
hrof.
fæȝ(e)r,
þeatr.
hopian,
blostm,
nosu, open,
þridda, brid,
softe.
stofa, ȝeoc.
ƿyrhta,
ƿorhte,
dohtor.
nosterle.
næddre,
scolde,
endleofan,
ƿolde.
helpan, oft.
ȝlof, oðer.
(efeta)
Typical name, night,
Modern
now, snow,
English
equicorn, thank,
valents
sing, fasten,
food, goose, cock, dog,
pan, pluck,
ride, green,
roof, moon,
proud,
door, word,
follow, god,
root, to/too, hop, ox,
speak, ape, father, star.
shoe.
help, heap,
corn, morn.
apple, clip.
know, gnat,
rain, hymn,
spin.
Other
Modern
English
spelling
s/sound
values
(but, holly,
book, foot,
adder,
fair, theatre.
hood.
blood, flood. foal, folk,
my/mine,
seldom,
roof.
floor.
blossom,
eleven, help, soft.
oft[en]).
third, bird,
gold, hole,
wright,
hope, nose,
wrought,
open, stove,
nostril.
yoke.
daughter.
(newt).
should,
48
The History of English Spelling
Companion Material
would.
glove, other.
49
© 2011 Upward & Davidson
The History of English Spelling
Companion Material
Letter(s) Voiceless
Voiced S
S
Old
saƿl, snæȝl, bysiȝ, cyse
English
stranȝ, sƿat, losian,
scacan, scip, ta, tacen,
Voiceless
Th
þeaht, þeof,
scoh, scur,
tæhte,
þin, þorn,
acsian, mus, risan,
scyld,
tiȝian,
þrote, þuma.
cyssan.
þusend,
biscop,
timber, to,
husbonda,
ƿæscan,
treo, tunȝe,
clænsian,
enȝlisc.
tƿentiȝ,
bræs.
hors.
husian.
is, mys.
bræsen,
SC > SH
© 2011 Upward & Davidson
tyrnan,
ascian.
freosan,
sinder.
fyrs.
ƿis.
dysiȝ.
T
bræþ, claþ,
fylþ, muþ,
norþ, trieƿþ.
stranȝ, cetel, þær, þæh,
æfter,
þes, þonne.
heorte,
mæst,
settan.
is, ƿæs,
ƿið.
moþþe.
heihþo, sihþ.
daȝas.
Typical
Modern
English
equivalents
soul, snail,
busy,
shake,
toe, token,
strong,
cheese,
ship, shoe, taught, tie,
thief, thin,
sweat, ask, lose, rise,
shower,
timber,
thorn,
mouse,
thousand,
shield,
to/too, tree, throat,
kiss.
husband,
bishop,
tongue,
cleanse,
wash,
twenty,
to house.
English.
turn, strong,
kettle, after,
heart, most,
set.
thought,
thumb.
breath,
cloth, filth,
mouth,
north, truth.
moth.
Other
brass.
Modern
English horse.
spelling
s/sound
(ice, mice.)
values
brazen,
ask.
there,
freeze,
though, this,
furze.
then.
dizzy.
with.
(cinder.)
height,
50
The History of English Spelling
Companion Material
© 2011 Upward & Davidson
sight.
wise.
is, was,
days.
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The History of English Spelling
Letter(s) Voiced Th
Old
fæðm, siðe,
English
soðian,
Companion Material
Long U
druȝað, ful,
Short U
ful, pullian.
© 2011 Upward & Davidson
W before
vowels
ƿæccan,
W after
vowels
breoƿan,
ƿælisc, ƿeb, feaƿe, niƿe,
hlud, hus,
ƿulf, ƿudu.
æȝðer,
neahȝebur,
hƿæðer,
prud, ure,
butere,
ƿodnesdæȝ, slaƿe,
norðern,
ut.
cuppe,
ƿolde, ƿyrm, snaƿe.
hundred,
dƿeorȝ,
hunȝor,
sƿete,
brun,
sunne,
tƿentiȝ.
eahtoða,
crudan,
under, uppe.
beniðan,
scur, tun,
oðer, hraðer.
cu, nu.
smeðe.
eorðe, ƿriða. ule.
