Old English phonology

Old English phonology is the pronunciation system of Old English, the Germanic language spoken on Great Britain from around 450 to 1150 and attested in a body of written texts from the 7th–12th centuries. Although its reconstruction is necessarily somewhat speculative, features of Old English pronunciation have been inferred partly from the sounds used in modern varieties of English (including dialects), partly from the spellings used in Old English literature, partly from analysis of Old English poetry, and partly from comparison with other Germanic languages.

Some words were pronounced differently in different dialects of Old English. The dialect called West Saxon is the best documented in surviving texts, and so is commonly treated as a default reference in descriptions of Old English, even though it is not a direct ancestor of the modern English language (which is more closely related to the Mercian dialect).

Old English had a distinction between short and long (doubled) consonants, at least between vowels (as seen in sunne "sun" and sunu "son", stellan "to put" and stelan "to steal"), and a distinction between short vowels and long vowels in stressed syllables. It had a larger number of vowel qualities in stressed syllables (/i y u e o æ ɑ/ and in some dialects /ø/) than in unstressed ones (/ɑ e u/). It had diphthongs that no longer exist in Modern English (such as /eo æɑ/), with both short and long versions.

Consonants

The inventory of consonant surface sounds (whether allophones or phonemes) of Old English is shown below. Allophones are enclosed in parentheses.

Consonants in Old English

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m		(n̥) n			(ŋ)
Stop	p b		t d	tʃ (dʒ)		k (ɡ)
Fricative	f (v)	θ (ð)	s (z)	ʃ	(ç)	x ɣ	(h)
Approximant			(l̥) l		j	(w̥) w
Trill			(r̥) r

The following consonants were generally both spelled and pronounced approximately as in modern English: /m n p b t d l/. Others are described at Help:IPA/Old English and discussed below.

Gemination

There was a contrast between short consonant sounds, such as the /n/ in banan 'slayers', and long consonant sounds, such as the /nn/ in bannan 'summon': long consonants were represented in writing with double consonant letters. Long consonants are also called geminate consonants (or just "geminates") from the Latin word geminus 'twin, double'.

Geminate consonants were typically preceded by a stressed short vowel and followed by a vowel or sonorant, e.g. cynnes 'kin' (genitive), bettra 'better'. Geminates were shortened next to other consonants, at the end of a word, or after an unstressed vowel. In writing, however, double consonant letters were sometimes used in some of these contexts by analogy to inflected forms, or as etymological spellings. It is likely that early on, short and long consonants did contrast in word-final position, but even early texts show variation in spelling in this position: e.g. between bedd and bed 'bed', pronounced something like /bed/. It seems that geminate consonants could cause a preceding long vowel to be shortened, although this change may have been sporadic or the long vowel may have been subject to analogical restoration in some cases.

The short-long contrast was distinctive for most consonant phonemes: minimal pairs can be cited for long and short /p t k tʃ d θ s m n l r/, and also for /ɣ/ and /j/ assuming that phonetic [ɡɡ], [ddʒ] are phonemically analyzed as /ɣɣ/, /jj/. Sometimes [j] and [(d)dʒ] are instead analyzed as separate phonemes, in which case neither has a distinctive length contrast. The affricate [dʒ] was always phonetically long between vowels; it could also occur after /n/ or at the end of a word. There seems to have been no merge between [dʒ] and [j] at the end of a word, so there was a distinction in pronunciation between weġ 'way', pronounced [wej], and weċġ 'wedge', pronounced [wedːʒ] or [wedʒ]. The approximant /w/ was always short. The fricative /f/ could be short or long, but geminate /ff/ was fairly marginal. In the context of verb conjugation, intervocalic singleton /f/ often originated from Proto-Germanic *b and showed alternation with the geminate /bb/. The change of intervocalic *b to /f/ had the effect of eliminating former minimal pairs between /b/ versus /bb/. The fricative /x/ (spelled ⟨h⟩) came to be lost when single between voiced sounds; since only long /xx/ remained in this position (in words such as hlihhan, hweohhol), its length was no longer contrastive. Spellings with single ⟨h⟩ for original /xx/ are sometimes seen, e.g. hlæhað, croha. Length was not distinctive for the phoneme /ʃ/, which originated from a cluster and was probably always phonetically long [ʃʃ] when it came between vowels within a word, and phonetically short [ʃ] in word-initial or word-final position.

Fricative voicing

The phonemes /f θ s/, which all belong to the phonetic category of fricatives, had different pronunciations depending on the context (allophones). One set of allophones were voiceless, and are transcribed phonetically as [f θ s]; the other set of allophones were voiced, and are transcribed phonetically as [v ð z]. As a rule, the difference between [f θ s] and [v ð z] was unmarked in Old English spelling. The sounds [f v] were both written as ⟨f⟩, the sounds [s z] were both written as ⟨s⟩, and the sounds [θ ð] were both written as either ⟨ð⟩ or ⟨þ⟩ (even though there were two letters, they were not used in Old English to distinguish between the voiceless and voiced versions of this sound: therefore, the Old English letter ⟨ð⟩ is not always pronounced like the IPA letter of the same shape). However, certain alternative spellings existed for some sounds (e.g. [v] was sometimes written ⟨u⟩, as in Latin).

The pronunciation of /f θ s/ as [f θ s] versus [v ð z] was generally predictable from context. The voiced allophones [v ð z] were used when one of these phonemes was surrounded on both sides by voiced sounds (between vowels, between a vowel and a voiced consonant, or between voiced consonants) and immediately preceded by a syllable with some degree of stress. For example, the phoneme /θ/ was pronounced as the voiced sound [ð] in the words eorðe 'earth' and fæþm 'fathom', which can be phonemically transcibed as /ˈe͝orθe/, /ˈfæθm/ and phonetically transcribed as [ˈe͝orðe], [ˈfæðm]. The voiceless allophones [f θ s] were used next to voiceless consonants, at the beginning and end of words, after unstressed syllables, and at the start of the second elements of compound words.

The allophones [f θ s] and [v ð z] alternated in contexts such as the following:

• ċealf ('calf, young cow') /tʃæ͝ɑlf/ [tʃæ͝ɑɫf] vs. ċealfru ('calves') /ˈtʃæ͝ɑlfru/ [ˈtʃæ͝ɑɫvru]
• smiþ ('blacksmith') /smiθ/ [smiθ] vs. smiþas ('blacksmiths') /ˈsmiθɑs/ [ˈsmiðɑs]
• hūs ('house' noun) /ˈxuːs/ [ˈhuːs] vs. hūsian ('to house') /ˈxuːsiɑn/ [ˈhuːziɑn]

There may have been some exceptions to the distribution of [f θ s] and [v ð z] according to these rules. Some scholars have argued that the contrast had already become phonemic (if marginally so) in Old English whereas Minkova 2011, citing the absence of minimal pairs, argues that they were not lexically contrastive segments and so should be analyzed as allophones during Old English, even if their distribution was not determined solely by phonology.

One category of potential exceptions is words where the fricative originally stood after an unstressed vowel, but the vowel was deleted by syncope, such as strengþu 'strength' from Proto-West-Germanic *strangiþu, or hālsian 'to take an oath' from Proto-West-Germanic *hailisōn. The verb blētsian 'to bless' contains the same suffix -sian attached to the root of blōd 'blood', and the replacement of voiced [d] with voiceless [t] before ⟨s⟩ in this word suggests that fricatives were at least originally voiceless in this context. On the other hand, some words such as Proto-West-Germanic *anafalt- > Old English anfilt(e), anfealt > modern English anvil and Proto-West-Germanic *sigiþī > Old English sīþe > modern English scythe have outcomes that imply that fricatives became voiced after syncope in at least some words.

The consensus view is that word-initial ⟨f þ~ð s⟩ were pronounced as voiceless [f θ s], but Lass 1991–1993 considers it probable they were pronounced as [v ð z] in at least some accents of Old English (suggesting this occurred in West Saxon, Kentish, and West Mercian, but not in East Mercian or Northumbrian).

The rules described above did not apply to the fricatives /x/ (spelled ⟨h⟩) or /ʃ/ (spelled ⟨sc⟩, often written ⟨sċ⟩ in modern editions).

• In contexts where other fricatives became voiced, Proto-Germanic *x came to be lost entirely in Old English, though before it was lost it caused certain sound changes such as breaking of preceding vowels. Old English did possess a voiced velar fricative sound [ɣ], which developed from Proto-Germanic *ɡ, but [ɣ] is usually analyzed as a separate phoneme from /x/: the sounds were normally distinguished in spelling, with [ɣ] written as ⟨g⟩ and /x/ as ⟨h⟩, although some unetymological interchange of these spellings occurs, especially in word-final position (where the sounds seem to have merged into one phoneme by late Old English). The fricative [ɣ] seems to have instead been phonemically identified in Old English with the plosive [ɡ], also written ⟨g⟩.
• The fricative /ʃ/ developed later than other fricative sounds, as it evolved from the West Germanic cluster /sk/. It is likely that sċ was pronounced as geminate [ʃʃ] between vowels, and possibly also at the end of a word after a short vowel. In Old English poetry, ⟨sc⟩ between vowels seems to have been treated metrically like a cluster rather than like a single consonant.

