8. Spelling changes in me

The most important feature of Late ME texts in comparison with OE texts is the difference in spelling. The written forms of the words in Late ME texts resemble their modern forms, though the pronunciation of the words was different.

In the course of ME many new devices were introduced into the system of spelling; some of them reflected the sound changes which had been completed or were still in progress in ME; others were graphic replacements of OE letters by new letters and digraphs.

In the ME the runic letters passed out of use.

• th replaced ð/þ/Đ/đ;

• æ, œ disappeared;

• the rune “wynn” was displaced by –w-

After the period of Anglo-Norman dominance (11^th-13^th c.) English regained its prestige as the language of writing, writing was in the hands of those who had a good knowledge of French. Therefore many innovations in ME spelling reveal an influence of French scribal tradition. The digraph ou ie and ch which occurred in many French borrowings and were regularly used in Anglo-Norman texts were adopted as new ways of indicating the sound u:, e:, tſ.

Compare: out – ūt, chief – thief. The letters “j, k, v, q” were probably first used in imitation of French manuscripts. The 2-fold use of “g” and “c” stood for dg, s, before front vowels and for g, k before back vowels.

Other alterations in spelling cannot be traced directly to French influence though they testify to a similar tendency: a wider use of digraphs. In addition to ch, ou, ie and th, introduced sh (also ssh and sch) to indicate the new sibilant ſ, dg to indicate dg, alongside j and g (before front vowels) the digraph wh OE sequence of letters “hw” as in OE “hwæt” but it was still reading like hw. Long sounds were shown by double letters, for ex. ME book, though with vowels this practice was not very regular, long e: could be indicated by ie and ee and also by “e”.

Some replacements were probably made to avoid confusion of resembling letters: thus o was employed not only for o but also to indicate short u; it happened when “u” stood close to n, m, v for they were all made up of down strokes and were hard to distinguish in a hand-written text. This replacement was facilitated – if not caused – came to be used as an equivalent of ‘i’.

For letters indicating 2 sounds the rules of reading are as follows: g and с dg, s, before front vowels and for g, k before back vowels. “y” – stand for j, at the beginning of words equivalent of “i”. “Th” and “s” indicate voiced sounds between vowels and voiceless – initially finally and next to the other voiceless consonants.

Note! in ME – unlike OE- this rule doesn’t apply to the letter “f”, it stands for the voiceless f while the voiced v is shown by “v” and “u”.

Long sounds in ME texts are often shown by double letters or digraphs: open syllables often contain long vowels, while closed syllables may contain both short and long vowels. Vowels are long before a sonorant + a plosive consonant and short before other sequences.