þu.
ȝeforðian.
sceaƿian
cliƿen, hieƿ,
hreoƿ,
treoƿe.
hƿæt, ƿeoluc
feoƿer,
burh,
cuman,
berðen,
ƿeoc, ƿid,
sƿeord, tƿa, saƿol.
andsƿerian
huniȝ,
treow.
munuc, sum, cƿacian,
husbonda,
plume,
sunu,
cƿen, cƿic,
ƿundor.
becƿeðan.
turf, duru.
ƿræstlian,
(laȝu, furh.)
sucan, uder,
us.
ƿritan.
fuȝel, ȝrund,
hund.
Typical
Modern
English
equivalents
fathom,
drought,
scythe,
foul, loud,
soothe,
either,
whether,
northern,
house,
neighbour,
proud, our,
out.
watch,
brew, few,
Welsh, web, new, show,
butter, cup,
hundred,
hunger,
sun, under,
up.
other,
rather.
full, pull.
ƿlisp.
cow, now.
week, wide, slow, snow.
Wednesday,
would,
worm;
dwarf,
sweet,
twenty.
what
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The History of English Spelling
Other
smooth.
Modern
English
eighth,
spelling
s/sound beneath,
values
earth,
wreath.
Companion Material
brown,
© 2011 Upward & Davidson
wolf, wood. whelk.
crowd,
shower,
town, owl.
clue, hue,
rue, true.
borough,
sword, two,
come,
answer.
four, soul.
quake,
tree.
honey,
thou.
monk,
some, son,
burden,
husband,
afford.
plum, suck,
udder, us.
wonder.
queen,
quick,
bequeath.
turf, door.
wrestle,
fowl,
write
ground,
hound.
53
lisp.
(law,
furrow.)
The History of English Spelling
Letter(s) X
Old
eax, fleax,
English
fox, oxa,
siex, ƿæx.
Companion Material
Long Y
bryd, cye,
Short Y
crypel,
fyr, hyden,
cyssan,
hyf, mys.
dysiȝ, fyllan,
lytel, pytt,
(acsian/
axian.)
fylð, ƿyscan.
yfel.
© 2011 Upward & Davidson
Z
Elizabeþ.
(bræsen,
dysiȝ, fyrs.)
synn.
ȝecynde,
ȝemynde.
ƿyrm,
ƿyrȝan,
ƿyrsa.
byrȝan,
bysiȝ, crycc.
myriȝ.
Typical
Modern
English
equivalents
ax(e), flax,
bride, kine,
fox, ox, six, fire, hide,
wax.
Other
(ask.)
Modern
English
spelling
s/sound
values
hive, mice.
cripple,
Elizabeth.
kiss, dizzy,
fill, little,
pit, sin.
filth, wish.
kind, mind.
evil.
worm,
(brazen,
dizzy,
worry,
worse.
bury, busy,
crutch.
merry.
54
furze.)
The History of English Spelling
Companion Material
© 2011 Upward & Davidson
A note on place-names
The above analysis, and, of course, the corresponding chapter in History, has
surveyed the patterns and system of Old English spelling, but by using chiefly
examples of words that have preserved a more or less recognizable form down to
the 20th century, it may give the impression of a much greater similarity between
written Old English and written Modern English than in fact exists. A very different
picture is gained from a comparison of some Old English place-names with their
Modern English equivalents1, where radical transformations are seen to have taken
place. How many of the following Old English forms of the names of well-known
modern English towns are readily identifiable with their 20th-century spellings
(and they are here already modernized by W in place of ƿ): Beornmundinȝaham,
Contwaraburȝ, Eferwic, Escanceaster, Ȝleawecestre, Læȝreceaster, Loidis, Liccetfeld,
Lundene, Suðhamtun, Wærincwic, Wiȝraceaster? They are Modern English
Birmingham, Canterbury, York, Exeter, Gloucester, Leicester, Leeds, Lichfield,
London, Southampton, Warwick, Worcester.
1
Examples are taken from Eilert Ekwall The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English PlaceNames (4th edn., Oxford 1959: The Clarendon Press).
55