Origins of /f, θ, s/

The Old English phoneme /f/ descended in some cases from Proto-Germanic *f, which became [v] between voiced sounds as described above. But /f/ also had another source. In the middle or at the end of words, Old English /f/ was often derived from Proto-Germanic *[β] (also written *ƀ), a fricative allophone of the phoneme *b. Proto-Germanic *b became Old English /b/ only at the start of a word, after [m], or when geminated. In other contexts, it became Old English /f/, pronounced either as [v] or [f] based on its position (the originally voiced fricative was devoiced before voiceless sounds or in final position):

• PG *stabaz [ˈstɑβɑz] > OE stæf /ˈstæf/
• PG *habdē > OE hæfde [ˈhævde] 'had', but PG *habjaną > OE habban [ˈhɑbbɑn] 'to have'

In contrast, the Old English phonemes /θ/ and /s/ generally descend only from Proto-Germanic voiceless *θ and *s. Proto-Germanic *[ð] (a fricative allophone of *d, sometimes derived by voicing of *θ in the context of Verner's Law) regularly developed in all positions into the Old English stop /d/, as in fæder /ˈfæder/ from Proto-Germanic *fadēr [ˈɸɑðɛːr]. Proto-Germanic *z (which existed only as the Verner's Law counterpart of *s) regularly developed to Old English /r/ (a sound change called rhotacism). As a result, some Old English verbs show alternations between /θ/ [θ~ð] and /d/ or between /s/ [s~z] and /r/, although in others this alternation was leveled, resulting in /θ/ [θ~ð] or /s/ [s~z] throughout.

Examples of Old English verbs that retained inherited /θ/–/d/ or /s/–/r/ alternations:

• snīþan, snāþ, snidon, sniden /ˈsniːθɑn, ˈsnɑːθ, ˈsnidon, ˈsniden/ [ˈsniːðɑn, ˈsnɑːθ, ˈsnidon, ˈsniden] from Proto-Germanic: *snīθaną, *snaiθ, *snidun, *snidanaz 'cut'
• frēosan, frēas, fruron, froren /ˈfre͞osɑn, ˈfræ͞ɑs, ˈfruron, ˈfroren/ [ˈfre͞ozɑn, ˈfræ͞ɑs, ˈfruron, ˈfroren] from Proto-Germanic: *freusaną, *fraus, *fruzun, *fruzanaz 'freeze'

Examples of Old English verbs that leveled the consonant to only /θ/ or only /s/:

• wrīþan, wrāþ, wriþon, wriþen /ˈwriːθɑn, ˈwrɑːθ, ˈwriθon, ˈwriθen/ [ˈwriːðɑn, ˈwrɑːθ, ˈwriðon, ˈwriðen], versus Proto-Germanic: *wrīθaną, *wraiθ, *wridun, *wridanaz 'wrap, twist'
• lesan, læs, lǣson, lesen /ˈlesɑn, ˈlæs, ˈlæːson, ˈlesen/ [ˈlezɑn, ˈlæs, ˈlæːzon, ˈlezen], versus Proto-Germanic: *lesaną, *las, *lēzun, *lezanaz 'gather'

Velar consonants

The voiceless velar plosive [k] was typically spelled ⟨c⟩. Velar [k] alternated in some circumstances with the voiceless palatal affricate [tʃ], also spelled ⟨c⟩.

The voiced velar plosive [ɡ] and fricative [ɣ] were both typically spelled ⟨g⟩ and can be analyzed as allophones of the same phoneme. In early Old English, the plosive [ɡ] was used only after /n/, as in singan, or as part of the geminate [ɡɡ], as in frogga (also written frocga). (Geminate [ɡɡ] was uncommon, since West Germanic gemination caused palatalization.) In later Old English (possibly after around 950 or 1000 AD), [ɡ] was also used at the start of a word (or at the start of a morpheme in compound or prefixed words), but in early Old English, [ɣ] is believed to have been used in word-initial position. In both early and late Old English, [ɣ] was used medially after vowels or after consonants other than /n/. The sounds [ɡ] and [ɣ] were mostly in complementary distribution. However, either sound could occur after /n/, since phonetic [nɣ] occurred as the result of syncope in some words such as syngian. The phonemic transcription used in this article ignores such exceptional cases and treats [ɣ] and [ɡ] as allophones of a phoneme /ɣ/. As with ⟨c⟩, the letter ⟨g⟩ in Old English represented not only velar but also palatal consonant sounds: [ɣ] had a palatal counterpart [j] and [ɡ] had a palatal counterpart [dʒ], described in the following section.

The voiceless glottal fricative [h] and voiceless velar fricative [x] were both typically spelled ⟨h⟩ and are generally analyzed as allophones of a single phoneme, which can be analyzed as /x/, at least in early Old English. The glottal allophone [h] was used at the start of a word (or at the start of a morpheme in compound or prefixed words), whereas the velar allophone [x] was used at the end of a syllable (by itself or in combination with another consonant) or as part of the geminate [xx]. Thus, hund ('dog') can be transcribed phonetically as [hund], phonemically as /xund/. This phoneme is often assumed to have had a third allophone, a voiceless palatal fricative [ç], used after front vowels (or possibly only after stressed front vowels). For example, cniht ('boy') /knixt/, may have been phonetically realized as [kniçt]. The use of the sound [ç] in this position is supported by developments in English pronunciation seen from the thirteenth century onward: original /x/ sometimes became /f/ after a back vowel (e.g. rough, tough, trough), but this change is never seen after a front vowel. That is explained if it is assumed that the allophone [x] sometimes became [f], but the allophone [ç] never did so. Lass 1994 considers it uncertain that [ç] was used already in Old English, whereas Hogg 1992 regards it as certain that ⟨h⟩ had developed a palatal version, like other velar consonants.

The consonants /ɣ/ and /x/ are analyzed as separate phonemes in at least the early stages of Old English, because it appears that they originally stood in direct contrast at the start of a word (as in [ɣoːd] gōd 'good' vs. [hoːd] hōd 'hood') or at the end of a word (as in [læ͞ɑɣ] lēag 'lye' vs. [læ͞ɑx] lēah 'clearing, meadow').

However, the contrast between /ɣ/ and /x/ in word-final position came to be neutralized during the Old English period in at least some dialects, judging by the eventual use of spellings with ⟨h⟩ for words that originally ended with /ɣ/ (as well as some cases of "inverted" spellings with a final ⟨g⟩ for words that originally ended with /x/). Such spellings occur regularly in Late West Saxon and Kentish texts from around 900 onwards, suggesting both sounds had come to be pronounced [x] in this position (compare the devoicing of final /f/). They are not attested in older Kentish charters, and are seen only occasionally in Early West Saxon. Spellings with ⟨h⟩ for original /ɣ/ are comparatively rare in Anglian dialects, with hardly any clear examples in Northumbrian texts.

In the middle of a word, [x] or [h] had been lost early on between voiced sounds. Accordingly, there was no direct contrast between /ɣ/ and /x/ in this position. In the same dialects where final /ɣ/ came to be spelled with ⟨h⟩, there are occasional, less systematic examples of word-medial /ɣ/ being written with ⟨h⟩, such as ⟨fuhlas⟩ for fuglas. Spellings like this have been interpreted as evidence that /ɣ/ could be devoiced to [x] in syllable-final, as well as in word-final position, but they may instead simply be cases where ⟨h⟩ was used analogically to represent voiced [ɣ], based on the interchangeability of the spellings ⟨h⟩ and ⟨g⟩ in word-final position: there are also a few examples of ⟨h⟩ being used in place of medial ⟨g⟩ at the start of a word-medial syllable, such as ⟨dahum, sorhe⟩ for dagum, sorge.

It is possible that at some point after the sound changes described above, medial [ɣ] came to be reanalyzed as an allophone of /x/. In Late West Saxon texts, ⟨g⟩ and ⟨h⟩ were in complementary distribution everywhere except for at the start of a word. In word-initial position, [ɣ] never merged with [h] (/x/), but the eventual replacement of word-initial [ɣ] with the plosive [ɡ] might have been a consequence of the sound becoming phonemically reanalyzed as /ɡ/ in this position.

A morphological contrast is seen between inflected forms with medial -⟨g⟩- [ɣ], and forms that show contraction of adjacent vowels after the loss of original intervocalic [x] or [h]. These alternate in certain classes of strong verbs as a result of Verner's Law.

