16. Old English consonant system

The velar consonants [k, g, x, γ] were palatalized before a front vowel, and sometimes also after a front vowel, unless followed by a back vowel. Thus in OE cild (NE child) the velar consonant [k] was softened to [k’] as it stood before the front vowel [i] – [kild] > [k’ild]; similarly [k] became [k’] in OE sprǽc (NE speech) after a front vowel but not in OE sprecan (NE speak).

Nasal sonorants were regularly lost before fricative consonants; in the process the preceding vowel was proably nasalized and lengthened. It should be also mentioned the loss of consonants in unstressed final syllables. [j] was regularly dropped in suffixes after producing various changes in the root.

PG [z] underwent a phonetic modification through the stage of [з] into [r] and thus became a sonorant, which ultimately merged with the older IE [r]. This process is termed rhotacism.

In all WG languages, at an early stage of their independent history, most consonants were lengthened after a short vowel before [l]. This process is known as geminantion or doubling of consonants, e.g. fuljan > fyllan (NE fill). The change did not affect the sonorant [r], e.g OE werian (NE wear); nor did it operate if the consonant was preceded by a long vowel, e.g. OE dēman, mētan (NE deem, meet).

== Unstressed vowels

In Early ME the pronunciation of unstressed syllables became increasingly indistinct. As compared to OE, which distinguishes five short vowels in unstressed position [e/i], [a] and [o/u], Late ME had only two vowels in unaccented syllables: [ə] and [i], e.g. OE talu – ME tale [΄ta:lə] – NE tale, OEbodiз – ME body [΄bodi] – NE body. The final [ə] disappeared in Late ME though it continued to be spelt as -e. When the ending –e survived only in spelling, it was understood as a means of showing the length of the vowel in the preceding syllable and was added to words which did not have this ending before, e.g. OE stān, rād – ME stone, rode [´stone], [´rode] – NE stone, rode. It should be remembered that while the OE unstressed vowels thus were reduced and lost, new unstressed vowels appeared in borrowed words or developed from stressed ones, as a result of various changes, e.g. the shifting of word stress in ME and NE, vocalization of [r] in such endings as writer, actor, where [er] and [or] became [ə].

Quantitative vowel changes in Early me

In Later OE and in Early ME vowel length began to depend on phonetic conditions. The earliest of positional quantitative changes was the readjustment of quantity before some consonant clusters:

1) Short vowels were lengthened before two consonants – a sonorant and a plosive; consequently, all vowels occurring in this position remained or became long, e.g. OE wild – ME wild [wi:ld] – NE wild.

2) All other groups of two or more consonants produced the reverse effect: they made the preceding long vowels short, and henceforth all vowels in this position became or remained short, e.g. OEcēpte > ME kepte [΄keptə] – NE kept.

3) Short vowels became long in open syllables, e.g. OE nama > ME name [na:mə] – NE name. In spite of some restrictions no lengthening occurred in polysyllabic words and before some suffixes, OE bodiз > ME body [΄bodi] – NE body.