The 6th PPT presentation on the History of Language. This is for pages 102-108 of the Old English chapter. Thank you both Abdullah Bin Jammaz and Ruibby Alqhtani for your work.

1. Pronunciation & spelling of Old English
Our knowledge of the pronunciation of Old English can
only be approximate since there are no recordings.
In Old English times , there were regional and individual
differences and doubtless social differences as well.

2. vowels
The vowel letters in Old English were a, æ, i, o, u and y . They
represent either short or long sounds.
god = good, God
The five vowels a, e, i , o and u referred to as “ Continental”
values.
Examples of Modern English development of the Old English
sound are illustrated:

3. • Long diphthongs has been shortened to short
diphthongs of similar quality (monophthongs)
– ea and eo
• eall “all”
• geared “yard”
• meolc “milk”
• weorc “work”

4. consonants
• The consonant letters in Old English were b , c, d, f, g
, h, k, l , m, n, p, r, s, t, þ or ð , w ,x and z . ( The
letters j, q and v were NOT used for writing
• Old English and y was always a vowel.
• b, d, k rarely used
• I, m, n, p, t, w and x had a different shape (p, x) and
had the value these letters represent in Modern
English.
• To be sure of the pronunciation of the Old English c,
it is often necessary to know the history of the word.
– cepan “keep” the first vowel was originally back and later
mutated into front one.

5. • Mutation is a change in a vowel sound brought
about by a sound in the following syllable. A
vowel by a following I or y is called i-mutation or
i-umlaut.
– Survived in Modern English as in
• Full – fill
• Blood – bleed
• R may have been a trill at the beginning of words
but retroflex after vowels like American English.
• Z was rare. When used it has the value of [tz]
• Doubling of consonants between vowels
indicated length unlike Modern English
– Hotter, add, egg

6. stress
• Stress system was simpler in Old English
• Old English words of more than one syllable
like those all Germanic language , were
regularly stressed on the first syllables.
• Verbs with prefixes stress the first syllable of the root
onbi’ndan “unbind”

7. The vocabulary of Old English
There are two differences between OE and ME:
1- There were relatively few loanwords, most of the word stock
being of native Germanic origin.
2- The gender of nouns was more or less arbitrary rather than
determined by the sex or sexlessness of the thing named.
The Germanic Words Stock:
• To be sure, many Old English words of Germanic origin were
identical or at least highly similar in both form and meaning to ME.
E.g. god, gold, hand.
• Some kept the shape but changed the meaning. E.g. OE (bread)
“piece” not “bread”.
• Some disguised and some disappeared.
• Extensive use of compounds. “football” “blackboard”

8. Gender in Old English
OE differs from ME in having grammatical
gender. There were three genders in Old
English that continued through ME. Survived
nowadays in languages like German:
1- Neuter (OE wif) + hit
2- Masculine
3- Feminine

9. Made by :
Abdullah Bin Jammaz
Ruibby Alqhtani