The inflectional paradigms of some words show alternation between [ɣ], [j], and [x] as a result of devoicing and palatalization:

• dæġ ('day') [ˈdæj], dæġes (GEN.SG) [ˈdæjes] vs. dagas (NOM.PL) [ˈdɑɣɑs] (also dagung ('dawn') [ˈdɑɣuŋɡ])
• burg, burh ('castle') /burɣ/ > [burx], vs. burgum (DAT.PL) [ˈburɣum], vs. byrġ (NOM.PL) [ˈbyrj]

Distribution of consonant phones written with ⟨h⟩ and ⟨g⟩

Position		Phone
		[h]	[x]	[ɣ]	[ɡ]	[j]	[dʒ]
Initial onset		hōd [hoːd]	-	gāt [ˈɣɑːt], later [ˈɡɑːt]		ġēar [ˈjæ͞ɑr]	-
Medial onset	After a vowel	(swehoras*)	-	dagas /ˈdɑ.ɣɑs/	-	dæġes [ˈdæ.jes]	-
	After /r/ or /l/	(furhum*)	-	burga [ˈbur.ɣa]	-	herġa [ˈher.ja]	-
	After /n/	-	-	syngian [ˈsyn.ɣi.ɑn]	þingian [ˈθiŋ.ɡi.ɑn]	menġu [ˈmen.ju]	menġan [ˈmen.dʒɑn]
	Geminate	-	pohha [ˈpox.xɑ]	-	frogga [ˈfroɡ.ɡɑ]	-	seċġan [ˈsed.dʒɑn]
Final coda	After a vowel	-	nēah [ˈnæ͞ɑx]	bēag [ˈbæ͞ɑɣ]*	-	weġ [ˈwej]	weċġ [ˈwedʒ]
	After /r/ or /l/	-	seolh [ˈse͝olx]	burg [ˈburɣ]*	-	byrġ [ˈbyrj]	-
	After /n/	-	-	-	sang [ˈsɒŋɡ]	-	lenġ [ˈlendʒ]

Palatal consonants

Main article: Phonological history of Old English § Palatalization

The palatal consonants [tʃ, dʒ, j, ʃ] were represented in Old English spelling with the same letters as velar consonants or clusters [k, ɡ, ɣ, sk]:

• ⟨c⟩ represented either palatal [tʃ] or velar [k].
• ⟨g⟩ represented either palatal [j] or velar [ɣ]. After the letter ⟨n⟩, it usually represented palatal [dʒ] or velar [ɡ].
• ⟨cg⟩ or ⟨gg⟩ represented double consonants between vowels: either palatal [ddʒ] or (rarely) velar [ɡɡ].
• ⟨sc⟩ represented either palatal [ʃ] or velar [sk].

Modern editors may mark the palatal consonants with a dot above the letter: ⟨ċ⟩, ⟨ġ⟩, ⟨sċ⟩. Historically, [tʃ, ʃ, dʒ] developed from [k, sk, ɡ] by palatalization. Some cases of [j] developed from palatalization of [ɣ], while others developed from Proto-Germanic *j. Those historical sound changes resulted in certain common patterns to where the palatal sounds occurred. However, even though palatalization was originally a regular sound change, later sound changes and borrowings meant that the occurrence of the palatal forms was no longer predictable. Thus, the palatals and the velars ultimately became separate phonemes. But there is some debate about when the contrast became phonemic, as well as about when the palatal counterparts of [k ɡ] evolved to affricates [tʃ dʒ] as opposed to palatal plosives [c ɟ]. The forms ⟨orcgeard⟩ and ⟨feccan⟩, attested around 900 AD as unetymological spellings of original ortġeard and fetian, are commonly interpreted as evidence that palatal ċ had become an affricate [tʃ], as it is assumed that these words underwent a change of [tj] to [tʃ]. However, because palatal ċ and velar c alliterate in English poetry up through at least the late tenth century, Minkova 2014 assumes that they were still allophones of a single phoneme before 1000. Likewise, word-initial palatal ġ and velar g alliterate with each other in early Old English verse (before the latter changed to [ɡ], circa 950 AD), which Minkova 2014 interprets as evidence that [j] and [ɣ] constituted allophones at this point in time, despite the existence of /j/ from Proto-Germanic. Lass 1994 assumes that [j], [ɣ] and [ɡ] were all allophones of a phoneme /ɡ/ at one point during the history of Old English.

Palatalized ⟨sċ⟩, according to Minkova 2014, may have still been pronounced as a cluster [sc] rather than as a unitary consonant [ʃ] in some dialects at the end of Old English.

The distribution of velar and palatal consonants is described below.

Distribution of [k tʃ ɣ~ɡ j ʃ] before vowels

consonant	stressed vowel											unstressed vowel
	a	o	u	æ	e	y	ea	i	eo	ie	io	a	o/u	e/i
c/ċ	k			k, tʃ			tʃ (k)	tʃ				k, tʃ
g/ġ	ɣ~ɡ, j						j (ɣ~ɡ)	j				ɣ~ɡ, j
sc/sċ	ʃ											ʃ, sk

• ⟨sc⟩ is always palatal [ʃ] at the start of a stressed syllable. In writing, the letter "e" was variably used as a diacritic to indicate its palatal quality before a back vowel: e.g. /ˈʃort/ was spelled either ⟨scort⟩ or ⟨sceort⟩, /ˈʃɑkɑn/ was spelled either ⟨scacan⟩ or ⟨sceacan⟩.
• ⟨c g⟩ are always palatal [tʃ j] before stressed ⟨i eo ie io⟩, and also before ⟨ea⟩ in most dialects; however, in Mercian, velar cea, gea can be found in words that underwent "second fronting" of stressed ă to æ̆, followed by back umlaut (e.g. Mercian geatu = West Saxon gatu).
• Before stressed ⟨a o u⟩, ⟨c⟩ is always velar [k], and ⟨g⟩ is usually velar [ɣ~ɡ]. Palatal [j] can occur before a stressed back vowel in words such as /junɡ/ 'young' (which had /j/ originally in Proto-Germanic): this could be spelled ⟨gung⟩, but spellings with initial ⟨i⟩, ⟨gi⟩ or ⟨ge⟩ are often seen instead, such as ⟨iung giung giong geong⟩. Some scholars interpret spellings like ⟨geong⟩ as evidence that an epenthetic glide developed between the palatal consonant and the following back vowel, whereas others interpret ⟨ge⟩ in this context as a diacritic spelling where ⟨e⟩ simply marks the palatal quality of the preceding consonant letter.
• Before stressed ⟨æ e y⟩, ⟨c g⟩ are velar [k ɣ~ɡ] in cases where the vowel developed by i-umlaut of a back vowel: e.g. cǣġ, gēs, gylden, cȳþan. (The i-umlaut of original /ju/ seems to have become unrounded early on, e.g ġingra.) Palatal ċæ, ġæ, ċe, ġe are typically not found in stressed syllables in Early West Saxon, since palatal diphthongization (traditionally dated before i-umlaut) replaced them with ċea, ġea, ċie, ġie respectively. However, these sequences are attested in some varieties of Old English. Spellings with ⟨cæ, gæ⟩ for original ċæ̆, ġæ̆, such as ċæstre, ġæf, are attested in Anglian, although not universally: such words can also be spelled in Anglian texts with ⟨cea, gea⟩ or ⟨ce, ge⟩, depending on the dialect and time period. In Kentish, palatal diphthongization did not occur, but the vowel æ eventually merged with e: subsequently, either letter could be used regardless of a word's etymology. Thus, spellings such as onċærrende, ċǣses can be found in Kentish charters from the 9th century. Palatal ċe, ġe arose regularly in non-West Saxon dialects in words containing the i-umlaut of ea (e.g. Mercian ċele, Mercian ġerwan, Kentish ġēman = Early West Saxon ċiele, ġierwan, ġīeman) and can be found in Late West Saxon texts, which show (somewhat inconsistent) "smoothing" of Early West Saxon ē̆a to ē̆ after a palatal consonant, e.g. ċerf, ġef, ġēr. Mercian texts that exhibit "second fronting" of æ̆ to ĕ may contain ċe, ġe in forms such as ġet, ċester = Early West Saxon ġeat, ċeaster. Palatal diphthongization of e does not seem to have been a consistent sound change outside of West Saxon (though there is some evidence in other dialects of e being raised after palatals in certain words) so there are also examples where e simply represents original /e/, such as Mercian ġeldan = Early West Saxon ġieldan. Palatal ċy, ġy occur in Late West Saxon words where ⟨y⟩ corresponds to Early West Saxon ie: e.g. ġyfu, ġyldan. The letter "y" could also be used in Late West Saxon in place of original i, e.g. in ċyriċe for ċiriċe. After the merger of y, e in Kentish, ⟨y⟩ could be used as a "reverse" spelling for /e/, as in Kentish ċyrð.

Before unstressed vowels, ⟨c g sc⟩ can be palatal or velar depending on etymology. Velar [k ɣ sk] can be found before unstressed back vowels in words such as dīcas, plegode, æscas, whereas palatal [tʃ j ʃ] can be found before unstressed back vowels in words that originally contained an etymological *j or *i after the consonant, such as sēċan, wierġan, wȳsċan from Proto-Germanic *sōkijaną, *wargijaną, *wunskijaną. Velar [k ɣ sk] can be found before an unstressed front vowel in class II weak verbs with an infinitive ending in -ian; e.g. wacian, dagian, āscian. The front vowel /i/ is here derived from umlaut, unrounding, shortening and raising of original -ō-: e.g. Proto-West-Germanic *makōn 'to make' was replaced with *makōjan, which is hypothesized to have developed through *makœ̅jan and *makejan to Old English maci(ġ)an. As seen from these examples, the sounds that etymologically caused palatalization of velar consonants also caused i-umlaut of the vowel in the preceding syllable. However, it is not always possible to predict whether a consonant is velar or palatal from the quality of the preceding vowel; some palatal consonants arose after the vowel ⟨i⟩, which is unchanged by i-umlaut (as in rīċu; contrast strīcan) and for historical reasons, some words developed palatal consonants between two back vowels (as in sċeōġeað /ˈʃoːjɑθ/).

