CASE STUDY 1

Every spoken language has a class of vowels and a class of consonants.

the system of vowels in the Proto-Germanic language:

1. Short monophtongs: i, e, a, o, u

2. Long monophtongs: i:, e:, a:, o:, u:

3. Diphthongs: ei, ai, eu, au, iu.

Vowels and diphthongs

Old English had six simple vowels, spelled a, æ, i, o, u and y, and probably a seventh, spelled ie. It also had two diphthongs (two-part vowels), ea and eo. Each of these sounds came in short and long versions. Long vowels are always marked with macrons (e.g. ā) in modern editions for students, and also in some scholarly editions. However, vowels are never so marked in Old English manuscripts.

When we speak of vowel length in Old English, we are speaking of duration, that is, how long it takes to pronounce a vowel. This fact can trip up the modern student, for when we speak of “length” in Modern English, we are actually speaking of differences in the quality of a vowel. If you listen carefully when you say sit (with “short” i) and site (with “long” ī), you’ll notice that the vowels are quite different: the “short” version has a simple vowel [ɪ], while the “long” version is a diphthong, starting with a sound like the u in but and ending with a sound like the i in sit [ʌɪ].[1] The same is true of other long/short pairs in Modern English: they are always qualitatively different. We do give some vowels a longer duration than others (listen to yourself as you pronounce beat and bead), but this difference in duration is never significant: that is, it does not make a difference in the meaning of a word. Rather, we pronounce some vowels long and others short because of the influence of nearby sounds.

Vowel length (that is, duration) is significant in Old English because it does make a difference in the meanings of words. For example, Old English is means ‘is’ while īs means ‘ice’, ac means ‘but’ while āc means ‘oak’, and ġe means ‘and’ while ġē means ‘you’ (plural). The significance of length means that the macrons that appear in the texts you will be reading are not there only as guides to pronunciation, but also to help you decide what words mean. If you absent-mindedly read mǣġ ‘kinsman’ as mæġ ‘may’, you will never figure out the meaning of the sentence you are reading.

Simple vowels

The following list of vowels deals with quality only; you may assume that the short and long vowels sound alike except for a difference in duration. The list cites a number of Modern English words for comparison: these are from the Mid-Atlantic dialect of American English and may not be valid for speakers of British English or other American dialects.

a	is pronounced [ɑ], as in Modern English father. Examples: macian ‘make’, bāt ‘boat’.
æ	is pronounced [æ], as in Modern English cat. Bæc ‘back’, rǣdan ‘read’.
e	is pronounced [e], as in Modern English fate; that is, it is like the e of a continental European language, not like the “long” or “short” e of Modern English (actually [i] or [ɛ]). Helpan ‘help’, fēdan ‘feed’.
i	is pronounced [i], as in Modern English feet; that is, it is like the i of a continental European language, not like the “long” or “short” i of Modern English (actually [ʌɪ] or [ɪ]). Sittan ‘sit’, līf ‘life’.
o	is pronounced [o], as in Modern English boat. God ‘God’, gōd ‘good’.
u	is pronounced [u], as in Modern English tool; it is never pronounced [ʌ] as in Modern English but. Full ‘full’, fūl ‘foul’.
y	is pronounced [y], like the ü in German über or Füße, or like the u in French tu or dur. Make it by positioning the tongue as you do to say feet while rounding the lips as you do to say tool. Cyning ‘king’, brȳd ‘bride’.
ie	which appears mainly in early West Saxon, is difficult to interpret. It was probably approximately [ɪ], like the i of Modern English sit. In late West Saxon, words that contained this vowel are rarely spelled with ie, but rather with i or y. Ieldesta ‘eldest’, hīeran ‘hear’.

• Many grammars tell you to pronounce short e as [ɛ], like the e in Modern English set, short i as [ɪ], like the i of Modern English sit, and short u as [ʊ], like the u of Modern English pull. You can get away with these pronunciations, though they probably do not represent the Old English vowels accurately.

• In most Modern English dialects, the “long” vowels /eː/, /oː/ and sometimes /i/ and /u/ are pronounced as diphthongs, e.g. /eɪ/, /oʊ/, /əʊ/. Old English long vowels are thought not to have been diphthongized, so try to avoid pronouncing them as diphthongs.