Changes in Consonants

Voiceless fricatives appeared Germanic languages as a result of the First Consonant Shift (Grimm’s Law).

1. Voicing of fricatives in intervocal position

f > v ofer (over) wif – wife (wife – wives)

hlaf - hlafas (loaf – loaves)

0 > o ooer (other)

V sibilant z was unstable in OE (and other Germanic gauges), and very soon changed into r .This process is called rhotacism.: wesun – weren (were, but was) maiza – mara (more but most)

2. Loss of consonants in certain position. Like h that was lost in intervocal position, the sounds n and m were lost before h, entailing the preceding vowel:

Bronhte - brohte (brought)

Fimf - fif (five)

The nasals were not lost in German, so there are corresponding German words as funf, ander and Mund.

3. Metathesis of r. In several OE words the following change of the position of consonants takes place:

Oridda - irda (thirs)

Brunnan - burnan (burn)

Hros - hors (horse)

As we can see, the changes in OE sounds were for the most part reflected in spelling, and we must only rely on the corresponding words from other languages to see what the origin of this or that sound was.

Old English Noun

Nouns in O had the categories of number, gender and case. Nouns used to den males are normally masculine - , faeder, brooor, abbot (man, fatherbrother, abbot). Those denoting females should be all feminine – mooor, sweostor, cwene, abbudissa)(mother, sister, queen, abbess). Yet there are curious exceptions, such as the words maezden (maid), wif (wife) are neuter (compare in Ukrainian хлоп’я, дівча).

There are two umbers and four cases – nominative, genitive, dative and accusative. Comparing with what we have now we can see that number proved to be a stable category. Case is supplanted by other means to express the relations between the words in an utterance, whereas gender disappeared altogether.

The nouns in OE are commonly classified as belonging to strong and weak declension, within each of the groups there are several subgroups.

The Strong Declension

It includes nouns that had had a vocalic stem-forming suffix. They look like this:

-a- stem

can be either masculine or neuter. But the difference between the two genders may be seen only in the nominative:

S i n g u l a r

m n (short root vowel) n (long root vowel)

Nom. stan scip sceap

Gen. stanes scipes sceapes

Dat. stane scipe sceape

Acc. stan scip sceap

P l u r a l

Nom. stanas scipu sceap

Gen. stana scipa sceapa

Dat. stanum scipum sceapum

Acc. stanas scipu sceap

Stone Ship Sheep

There are some differences in declensions with mutated vowel in the stem.

Nouns belonging to -o-stems are all feminine.

The nouns formerly having –i-suffix, now called –i-stems might belong to all the three genders, and the case endings are different for different genders – masculine and neuter

Have me endings as masculine and neuter nouns of the –a-stems, and feminine noun endings repeated the endings of the –o-stems. Nouns belonging to –u-stems may be of masculine or feminine gender.

Weak Declensions

This class of nouns consists of a numerous group of nouns originally having –ems; the suffix is well-preserved in declension of nouns in OE, but disappeared in the nominative case. –n-stem nouns may be of all three genders. But there is no difference in declensions of different genders:

m n f

Singular

Nom. nama eare tunze

Gen. naman earan tunzan

Dat. naman earan tunzan

Acc. naman earan tunzan

P l u r a l

Nom. naman earan tunzan

Gen. namena earana tunzena

Dat. naman earun tunzum

Acc. naman earan tunzan

Name Ear Tongue