The voiced affricate [dʒ] was found only in restricted contexts: it did not occur at the start of a word, and occurred medially or finally only after a nasal or in contexts where it was (at least originally) geminated. It was therefore in nearly complementary distribution with [j]. However, phonetic [nj] occurred as the result of syncope in some words such as menġu (a syncopated form of meniġu 'many; a multitude'). The transcription in this article ignores such exceptional cases and treats [dʒ] as an allophone of /j/.

• senġan ('to sing') /ˈsenjan/, pronounced [ˈsendʒɑn] (from *sangijan)
• bryċġ ('bridge') /bryjj/, pronounced [bryddʒ] (from *bruggjō < *bruɣjō)

In circumstances where the palatal affricates [tʃ] and [dʒ] came to be followed by another consonant due to syncope of an intervening vowel, they were eventually replaced with the corresponding velar plosives, [k] and [ɡ] respectively. (Ringe & Taylor 2014 assume this replacement occurred before the palatalized variants had developed into affricates. Campbell 1959 assumes that such consonants were never affricated, but transcribes them as palatal in Old English.) The affricates do seem to have been used before other consonants in compound words, e.g. in bryċġ-bōt 'bridge-repairing' and seċġ-lēac 'sedge-leek, rush-garlic'.

Sonorants

[ŋ] is an allophone of /n/ occurring before [k] and [ɡ]. Words that have final /ŋ/ in standard Modern English have the cluster [ŋɡ] in Old English.

• sincan ('sink') /ˈsinkɑn/, phonetically [ˈsiŋkɑn]
• lang ('long') /ˈlɑnɡ/, phonetically [ˈlɑŋɡ] (or [ˈlɔŋɡ])

The exact nature of Old English /r/ is not known. It may have been an alveolar approximant [ɹ], as in most Modern English accents; an alveolar flap [ɾ]; or an alveolar trill [r].

The spellings ⟨hw⟩, ⟨hl⟩, ⟨hn⟩, ⟨hr⟩ probably represented two-phoneme clusters, /xw, xl, xn, xr/, where /x/ was pronounced [h] (its usual allophone in syllable-initial position). In this context, /w, l, n, r/ may have been pronounced as voiceless sonorants [ʍ, l̥, n̥, r̥]. The status of ⟨hw⟩, ⟨hl⟩, ⟨hn⟩, ⟨hr⟩ as clusters rather than unitary segments in Old English phonology is supported by their alliteration in poetry with each other and with prevocalic [h] /x/. In addition, variation is seen between the spellings hræn and hærn 'wave, sea', which suggests the ⟨hr⟩ in the first form was not a single consonant phoneme.

Voiceless sonorant clusters

Word	Phonemic transcription	Phonetic transcription
hwæt ('what')	/xwæt/	[hʍæt]
hlāf ('bread')	/xlɑːf/	[hl̥ɑːf]
hnutu ('nut')	/xnutu/	[hn̥utu]
hrīm ('rime')	/xriːm/	[hr̥iːm]

There is an alternative hypothesis that holds that (at least in later periods) ⟨h⟩ in these sequences was not pronounced as an independent consonant sound, but was only a diacritic marking the voicelessness of the following sonorant. Original /xl, xn, xr/ would merge with plain /l n r/ by early Middle English. The merger of /xr/ and /r/ seems to have been completed earliest, by the middle of the eleventh century, based on frequent interchange of the spellings ⟨hr⟩ and ⟨r⟩ in glosses from that time period. The merger of /xn/ and /n/ was probably complete by the start of the thirteenth century. The spellings ⟨hr⟩ and ⟨hn⟩ had both fallen out of use by around 1250. The merger of /xl/ and /l/ may have taken somewhat longer to complete, as the spelling ⟨hl⟩ and an alternative spelling ⟨lh⟩ are attested in some Middle English texts, one of the latest being the Ayenbite of Inwyt (written in 1340 by a Kentish English speaker who was probably born during the thirteenth century). At least some of these mergers may have begun earlier. Old English scribes occasionally omitted the letter ⟨h⟩ in words starting with these clusters. A merge of the cluster /xw/ with /w/ is also attested in some historical and many current varieties of English, but has still not been completed, as some present-day speakers distinguish the former as [ʍ]. There is evidence of alliteration between ⟨hw⟩ and ⟨w⟩ in some Old English poems.

Velarization

/l r/ apparently had velarized allophones [ɫ] and [rˠ] or similar sounds when they were followed by another consonant or were geminated. That is suggested by the vowel shifts of breaking and retraction before /l r/, which could be cases of assimilation to a following velar consonant:

• *lirnian > liornian > leornian [ˈle͝orˠniɑn] ('learn')
• *erþǣ > eorþǣ > eorþe [ˈe͝orˠðe] ('earth')
• *fællan > feallan [ˈfæ͝ɑɫɫɑn] ('to fall')

Based on phonotactic constraints on initial clusters, Fisiak 1967 proposed interpreting ⟨wr⟩ and ⟨wl⟩ as digraphs representing the velarized sounds in prevocalic position, in which case the distinction would be phonemic, as exhibited by minimal pairs such as wrīdan [ˈrˠiːdɑn] "to grow" vs. rīdan [ˈriːdɑn] "to ride" or wlītan [ˈɫiːtɑn] "to look" vs. lītan [ˈliːtɑn] "to bend". However, this hypothesis is inconsistent with orthoepic and orthographic evidence from the Early Modern English era, as well as borrowings into and from Welsh, which has [wl] and [wr] as genuine initial clusters. Furthermore, in Old English poetry, ⟨wr⟩ and ⟨wl⟩ can alliterate with each other as well as with ⟨w⟩ followed by a vowel, as in "Wēn' ic þæt gē for wlenco, nalles for wræcsīðum" (Beowulf 338).

Vowels

Old English had a moderately large vowel system. In stressed syllables both monophthongs and diphthongs had short and long versions, which were clearly distinguished in pronunciation. In unstressed syllables, the number of vowel contrasts was generally reduced. Historically, unstressed vowels could be elided in some circumstances.

Monophthongs

Depending on dialect, Old English distinguished five to eight vowel qualities in stressed syllables. Each could appear as a long or a short monophthong. An example of two words distinguished by vowel length is god [god] ('god') versus gōd [goːd] ('good').

Monophthongs in Old English

	Front		Back
	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
Close	i iː	y yː		u uː
Mid	e eː	(ø øː)		o oː
Open	æ æː		ɑ ɑː

The front mid rounded vowel /ø(ː)/ (spelled usually as ⟨oe⟩) existed only in some dialects; in others, it was unrounded and merged with /e(ː)/ ⟨e⟩. This merger is seen for both the long and short versions of the vowel in West Saxon and Kentish by around 900 AD, and was complete in Late West Saxon. In Anglian dialects long /øː/ generally remains rounded, but short /ø/ exhibits variable unrounding.

In Kentish, the vowels /æ(ː)/ and /y(ː)/ also merged into /e(ː)/ sometime around the 9th century, leaving /e(ː)/ and /i(ː)/ as the only front vowels in this dialect.

The long and short versions of each vowel were probably pronounced with the same quality, although some reconstructions assume accompanying qualitative distinctions.

• Short e i y o u are sometimes transcribed as "lax" [ɛ ɪ ʏ ɔ ʊ], in contrast to "tense" [eː iː yː oː uː] for long ē ī ȳ ō ū.
• The long–short vowel pair /æ æː/ developed into the Middle English vowels /a ɛː/, with two different vowel qualities distinguished by height: Hogg 1992 suggests they may have had different qualities in late Old English as well.
• The back low vowels /ɑ ɑː/ also generally show a qualitative distinction in Middle English: short /ɑ/ usually became Middle English /a/ (merging with the outcome of short /æ/), whereas long /ɑː/ was raised to Middle English [ɔː] except in northern dialects. In Old English, short /ɑ/ was probably pronounced as rounded [ɒ] before nasals, as is suggested by the fact that the word for "person", for example, is spelled as mann or monn.

Unstressed vowels

See also: Phonological history of Old English § Unstressed vowel reduction, and Proto-Germanic § Later developments

Unstressed syllables displayed fewer vowel contrasts. All unstressed vowels came to be shortened, and many texts only show a clear distinction in this context between three vowels, which can be phonemically transcribed as /ɑ e u/. Even this reduced three-way contrast was lost by Middle English, and the merger of unstressed /ɑ e u/ seems in fact to have occurred before the end of the Old English period. While they were probably still distinct in Early West Saxon as spoken in the late ninth century, their spellings become increasingly confused during the tenth and eleventh centuries; thus, Late West Saxon texts show interchange between endings such as -an, -en, -um.

In texts that show a three-way contrast between unstressed vowels, the letters ⟨i⟩ and ⟨o⟩ in unstressed syllables can be analyzed as contextual variants of the phonemes /e/ and /u/ respectively. In the case of /e/, the variant [i] ⟨i⟩ seems to have been used in words ending in -iġ, -iċ, -isċ, -ing, -iht, -liċ (e.g. hāliġ); or in general, in the environment of a following palatal consonant. In the case of /u/, the quality ⟨u⟩ was normally preserved in the endings -um, -ung, -uc or after an accented syllable containing the /u/ sound (as in duguþ); in other contexts (e.g. hēafod, heofon), ⟨u⟩ was variably interchanged with ⟨o⟩ depending on dialect and time period, with the use of ⟨o⟩ generally increasing over time, although there was a tendency to retain ⟨u⟩ in absolute word-final position.

