9. Old English consonants. The system consisted of several correlated sets of consonants. All the consonants fell into noise consonants and sonorants. The noise con­sonants were subdivided into plosives and fricatives; plosives were further differentiated as voiced and voiceless. The fricative consonants were also subdivided into voiced and voiceless; in this set, however, sonority was merely a phonetic difference between allophones. The most universal distinctive feature in the consonant sys­tem was the difference in length. During the entire OE period long con­sonants are believed to have been opposed to short ones on a phonem­ic level; they were mostly distinguished in intervocal position. Sin­gle and geminated (long) consonants are found in identical phonetic conditions. In final position the quantitative opposition was irrelevant and the second letter, which would indicate length, was often lacking, e, g. OE man and eal are identical to mann, eall. PG had the following two sets of fricative consonants: voiceless [f, 0, x, s] and voiced [v, ð, y, z]. In Early OE the difference between the two groups was supported by new features. PG voiced fricatives tended to be hardened to corresponding plosives while voiceless fricatives, being contrasted to them primarily as fricatives to plosives, developed new voiced allo­phones. Hardening. ð-d, v-b, y-g. voicing/devoicing. v-v/f, f-v/f, O- ð/O, y-y/x, s-z/s. rotacism. z-r. 3. Loss of Consonants in Some Positions. Nasal sonorants were regularly lost before fricative consonants; in the process the preceding vowel was probably nasalised and length­ened. Fricative consonants could be dropped between vowels and before some plosive consonants; these losses were accompanied by a compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel or the fusion of the preceding and succeeding vowel into a diphthong.We should also mention the loss of semi-vowels and conso­nants in unstressed final syllables. [j] was regularly dropped in suffix­es after producing various changes in the root: palatal mutation of vow­els, lengthening of consonants after short vowels. The loss of [w] is seen in some case forms of nouns. 4. Gemination of Consonants. In all WG languages most consonants were lengthened after a short vowel before [j ]. This process is known as WG "gemination" or "doubling" of con­sonants, as the resulting long consonants are indicated by means of doub­le letters. During the process, or some time later, [j ] was lost, so that the long consonants ceased to be phonetically conditioned. When the long and short consonants began to occur in identical phonetic conditions, namely between vowels, their distinction became phonemic. The change did not affect the sonorant [r] nor did it operate if the consonant was preceded by a long vowel.

10. Old English nouns

In Old English they have 3 genders (masculine, neuter, feminine), 2 numbers (singular, plural), and 5 cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental). In Old English, nouns were inflected (they changed how they were written and spoken) to show add little bits of extra information to communicate their function within the sentence and the number of things a noun represented. Although learning a language with three different genders might seem hard, it isn't really very hard - it can easily enough be done if you just make sure to memorize nouns along with their definitive article. For example, don't just remember the word "ġiefu" - remember "sēo ġiefu", so you'll always know it's a feminine noun - you can easily just not say the article if you don't need to; on the other hand, if you don't know the gender of a noun, it might be annoying.

Nouns were the essential element to a noun phrase (either a noun or a pronoun had to be in a noun phrase). Also in the noun phrase you could put noun modifiers, like numbers, adjectives, articles, and demonstratives. All other words within a noun's phrase had to agree with the noun in gender, number, and case. In addition, most adjectives (but not most numerals) could either be declined strong or weak, according to whether or not the adjectives were preceded by a possessive pronoun, the article, or a demonstrative. For more information on adjectives, see the adjectives page.

Nouns are divided into two main, broad categories of declension in Old English, the so called Strong and Weak nouns. There are other minor declensions, as well, but most nouns fall into these two classifications.

11. Old English adjective.

Adjectives in Old English agree with the noun they describe in case, gender, and number. There are several variations on the general declension, but overall, adjectives decline thus

Notice that the genitive, dative, and instrumental feminine are all -re, the masculine and neuter genetive are both "-es", and masculine and neuter dative are both "-um", and masculine and neuter instrumental are both "-e". Also, the neuter adjective adds no ending in the nominative/accusative case, just like neuter nouns themselves. Basically, you can see that the adjective ending will roughly correspond to the article ending (þæs and -es, þǣm and -um, þǣre and -re', etc.).

Notice that genitive and dative are the same in all genders for plural. Note also the the instrumental is exactly the same as the dative. The "-e" ending for nominative and accusative feminine was used in later Old English.

You can tell when to use the strong or weak declension.

An adjective would be declined weak if:

1. It was always declined weak (like most ordinal numbers, and all comparative adjectives)

2. It was preceded by the definitive article ("se/sēo/þæt" and all its declined forms), either demonstrative (either "se/sēo/þæt" and all its declined forms, or "þes/þis/þēos" and all its forms), or any possessive personal pronoun except for the third person ("his/hire/heora")

3. It was used as a nickname and came after the personal name it modified (for more info see: Old English/Titles and Nicknames

In all other cases, the adjective was declined strong, including if it came after a linking verb (like in "Iċ eom grēat" - "I am great" or "Þā wihta wǣron fǣtta" - "The creatures were fat").

If an adjective has a monosyllabic stem and has æ for its vowel, and the æ is followed by a single consonant, as in the words glæd ("glad") and blæc ("black), then an extra rule comes into play: the æ changes to an a whenever the adjective acquires a suffix which begins with a vowel.

In Old English, all comparative adjectives were declined according to the weak declension - no matter what. The comparative degree was usually formed with the suffix "-ra" (the "a" being the weak masculine singular ending - so it should be replaced by other grammatical endings when it is declined). The superlative degree ("most") was usually formed by adding the suffix "-ost" to an adjective; but like the normal positive degree, it was sometimes declined weak and sometimes declined strong (see the "Strong or Weak?" section above for more information). For example:

• wīs ("wise") - wīsra ("wiser") - wīsost ("wisest")

• cræftiġ ("crafty, skilled") - cræftiġra ("craftier, more skilled") - cræftigost ("craftiest, most skilled")

• hefiġ ("heavy, important") - hefiġra (""heavier, more important") - hefigost ("heaviest, most important")

• Some common adjectives undergo i-mutation in the comparative and superlative, and have -est instead of -ost as the superlative suffix. Examples are:

• eald ("old") - ieldra ("older") - (ieldest)

• ġeong ("young") - ġingra ("younger") - ġingrest ("youngest")

• hēah ("high") - hīerra ("higher") - hīehst ("highest")

• strang ("strong") - strengra ("stronger") - strengest ("strongest")

• lang ("long") - lengra ("longer") - lengest ("longest")

• Some adjectives formed their comparative and superlative degrees irregularly, and need to be memorized:

• gōd ("good") - betera ("better") - betst ("best")

• yfel ("bad, evil") - wirsa ("worse") - wirst ("worst")

• lytel ("little, small") - læssa ("smaller, less") - læst

• miċel ("much, great") - māra ("more, greater") - mǣst ("most, greatest")

• Sometimes adjectives in Old English can govern cases, like prepositions. German does the same thing with adjectives such as gleich, which can operate both as a descriptive adjective, and a predicate adjective with a noun "object". In Old English, adjectives often took the dative case, but cold also take other cases as well.