15. Me Phonetics

Changes in the System of Spelling

French graphic habits were introduced, and marking the sounds became European in form, no alien letters hampered reading because all they were exclusively Latin. Specifically English sounds, earlier marked by specific only for the English language were replaced by digraphs. G,Y, and wynn were replaced by Latin letters.

jrej – grey jear - ear

The sound dj marked by сз was also rendered by g or dg - singe, n French borrowings the same sound was marked according to the radition by j - judge, June. Letter q, v were introduced.

Long u was replaced by digraph ou, in the French tradition: hus - hous, in final and occasionally in medial it was ow: hu- how; cu- cow, dun - down. some cases the sound и came to be represented by o, especially neighbouring the letters with many vertical lines lufu - loue; cumen - comen etc.

Long sound о is now rendered by oo\fot, tod —> foot, tooth ) was marked either by a digraph ее metan - mete, о meet) or turned into ie; feld - field; (like :hief, relief)

k+ consonant – cnawan – knowen.

3. Changes in the system of consonants

affricates TSh, Dg aroused. The number of consonants increase. F and V S and Z became separate phonemes. Cild – child, hwilc – which. taecan – teach. Sc – sh. Varians with , sh< tch depended on the dialects. cg – became DG brycg – bridge. J'- J jear - yeer, year – day . H at the beginning of the word was lost in clusters hr, hi, hn, hw hrinj - ring hrycg - ridge . The sound Y (marked by j) in the intervocal position vocalised and turned into w, which led to the following diphthongs: aз - aw(au) drajan – drawen. The combinations j+ vowel lead to long vowels: tigele – tile; In combination with liquids (/ and r) new diphthongs appeared: 'j> rj- lw,rw [ou] and [аи]

4. Changes in the system of vowels

1. There were quantitative changes in vowels. In Old English a short or a long vowel might be found in any position; they were absolutely independent phonemic units. The Middle English vowel system was basically different. The quantity of vowels becomes dependent on the environment, on what follows the vowel. With a few exceptions the situation in Middle English is briefly this: in some phonetic environment only short vowels are possible; in the other the vowels are invariably long.

First, a long vowel before two consonants is shortened;fe:dan – fe:den – fe;dde – fedde. the exception here are the clusters mb, Id, nd (i.e. two voiced sonorants) or when the two consonants belonged to the second syllable of the word, (maeste, laest -> most; least).

But short vowels were lengthened in open syllables (A, E, O). ca:ru – care; talu – t:ale, macian – make. I, U didn't lengthen.

2. Monophthongization of all Old English diphthongs EA, EO type.. The sounds that appeared as a result of this process were not new to the English language - they simply coincided with the sounds that already existed in the language, in many cases returning the vowel to its previous quality, which was changed in the course of breaking, diphthongization after palatal consonants, and mutations a heard - hard earm - arm healf-half eall – all< heorte – herte.

3. Individual changes.

Changed – long A – long O – ha:m – ho:m;

Short Ae – short - aeppel – appel; waes – was.

Long AE – long open E – slaepan – sle:pen (with dialectical variant).

Short and long Y – I, e, y.

OE first – North, East first; Kent – ferst; West – Fyrst. Fyr – fir, fer, fyr. Other vowels remained unchanged.

4.Levelling of unstressed vowels.

All unstressed vowels were weakened and reduced to shwa, denoted by E. bindan – binden; sunu – sune.

Rise of new diphthongs EI, AI type.

They originated from groups consisting of a vowel or either a palatal or a velar fricative. DAEG – dai, day; WAEG – way; greg – grey; sagu – legend – sawe; When a vowel was followed by H, a diphthong arouse: naht – naught; brohte – broughte; troh – trough; plo:h – plough. French letters were replaced by correspondent English.