Unstressed /e/ developed from older /æ/ and /i/, and spellings with unstressed ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨i⟩ can be seen in certain early Old English texts.

Diphthongs

All dialects of Old English had diphthongs. Diphthongs were written with digraphs composed of two vowel letters and were pronounced by gliding from one vowel quality to another within a single syllable. The two main spellings used to represent diphthongs were ⟨ea⟩ and ⟨eo⟩.

• ⟨ea⟩ was pronounced like [æɑ], gliding from the sound of the vowel ⟨æ⟩ to ⟨a⟩. (The spelling ⟨ea⟩ might have been used in place of ⟨æa⟩ because the latter would have essentially been a trigraph ⟨aea⟩.)
• ⟨eo⟩ was pronounced like [eo], gliding from the sound of the vowel ⟨e⟩ to ⟨o⟩.

Diphthongs could be short or long. A short diphthong had the same length as a short single vowel, and a long diphthong had the same length as a long single vowel. As with monophthongs, their length was not systematically marked in Old English manuscripts, but is inferred from other evidence, such as a word's etymological origins or the pronunciation of its descendants. Modern editions conventionally mark long diphthongs with a macron on the first letter: e.g. long ⟨ēa⟩, ⟨ēo⟩ in contrast to short ⟨ea⟩, ⟨eo⟩. In this article, short diphthongs such as ea are transcribed like [æ͝ɑ], and long diphthongs such as ēa are transcribed like [æ͞ɑ].

Some dialects had additional diphthongs:

• io, īo were found in Northumbrian, but were absent from Late West Saxon, having merged with eo, ēo (a merger also found to varying extents in other dialects). The quality of ⟨io⟩ is reconstructed as [io] or [iu]. The spelling ⟨io⟩ is attested in Early West Saxon, but it varies with the spelling ⟨eo⟩, suggesting the merger had already taken place in this dialect as of around 900 AD. In Mercian, ⟨eo⟩ and ⟨io⟩ are distinguished only in the earliest glosses; they merge in later texts, yielding eo, ēo as in West Saxon. In Kentish short eo, io tended to merge as eo, whereas long ēo, īo tended to merge as īo. In contexts where i-umlaut occurred, ⟨io⟩ corresponds instead in West Saxon to ⟨ie⟩ or later ⟨y⟩~⟨i⟩ (see below), as in Northumbrian þīostru, Mercian þēostru, Early West Saxon þīestru "darkness".
• ie, īe were found only in Early West Saxon. The quality of ⟨ie⟩ is disputed: some scholars reconstruct it as [iy], but others argue it was [ie] or [iə]. An alternative hypothesis is that it was a monophthong with an intermediate quality between [i] and [e]. By the time of Alfred the Great, the diphthongs ie, īe were apparently monophthongized to a vowel known as "unstable i", whose pronunciation is still uncertain. It later went on to merge with /y yː/ according to spellings such as gelyfan for earlier geliefan and gelifan ('to believe'). (According to another interpretation, however, the "unstable i" may simply have been /i/, and the later /y/ can be explained by the fact that Late West Saxon was not a direct descendant of Early West Saxon. See Old English dialects.) That produced additional instances of /y(ː)/ alongside those that developed from i-mutation and from sporadic rounding of /i(ː)/ in certain circumstances (e.g. myċel 'much' from earlier miċel with rounding perhaps triggered by the rounded /m/). All instances of /y(ː)/ were normally unrounded next to ⟨c⟩, ⟨g⟩ and ⟨h⟩: hence ġifan from earlier ġiefan 'to give'.

Thus, the inventory of diphthongs in Late West Saxon was as follows:

Diphthongs in Old English

First element	Short (monomoraic)	Long (bimoraic)	Spelling (original)	Spelling (modern editions)
Mid	e͝o	e͞o	eo	eo, ēo
Low	æ͝ɑ	æ͞ɑ	ea	ea, ēa

The table above displays how Old English vowel digraphs are commonly interpreted, but there are various debates about the pronunciation and phonemic analysis of these spellings.

Diphthong controversies

The phonetic realization of Old English diphthongs is controversial.

During the 20th century, various academic articles disputed the reconstruction of "short diphthongs", arguing that they were actually monophthongs (on the phonetic level, the phonemic level, or both). However, in response to these proposals, further arguments have been made in support of the proposition that short digraphs did in fact represent phonetic diphthongs. Hogg 1992 argues that a contrast between long and short diphthongs is not necessarily phonologically implausible, noting it is attested in some modern languages, such as Scots, where the short diphthong in tide /təid/ contrasts with the long diphthong in tied /taid/. In contrast, Minkova 2014 considers the evidence for the phonemic status of short diphthongs to be unconvincing and prefers to analyze short ⟨ea⟩, ⟨eo⟩ as allophones of /æ, e/, or at most, as semi-contrastive entities that never became completely distinct phonemes from the corresponding short monophthongs.

Assuming vowel digraphs were in fact pronounced as phonetic diphthongs, they may have been the 'falling' type (where the first portion of the diphthong was more prominent, and the second part was a non-syllabic offglide. Alternatively, both components may have been more or less equal in prominence.

The primary feature that distinguished ⟨ea⟩ from ⟨eo⟩ seems to have been the height of the first component of the diphthong: the start of ⟨ea⟩ sounded like ⟨æ⟩ /æ/ whereas the start of ⟨eo⟩ sounded like ⟨e⟩ /e/. The second component of any diphthong (whether original or from breaking) seems to have originally been high back rounded [u] (or [u̯]). Diphthongs seem to have still ended in this quality at the time when i-umlaut occurred. Fulk 2014 assumes the qualities [æu̯ eu̯ iu̯ æːu̯ eːu̯ iːu̯] continued to be used into Old English for ea eo io ēa ēo īo respectively, but acknowledges that their values may have been different in late Old English. Ringe & Taylor 2014 assume that by the 9th century, the second component of ea had become lowered and unrounded (aside from in the minority of regions where the alternative spelling ⟨eo⟩ was used for this diphthong). Both components of [æɑ] are low vowels and both components of [eo] are mid vowels. Lass & Anderson 1975 propose that Old English diphthongs were "height-harmonic", that is, that both parts of any diphthong had the same vowel height (high, mid or low) as a rule. The reconstruction of io as [iu] and early West Saxon ie as [iy] is consistent with this principle of height harmony. However, Ringe & Taylor 2014 do not find height harmony convincing as a general rule, arguing that the later development of ie īe points instead to the value [iə̯ iːə̯]. Hogg 2011 considers the lowering of the second element of diphthongs to be related to the development of unstressed vowel qualities; while acknowledging that the height of the first element affected the outcome of the second, Hogg rejects height harmony as an overarching principle, and supposes that io came to be pronounced [io] in Old English, with [iu] only being its early or archaic value. Some other scholars have reconstructed ⟨ea⟩ and ⟨eo⟩ as ending in an unrounded schwa-like glide in Old English. However, there is evidence that Old English eo io ēo īo had rounded outcomes in some dialects of Middle English.

Another controversy concerns the development of ē̆a from ǣ̆ and ī̆e from ē̆ in the context of West Saxon palatal diphthongization. It is difficult to explain why [æ e] would become [æɑ iy] after a palatal consonant; accordingly, Lass 1994 rejects the reality of this sound change and considers the digraphs in this context to be merely an orthographic device used to indicate that [æ e] were preceded by a palatal consonant. The mainstream position is that ǣ̆ and ē̆ were genuinely diphthongized in this position; it has been proposed that their initial outcomes were something like [eə̯ iə̯], with [eə̯] subsequently merging with ē̆a [æɑ].

Development of diphthongs

Further information: Phonological history of Old English

Old English diphthongs have several origins. Long diphthongs developed partly from the Proto-Germanic diphthongs *au, *eu, *iu and partly from Old English vowel shifts. Short diphthongs developed only from Old English vowel shifts. Here are examples of diphthongs inherited from Proto-Germanic:

• PG *dauþuz > OE dēaþ 'death'
• PG *deuzą > OE dēor 'animal' > Modern English deer
• PG *biumi > Anglian bīom, West Saxon bēo '[I] am'

Three vowel shifts produced diphthongs: breaking, back mutation, and palatal diphthongization. Breaking caused Anglo-Frisian short *æ, *e, *i to develop into the short diphthongs ea, eo, io before /x, w/ or a consonant cluster beginning with /r, l/. Anglo-Frisian long *ǣ, *ī developed into the diphthongs ēa and īo before /x/:

• PG *liznōjaną > Anglo-Frisian *lirnian > Anglian liornian, West Saxon leornian 'learn'
• PG *nāh > AF *nǣh > Old English nēah 'near'

Back mutation changed i, e and sometimes a to io, eo and ea before a back vowel in the next syllable:

• PG *sebun > AF *sefon > OE seofon 'seven'
• PG *niþanē > OE neoþan 'from beneath'

Palatal diphthongization changed æ, ǣ, e, ē to the diphthongs ea, ēa, ie, īe respectively after the palatalized consonants ġ, sċ, and ċ:

• PG *gebaną > AF *jefan > ġiefan 'give'

In addition, the back vowels a, o, u (long or short) could be spelled as ⟨ea⟩, ⟨eo⟩, ⟨eo⟩ respectively after ċ, ġ, or sċ. However, rather than indicating the development of a diphthong, these spellings might have just been a convention for marking palatal consonants before a back vowel, since the modern English descendants of such words do not display the typical evolution of the diphthong ⟨eo⟩ to a front vowel:

• PG *jungaz > OE ġeong 'young' (Modern English /jʌŋ/)
• PG *skuldē > sċeolde 'should' (Modern English /ʃʊd/)

Peter Schrijver has theorized that Old English breaking developed from language contact with Celtic languages. He says that two Celtic languages were spoken in Britain, Highland British Celtic, which was phonologically influenced by British Latin and developed into Welsh, Cornish and Breton, and Lowland British Celtic, which was brought to Ireland at the time of the Roman conquest of Britain and became Old Irish. Lowland British Celtic had velarization like Old and Modern Irish, which gives preceding vowels a back offglide. That feature came by language contact to Old English and resulted in backing diphthongs.

