Old English: Largely Phonology Language of Anglo-Saxon England, 449 AD- c.1100 AD

What should you know about the culture and people? Old English describes the period of the English language spoken between approximately 449 AD (the traditional date of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain) and 1100 AD (about fifty years after the Norman invasion of England in 1066 AD). The term Anglo-Saxon describes the culture and the people, Old English the language. Old English had a variety of dialects, but the one that we study as the "standard" is West Saxon, the language of King Alfred and the major works of Anglo-Saxon literature. Old English used a combination of the Germanic Futhorc and the Latin alphabet: it included four characters adapted from runes—Þ þ ‘thorn’ /θ/, Ƿ ƿ ‘wynn’ /w/, Ææ ‘ash’ /æ/, and Ȝ ȝ ‘yogh’ /g/. The principal form of writing was called Insular Miniscule. Old English literature included a number of genres, including poetry, religious prose, and adventure stories.

And about the language? The phonological inventory of Old English and its major allophonic distributions. Nouns and adjectives were inflected for three genders. Verbs had three primary types: strong, weak, and anomalous. Adjectives' inflections differed based on the presence or absence of a demonstrative pronoun in the phrase. Old English vocabulary used a great deal of compounding, for example, hlafdige (lady) bread-giver.

Old English “Wordhord” (Vocabulary) Extant vocabulary of Old English is approximately 24,000 words (compared with over half a million in contemporary English), but Approximately 830 of the most frequent words in English native The biggest “donor language” to English is Latin.

Word Formation Processes Compounding strategies most frequent in Old English Note how many of them are still productive in Present Day English

Derivational Affixing

Phonological Inventory: Vowels Vowel inventory comparable to other European languages The chart at the right from Baugh and Cable’s History of the English Language You have a comparable chart on p. 182 Vowels have same qualitative value that they do in IPA. Old English was spelled more phonetically than modern English is. The letter ‘e’ is /e/ or /ε/ depending on length; ‘i’ is either /i/ or /ɪ/ Vowel length was meaningful in Old English, even though many manuscripts don’t note it. wite I may see [wɪtə] differs from wīte punishment [wi:tə] Even though we would likely pronounce wite the same way, Old English speakers treated them differently.

Phonological Inventory: Consonants Old English has a smaller phonemic inventory of consonants than Present Day English: /p, b, f, θ, s, x, r, l, w, k, g, n, m/ , because There is more allophonic variation and pronunciations of two categories of sounds were determined by the phonological context in which they appear. Two categories of consonants were most affected by variation: Voiceless fricatives /f, θ, s/ become voiced /v, ð, z/ between voiced sounds: /f/ becomes /v/ in words like ofna ‘oven’ [ɔvnɑ] /θ/ becomes /ð/ in words like baðian to wash [bɑðɪɑn] /s/ becomes /z/ in words like hūsian to house [hu:zɪɑn] Velar consonants also changed in position depending upon the vowels and consonants that surrounded them.

Phonemic Inventory: Velars Velar stops change dramatically depending upon their phonetic environment. ‘g’ /g/ and ‘c’ /k/ become “palatalized” or “softened” into a glide or an affricate before a front vowel gēar [jæ:ər] year circian [čɪrčɪan] church ‘g’ becomes a voiced velar fricative [ɣ] between back vowels or after a liquid sagu [sɑɣu] story fylgan [fylɣɑn] to follow ‘h’ /x/ has three allophones: [h] at the beginnings of words heortan [hɛortɑn] heart [x] after back vowels leoht [lɛoxt] light [ç] (a voiceless palatal fricative – “the kitty cat sound”) after front vowels cniht [knɪçt] servant

Digraphs Old English also had two digraphs (two letter combinations) that were distinctive ‘sk’ /š/ scip [ʃɪp] ship ‘cg’ /ǰ/ ecg [ɛǰ] sword

Junius Manuscript Oxford Early Manuscripts Online Learn Old English Manuscript Hands