Early West Saxon ie, īe developed from i-mutation of ea, ēa or io, īo (at the time of i-mutation, the merger of the latter with eo, ēo seems to have not yet occurred). In dialects other than West Saxon, i-mutation instead turned ea, ēa into e, ē and left io, īo unchanged.

Stress

As in modern English, there was a distinction in Old English between stressed and unstressed syllables. Stress typically could be found only on the first or leftmost syllable of a root morpheme. In morphologically simple words, this is equivalent to the first syllable of the word: e.g. yfel 'evil', pronounced [ˈyvel]. Non-initial syllables within a morpheme were unstressed.

Inflectional suffixes are inferred to have been fully unstressed, based on the absence of alliteration involving these syllables (although in words with multiple unstressed syllables in a row, such as fremedon [ˈfremedon] 'they did', it is possible that there was some kind of alternating rhythm). Fully unstressed syllables did not contain long vowels or diphthongs.

When a simple word was extended by a derivational suffix, or when two roots capable of standing as free words were combined to form a compound, the primary stress fell on the first syllable of the leftmost root. However, there may have been secondary stress in some circumstances on the first syllable of the later element. In Old English verse, the first root of a compound participates in alliteration, whereas the second root of a compound can be involved in alliteration only as a supporting element, if it starts with the same consonant as the first root. Derivational suffixes and the second elements of compound words appear to display a wider range of vowel contrasts than inflectional suffixes: for example, a diphthong can be seen in the second syllable of the word spelled ⟨arleas⟩ 'honorless' derived from the morphemes ār 'honor' and lēas 'devoid of, bereft of' (as a suffix, '-less'). Since vowel length was not written in Old English, it is less clear to what extent long vowels may have been shortened, or conversely, analogically restored, in such derivational suffixes.

Prefixed words did not always have primary stress on the first syllable. Depending on the identity of the prefix and the part of speech of the word, the primary stress could fall either on the first syllable of the prefix or on the first syllable of the root after the prefix. The prefixes ġe- and be- were always fully unstressed, and the prefix for- was nearly always unstressed. In contrast, the prefixes and- and ed- always received primary stress. Other prefixes seem to have generally received primary stress in nouns or adjectives, but not in verbs or adverbs. The prefix hund-, used on numerals for the decades 70-120, was unstressed.

Phonotactics

Phonotactics is the study of the sequences of phonemes that occur in languages and the sound structures that they form. When describing syllable structure, a capital letter C can be used to represent a consonant sound and a capital letter V can be used to represent a vowel sound, so a syllable such as 'be' is described as having CV structure (one consonant followed by one vowel). The IPA symbol that shows a division between syllables is the dot [.].

Old English stressed syllables were structured as (C)³V(C)⁴; that is, one vowel as the nucleus with zero to three consonant phonemes in the onset and zero to four consonant phonemes in the coda. An example of a stressed syllable with the minimal number of phonemes would be ǣ 'law, statute', whereas an example of a stressed syllable with nearly the maximum number of phonemes would be bringst (the syncopated second-person singular present form of the strong verb bringan 'bring').

Onset

Onset clusters typically consist of a obstruent /p, b, t, d, k, ɣ, s, ʃ, f, θ, x/ followed by a sonorant /m, n, r, l, w/, although /s/ is allowed as a third element before voiceless stops, and /w/ is allowed before /r, l/. The consonants /j, tʃ/ occur only on their own. (If /n̥, r̥, l̥, ʍ, rˠ, ɫ/ are accepted as their own phonemes, the same can be said of these consonants and of /x/, but these are normally analyzed respectively as /xn, xr, xl, xw, wr, wl/.) Some have proposed analyzing clusters of /s/ and a voiceless stop as single segments. In Old English alliterative poetry, a word-initial sequence of /s/ + voiceless stop alliterates only with itself (with or without a following liquid): that is, ⟨st⟩ and ⟨str⟩ count as a match, as do ⟨sp⟩ and ⟨spl⟩, but ⟨st⟩ and /sp/ do not alliterate with each other.

Unpalatalized /sk/ and /skr/ did not occur as a rule at the start of a word, since in inherited vocabulary, original */sk/ came to be palatalized in this position regardless of what sound followed it. The cluster /sk/ could be found word-medially before a back vowel, e.g. in the words þerscan and discas, although the lack of palatalization in such forms might imply that the /s/ was shared between the first and second syllable. The cluster /skr/ probably occurred medially in malscrung, judging by the forms of the related Middle English malskren and Modern English masker. Kuhn 1970 assumes that /sk/ was found at the start of the word scolere, from Latin scholārius, but Campbell 1959 transcribes it as sċolere; the form sċrift from Latin scrīpt- shows that palatalized sċ- could come to be used at the start of Old English words taken from Latin.

The onset was optional, so syllables could start with a vowel phoneme. In Old English poetry, stressed syllables starting with vowel phonemes all alliterate with each other (regardless of whether the vowels are the same or different). A glottal stop consonant [ʔ] may have been phonetically inserted in this position. (Hogg 2011 views alliteration as inconclusive evidence for initial [ʔ].)

Old English syllable-initial consonant clusters

First consonant	Middle consonant	Last consonant						Examples
		-∅	-m	-n	-r	-l	-w
∅-	-∅-		m	n	r	l	w	mann, næġl, rūn, lār, word
	-p-	p	—		pr	pl	—	port, prēost, plega
	-b-	b			br	bl		bōc, blōd, brād
	-t-	t			tr	—	tw	tōþ, trēow, twelf
	-d-	d			dr		dw	dæġ, drincan, dwola
	-k-	k	—	kn	kr	kl	kw	cuman, cniht, cræft, clif, cwēn
	-ɣ-	ɡ		ɡn	ɡr	ɡl	—	gāt, gnīdan, grēne, glæd
	ʃ-	ʃ	—		ʃr	—		sċūr, sċrūd
	f-	f	—	fn	fr	fl	—	fæder, fnæd, frēond, flōd
	θ-	θ	—		θr	—	θw	þæt, þridda, þwēal
	x-	h	—	hn̥	hr̥	hl̥	hʍ	hām, hnutu, hrīm, hlūd, hwæl
s-	-∅-	s	sm	sn	—	sl	sw	sōþ, smiþ, snāw, slǣp, swēte
	-p-	sp	—		spr	spl	—	spēd, sprecan, splott
	-t-	st			str	—		stān, strǣt
	-k-	sk			skr			scōl
Other		j, tʃ, wr, wl						ġēar, ċild, wrāð, wlanc

Nucleus

The syllable nucleus was always a vowel in stressed syllables. Stressed monosyllabic words always ended in either a consonant or a long vowel (whether a long monophthong or long diphthong): this can be stated in terms of stressed words having at least two moras of length. In words of two or more syllables, it was possible for the stressed syllable to end in a short vowel (called a light syllable), although two-syllable words more often had a heavy first syllable (one that ended in a consonant or long vowel).

It is possible that certain sonorant consonants, such as /n/ or /l/, could serve as the nucleus of an unstressed syllable. However, it is difficult to determine whether or in which contexts consonants were syllabic in Old English, because the relevant forms show variable spelling (a vowel letter, presumably representing an epenthetic vowel sound, could often be inserted before the sonorant) and variable behavior in verse.

Coda

In general, Old English permitted similar kinds of clusters of coda consonants as modern English. In morphologically simple words, most coda clusters started with a sonorant or /s/.

Long (geminate) consonants seem to have become simplified to single consonants when not between vowels. However, [dʒ] (analyzed above as long /jj/) did not merge with single /j/ in this context, but remained a distinct coda.

The following tables show some examples of coda clusters that could occur in Old English, while not necessarily constituting an exhaustive list. Although /j/ might be categorized as a resonant, it had non-resonant allophones, and so will be listed alongside obstruent consonants in the tables below.

One resonant + one obstruent

C1	C2 (Second consonant)													Examples
	/t/	/d/	/θ/	/s/	/p/	/b/	/f/	/k/	/x/	/ɣ~g/	/j~dʒ/	/tʃ/	/ʃ/
/r/	/rt/	/rd/	/rθ/	/rs/	/rp/		/rf/	/rk/	/rx/	/rɣ/	/rj/	/rtʃ/	/rʃ/	sċort, word, weorð, gærs, sċeorp, turf, weorc, þweorh, beorg, byrġ, wyrċ, mersċ
/l/	/lt/	/ld/	/lθ/	/ls/	/lp/		/lf/	/lk/	/lx/	/lɣ/	/lj/	/ltʃ/	/lʃ/	sealt, gold, gælð, frēols, help, wulf, folc, seolh, dolg, *bielġ, hwelċ, melsċ
/n/	/nt/	/nd/	/nθ/		—	—	—	/nk/		/nɣ~ng/	/ndʒ/	/ntʃ/		ent, land, hȳnþ, dranc, sang, lenġ, benċ
/m/			/mθ/	(/ms/)	/mp/	/mb/	—	—	—	—	—	—		frymþ, ġelimp, lamb
/w/	/wt/	/wd/	/wθ/											ðēowt (=þēowet), ēowd (=ēowde), blēwþ

Some codas with an obstruent preceded by more than one resonant are attested, often as the result of syncope, e.g:

• /rnθ/, as in irnþ
• /rmθ/, /rms/, as in yrmþ, wyrms
• /rld/, as in weorld (a sycopated variant form of weorold)
• /lmd/, /lmθ/, as in cwylmd, cwylmð (syncopated variant forms of cwylmed and cwylmeð, the past participle and third person present singular of cwylman = cwielman)

Two obstruents with no preceding resonant

/t/			/θ/					/s/		Examples
/st/	/ft/	/xt/	/pθ/	/fθ/	/kθ/	/xθ/	/jθ/	/ps/	/ks/	dūst, cræft, ǣht, bestæpþ, drīfð, brȳcþ, mǣġþ, wæps, seax

The following additional two-obstruent coda clusters may rarely occur:

• /fs/ was normally replaced with /ps/, but there are some variant spellings with final ⟨fs⟩, such as wæfs, which may represent the original pronunciation.
• /xs/ was normally replaced with /ks/, but some variant spellings with final ⟨hs⟩ can be found, such as þreahs for þreax. It is possible that early on, the letter ⟨x⟩ was used to represent /xs/ rather than /ks/.
• /sp/, as in ġeresp, hosp, hyspte (past of hyspan). This could become /ps/ by metathesis, as in crisp~cyrps 'curly' from Latin crispus.
• /sk/, as in frosc. Uncommon compared to sċ /ʃ/, and often varies with ⟨x⟩ /ks/ (as in frox) by metathesis.
• /fd/, /jd/, as in ġenæfd, ġehyġd
• /tʃt/ might occur at the end of some Kentish verb forms spelled with ⟨ct⟩, namely ofðreċt and ġehyðlǣċt. (Campbell 1959 marks these with ⟨ċt⟩ but assumes ⟨ċ⟩ was phonetically a palatal stop, rather than affricate, when followed by another consonant. Hogg & Fulk 2011, p. 219 transcribe them with dotless ⟨ct⟩, assuming that preconsonantal ⟨ċ⟩ had already been replaced with velar ⟨c⟩ in Old English.)
• /θs/ was apparently regularly assimilated to /ss/ (which in turn was degeminated in syllable-final position to /s/), as in the nominative forms of the nouns bliss and liss, which would etymologically be blīþs and līþs. Some variant spellings can be found that do not show this simplification, but it is unclear whether the consonant was ever restored in pronunciation.

Two obstruents preceded by one resonant

	/t/				/θ/						/s/			Examples
	/st/	/ft/	/xt/	/kt/	/tθ/	/pθ/	/fθ/	/kθ/	/xθ/	/jθ/	/ts/	/ps/	/ks/
/r/	/rst/	/rft/	/rxt/			/rpθ/	/rfθ/	/rkθ/	/rxθ/	/rjθ/		/rps/	/rks/	fierst, edhwyrft, beorht, wyrpð, dyrfð, byrcþ (=biercþ), ferhþ, wyrġð, cyrps, horxlīċe
/l/	/lst/		/lht/	/lkt/		/lpθ/	/lfθ/	/lkθ/	/rxθ/	/ljθ/	/lts/			fylst, ġefulhtnede, ċilct, hilpð, sċylfð, *wielcþ, bylġþ, milts~milds
/n/	/nst/			/nkt/	/ntθ/	—		/nkθ/		—		—		canst, sanct, ġesċendð~ġesċentð, þyncþ
/m/	/mst/					/mpθ/		—		—			—	cymst, limpþ
/w/	/wst/													flēwst

Three obstruents preceded by up to one resonant

	/tst/	/θst/	/pst/	/fst/	/kst/	/xst/	/jst/	Examples
-∅-	/tst/	/θst/	/pst/	/fst/	/kst/	/xst/	/jst/	ābītst, cwiðst (also cwist), drȳpst (=drīepst), hæfst, bæcst, flīehst, sægst
/r/			/rpst/	/rfst/	/rkst/		/rjst/	wyrpst (=wierpst), ċyrfst (=ċierfst), wyrcst, byrġst (=bierġst)
/l/	/ltst/		/lpst/	/lfst/	/lkst/		/ljst/	ġehiltst, hilpst, dilfst, *milcst, bilġst
/n/	/ntst/	—	—	—	/nkst/	—	—	fintst, drincst

Additional possible three-obstruent clusters include:

• /ksθ/, as in wixð (third-person singular present form of wexan, smoothed variant of weaxan), if not simply a morphological spelling for /kst/.

Although resonant consonants such as /n/ or /l/ could occur word-finally after another consonant, there is some uncertainty about whether they were pronounced as coda consonants or as syllabic consonants (forming unstressed syllable nuclei) in this context. The tables below show word-final sequences ending in a resonant consonant:

Two resonants

	/l/	/n/	/m/	Examples
/r/	/rl/	/rn/	/rm/	ċeorl, þorn, wyrm
/l/	†/ll/	/ln/	/lm/	†eall, eln, cwealm
/n/	‡/nl/	†/nn/	—	‡ēarspinl, †cynn
/m/	‡/ml/	/mn/	†/mm/	‡cuml, stemn, †ramm
/w/	‡/wl/	—	—	sāwl

†It is assumed that geminate consonants such as /ll/, /nn/, /mm/ were simplified by the Old English period to single consonants when entirely in a syllable coda.

‡The final /l/ in words ending in /nl/, /ml/, /wl/ could potentially become syllabic or have an epenthetic vowel inserted before it; see below. This possibly could apply also to the final /n/ in /ln/.

Because of the loss of certain vowels in final syllables, Proto-West-Germanic came to have words ending in sequences of an obstruent consonant followed by a resonant consonant: for example, Proto-Germanic *xlaxtraz developed to Proto-West-Germanic *xlaxtr. In the past, it was sometimes assumed that a resonant consonant in such a position must necessarily be syllabic. This assumption is false: there are languages where a syllable can end in an obstruent followed by a resonant, as demonstrated by modern Icelandic, where vatn, býsn, segl, gísl are all monosyllables. There is evidence that this type of coda cluster eventually became disallowed in Old English, because many such words show a spelling with a vowel letter inserted before the consonant, such as hleahtor. However, some words could be spelled with or without an inserted vowel letter in Old English, raising the question of whether there was also variation between different pronunciations. Based on the treatment of such words in poetry, Fulk 1989 argues that their pronunciation changed either during or shortly before the time period when Old English literature was written: when not etymologically preceded by a vowel, resonant consonants in this position were generally nonsyllabic in early Old English verse, whereas in late Old English verse, they came to be syllabic (or preceded by an epenthetic vowel). Fulk finds that the syllabic pronunciations are generally used consistently in poetry from the ninth century or later. The development of a syllabic pronunciation seems to have been affected by the identity of the resonant, the identity of the consonant preceding the resonant, and the weight of the syllable.

• Word-final consonant + ⟨r⟩ sequences are practically always spelled with an epenthetic vowel letter in Old English manuscripts, e.g. æcer, fōdor, fæġer, although these epenthetic vowels do not always count as syllables in early Old English poetry.
• Word-final consonant + ⟨l⟩ sequences may be spelled with or without an epenthetic vowel depending on the identity of the consonant. An inserted vowel letter is never seen in ⟨rl⟩, and usually not in ⟨tl⟩, ⟨dl⟩, ⟨þl⟩, ⟨sl⟩, ⟨fl⟩, ⟨ġl⟩, but is seen often in other combinations, e.g. ⟨pl⟩, ⟨bl⟩, ⟨gl⟩, ⟨wl⟩, ⟨nl⟩. In poetry, ⟨l⟩ never scans as its own syllable after /d t f s/.
• Word-final consonant + ⟨n⟩ sequences show considerable variability. Spellings with an epenthetic vowel seem to be generally uncommon in words ending with a short vowel + single consonant + ⟨n⟩, e.g. swefn, reġn, stemn, although a few spellings with inserted ⟨e⟩ are attested early on (namely efen and ofen) and others are attested in late West Saxon. In cases where word-final ⟨n⟩ is preceded by more than one consonant, or by a syllable containing a long vowel or diphthong, the inclusion of an epenthetic vowel letter is variable, possibly affected by dialect.
• Word-final sequences of a consonant + ⟨m⟩ never scan as a separate syllable in poetry, and are never spelled with an epenthetic vowel letter in early West Saxon: e.g. ⟨māþm⟩, ⟨fæþm⟩, ⟨bōsm⟩, ⟨botm⟩, ⟨wæstm⟩, ⟨breahtm⟩. In texts from other time periods or dialects, spellings with ⟨um⟩ (e.g. late West Saxon ⟨māþum⟩, ⟨bōsum⟩) or ⟨em⟩ (e.g. Mercian ⟨westem⟩) can be found except for in words ending with ⟨rm⟩ or ⟨lm⟩.

Potential coda clusters ending in a resonant

last C	full cluster	Examples
/l/	/dl/, /tl/, /sl/, /fl/, /jl/, /mpl/, /nɣl~ngl/	nǣdl, setl, sūsl, ċeafl, seġl, templ, tungl
/n/	/fn/, /mn/, /stn/, /pn/, /kn/, /jn/	hræfn, stemn, fæstn, wǣpn, tācn, seġn
/m/	/tm/, /stm/, /htm/, /rhtm/, /sm/, /θm/	botm, bearhtm, wæstm, bōsm

Sound changes

Main article: Phonological history of Old English

Like Frisian, Old English underwent palatalization of the velar consonants /k ɣ/ and fronting of the open vowel /ɑ ɑː/ to /æ æː/ in certain cases. Old English also underwent vowel shifts that were not shared with Old Frisian: smoothing, diphthong height harmonization and breaking. Diphthong height harmonization and breaking resulted in the unique Old English diphthongs io, ie, eo, ea.

Palatalization yielded some Modern English word pairs in which one word has a velar and the other has a palatal or postalveolar. Some of these were inherited from Old English (drink and drench, day and dawn), and others have an unpalatalized form loaned from Old Norse (skirt and shirt).

Dialects

See also: Phonological history of Old English § Dialects

Old English had four major dialect groups: Kentish, West Saxon, Mercian and Northumbrian. Kentish and West Saxon were the dialects spoken south of a line approximately following the course of the River Thames: Kentish in the easternmost portion of that area and West Saxon everywhere else. Mercian was spoken in the middle part of England and was separated from the southern dialects by the Thames and from Northumbrian by the River Humber. Mercian and Northumbrian are often grouped together as "Anglian".

Modern English descends mostly from the Anglian dialect, rather than the standard West Saxon dialect of Old English. However, since London sits on the Thames, near the boundary of the Anglian, West Saxon and Kentish dialects, some West Saxon and Kentish forms have entered Modern English. For example, the spelling of the verb bury is derived from West Saxon, but the pronunciation /ˈbɛri/ is derived from Kentish.

The largest dialectal differences in Old English occurred between West Saxon and the other groups and occurred mostly in the front vowels, particularly the diphthongs. In Kentish, the vowels æ, e, y would eventually all merge as e (long and short). The primary differences between dialects were the following:

• Original /æː/ (derived from Proto-West-Germanic *ā by Anglo-Frisian brightening) remained as ǣ in West Saxon, but was raised to ē in Anglian. This preceded other changes such as breaking and the development of ǣ by i-umlaut of Old English ā (from Proto-Germanic *ai). Thus, West Saxon slǣpan ('to sleep') appears as slēpan in Anglian, but dǣlan ('to divide') from *dailijan appears the same in both dialects. (Note the corresponding vowel difference in the spelling of Modern English "sleep" and "deal", from Anglian slēpan and dǣlan.) Hogg 2011 thinks early Kentish had ǣ like West Saxon, whereas Ringe & Taylor 2014 argue that Kentish originally had ē as in Anglian based on the development of the diphthong ēo in the adverb nēor.
• The West Saxon vowels ie/īe were caused by i-umlaut of long and short ea, eo, io and did not appear in Anglian. Instead, i-umlaut of ea and rare eo are spelled e, and i-umlaut of io remains io.
• Breaking of short /æ/ to ea did not happen in Anglian before /l/ followed by a consonant; instead, the vowel was retracted to /ɑ/. When mutated by i-umlaut, it appears again as æ (vs. West Saxon ie): Anglian cald ('cold') vs. West Saxon ċeald.
• The merger of eo and io (long and short) occurred early in West Saxon but much later in Anglian.
• Many instances of diphthongs in Anglian, including the majority of those caused by breaking, were turned back into monophthongs again by the process of "Anglian smoothing", which occurred before c, h, g, alone or preceded by r or l. That accounts for some of the most noticeable differences between standard (West Saxon) Old English and Modern English spelling: ēage ('eye') became ēge in Anglian; nēah ('near') became Anglian nēh and was later raised to nīh in the transition to Middle English by the raising of ē before h (hence nigh in Modern English); nēahst ('nearest') become Anglian nēhst, shortened to nehst in late Old English by vowel-shortening before three consonants (hence next in Modern English).

All dialects of Old English seem to have shared palatalization as a sound change, including Northumbrian. Forms in Modern English with hard /k/ and /ɡ/ in which a palatalized sound would be expected from Old English appear to be influenced by Scandinavian.

Examples

The prologue to Beowulf:

Hwæt! Wē Gārdena in ġēardagum [ˈhʍæt weː ˈɡɑːrˠˌde.nɑ in ˈjæ͞ɑrˠˌdɑ.ɣum]

þēodcyninga þrym ġefrūnon, [ˈθe͞odˌky.niŋ.ɡɑ ˈθrym jeˈfruː.non]

hū ðā æþelingas ellen fremedon. [huː θɑː ˈæ.ðe.liŋ.ɡɑs ˈel.len ˈfre.me.don]

Oft Sċyld Sċēfing sċeaþena þrēatum, [oft ˈʃyld ˈʃeː.viŋɡ ˈʃɑ.ðe.nɑ ˈθræ͞ɑ.tum]

monegum mǣġþum meodo-setla oftēah. [ˈmɒ.ne.ɣum ˈmæːj.ðum ˈme.duˌset.lɑ ofˈtæ͞ɑx]

Eġsode eorl, syððan ǣrest wearð [ˈej.zo.de e͝orˠɫ ˈsɪθ.θɑn ˈæː.rest wæ͝ɑrˠθ]

fēasċeaft funden; hē þæs frōfre ġebād, [ˈfæ͞ɑˌʃæ͝ɑft ˈfun.den heː θæs ˈfroː.vre jeˈbɑːd]

wēox under wolcnum, weorð-myndum þāh, [we͞oks un.der ˈwoɫk.num ˈwe͝orˠðˌmyn.dum ˈθɑːx]

oð þæt him ǣġhwylċ þāra ymb-sittendra [oθ θæt him ˈæːj.hʍyltʃ ˈθɑː.rɑ ymbˈsit.ten.drɑ]

ofer hronrāde hȳran sċolde, [ˈo.ver ˈhr̥ɒnˌrɑː.de ˈhyː.rɑn ʃoɫ.de]

gomban ġyldan; þæt wæs gōd cyning. [ˈɡom.bɑn ˈjyl.dɑn θæt wæs ˈɡoːd ˈky.niŋɡ]

The Lord's Prayer:

Line	Original	IPA	Translation
[1]	Fæder ūre þū þe eart on heofonum,	[ˈfæ.der ˈuː.re θuː θe æ͝ɑrt on ˈhe͝o.vo.num]	Our father, you who are in heaven,
[2]	Sīe þīn nama ġehālgod.	[si͞y θiːn ˈnɒ.mɑ jeˈhɑːɫ.ɣod]	May your name be hallowed.
[3]	Tōbecume þīn rīċe,	[ˌtoː.beˈku.me θiːn ˈriː.tʃe]	May your kingdom come,
[4]	Ġeweorðe þīn willa, on eorðan swā swā on heofonum.	[jeˈwe͝orˠ.ðe θiːn ˈwil.lɑ on ˈe͝orˠ.ðan swɑː swɑː on ˈhe͝o.vo.num]	Your will be done, on Earth as in heaven.
[5]	Ūrne dæġhwamlīcan hlāf sele ūs tōdæġ,	[ˈuːrˠ.ne ˈdæj.hʍɑmˌliː.kɑn hl̥ɑːf ˈse.le uːs toːˈdæj]	Give us our daily bread today,
[6]	And forġief ūs ūre gyltas, swā swā wē forġiefaþ ūrum gyltendum.	[ɒnd forˠˈji͝yf uːs ˈuː.re ˈɣyl.tɑs swɑː swɑː weː forˠˈji͝y.vɑθ uː.rum ˈɣyl.ten.dum]	And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
[7]	And ne ġelǣd þū ūs on costnunge, ac ālīes ūs of yfele.	[ɒnd ne jeˈlæːd θuː uːs on ˈkost.nuŋ.ɡe ɑk ɑːˈli͞ys uːs of ˈy.ve.le]	And do not lead us into temptation, but rescue us from evil.
[8]	Sōðlīċe.	[ˈsoːðˌliː.tʃe]	Amen.

Bibliography

• Baker, Peter S. (2007). Introduction to Old English (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-5272-3.
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