Diphthongs

Old English has two digraphs (pairs of letters) that are commonly interpreted as diphthongs: ea and eo.[2] Both ea and eo can represent short or long sounds, equivalent in length to the short and long vowels. Beyond this generally agreed fact, there is controversy about what sound these digraphs represent. Here we present the most widely accepted view.

eo	represents [eo] or [eʊ], a diphthong that started with [e] and glided to a rounded sound, [o] or [ʊ]. Examples: ċeorl ‘freeman’ (Modern English churl), dēop‘deep’.
ea	represents [æɑ], a diphthong that started with [æ] and glided to [ɑ] (as in father). Feallan ‘fall’, rēad ‘red’.

Some grammar books say that the spelling ie also represents a diphthong, but this book interprets it as a simple vowel.

Consonants

Most Old English consonants are pronounced as in Modern English, and most of the differences from Modern English are straightforward:

1. Old English scribes wrote the letters þ (“thorn”) and ð (“eth”) interchangeably to represent [θ] and [ð], the sounds spelled th in Modern English. Examples: þing ‘thing’, brōðor ‘brother’. 

2. There are no silent consonants. Old English cniht (which comes to Modern English as knight) actually begins with [k]. Similarly hlāf(Modern English loaf) and hring (ring) begin with [h], gnæt (gnat) with [ɡ], and wrīðan (writhe) with [w]. Some Old English consonant combinations may be difficult to pronounce because they are not in Modern English. If you find this to be so, just do your best. 

3. The consonants spelled f, s and þ/ð are pronounced as voiced [v], [z] and [ð] (as in then) when they fall between vowels or other voiced sounds. For example, the f of heofon ‘heaven’, hæfde ‘had’ and wulfas ‘wolves’ is voiced. So are the s of ċēosan ‘choose’ and the ð of feðer‘feather’. This distinction remains not only in such Modern English singular/plural pairs as wolf/wolves, but also in such pairs as nounbath and verb bathe, noun cloth and derivative clothes.

4. These same consonants were pronounced as unvoiced [f], [s], and [θ] (as in thin) when they came at the beginning or end of a word or adjacent to at least one unvoiced sound. So f is unvoiced in ful ‘full’, cræft ‘craft’ and wulf ‘wolf’. Similarly s is unvoiced in settan‘set’, frost ‘frost’, and wulfas ‘wolves’, and þ/ð is unvoiced in þæt ‘that’ and strengð ‘strength’. 

5. When written double, consonants must be pronounced double, or held longer. We pronounce consonants long in Modern English phrases like “big gun” and “hat trick,” though never within words. In Old English, wile ‘he will’ must be distinguished from wille ‘I will’, and freme ‘do’ (imperative) from fremme ‘I do’. 

QUESTIONS:

1. Characteristics of the OE phonetics and spelling system.

The Old English Phonetics.      The phonetic system of Old English preserved in general the Common Germanic structure of sounds. Main phonetic features of Germanic languages - Grimm's Law and Verner's Law - are clearly seen in Old English, as well as many processes which took part among vowels and diphthongs. However, Old English is sometimes moving further in developing the phonetics, and that is why some of its models are a bit hard to trace back to the Common Germanic period. That is why we decided to follow the way suggested by many linguists in description the Old English phonetics: to offer the explanations comparing to theGothic language, the most ancient of witnessed Germanic tongues and the most archaic of them.

Though Gothic is referred to the East Germanic subgroup of languages, its similar sounds, morphological forms and vocabulary with Old English, Old High German, Old Scandinavian and other ancient Germanic languages are quite frequent. In the early Medieval Age, when both Gothic and Old English were spoken, single languages of the group did not go too far from each other and remained very much alike.

As a whole, Old English phonetics included the majority of sounds typical for all Germanic speech; and only some of its phonemes are unique and require a special acquaintance.

First we will talk about the vowels, which could be either short or long in Old English, just like in Modern English or German. The difference between them is also familiar to Modern English speakers: the distinction between open and close syllables. This distinction is quite Germanic, and obviously did not existed in Proto-Indo-European where vowels could be short and long in every position. In Germanic a long sound in a closed syllable can be seldom met. The table below explains all Old English (OE) vocals compared to those of Gothic and followed by examples (sounds for them will follow later):   

OE	Gothic	Description; Position; Pronunciation	Examples
a	a	Short back vowel; Mainly in open syllables, when the following one contains a back vowel; English cup	macian (to make), habban (to have)
á	ai	Long back vowel; In any kind of syllables; English star	stán (a stone), hátan (to call)
æ	a	Short back vowel; Met mainly in closed syllables, or in open ones, if the next syllable contains a front vowel; English bad	dæg (a day), wæter (water)
æ'	é, á	Long back vowel; as Gothic é found only in some verbal forms, as Gothic á is the result of the so-called i-mutation; German za"hlen	stæ'lon (stolen), hæ'lan (to cure)
e	i, ai, a	Short front vowel; as Gothic i, ai noticed only in some infinitives, otherwise is result of the mutation of i; English bed	sengean (to sing)
é	ó	Long front vowel; resulted from the i-mutation of ó; German Meer	déman (to judge)
i	i, ie	Short front vowel; can be either stable or unstable, the unstable sound can interchange with ie and y; Englishstill	bindan (to bind), niht - nyht (a night)
í	ie	Long front vowel; also stable and unstable (mutating to ý); English steal	wrítan (to write), hí - hý (they)
o	u, au	Short back vowel; English cost	coren (chosen)
ó	o	Long back vowel; English store	scóc (divided)
u	u, au	Short back vowel; used only when the next syllable contains another back vowel; English book	curon (they chose)
ú	ú	Long back vowel; English stool	lúcan (to look)
y	u	Short front vowel; i-mutation of u; German fu"nf	gylden (golden)
ý	ú	Long front vowel; i-mutation of ú, German glu"hen	mýs (mice)
a.	o	A special short sound met only before nasals in closed syllables	monn (a man)

Spelling.

OE alphabet used two kinds of letters: the runes and the letters of the Latin alphabet. The bulk of the OE material is written in the Latin script. The most interesting peculiarity of OE writing was the use of some runic characters, in the first place, the rune called "thorn" which was employed alongside the crossed d, ∂ to indicate [th] and [∂]. In the manuscripts one more rune was regularly used – "wynn" for the sound [w].

The Anglo-Saxons did not use the letters v and j (which were invented later), and q and z were used only very occasionally. They used the letter æ, which we do not use.

Old English writing - phonetic principle: every letter indicated a separate sound. But, some letters indicated two or more sounds. см. рисунки.

Some OE letters indicated two or more sounds, even distinct phonemes. The letters could indicateshort and long sounds. The letters f, s and [th], [∂] stand for voiced fricatives between vowels and also between a vowel and a voiced consonant; otherwise they indicate corresponding voiceless fricatives. The letter з stands for [g] initially before back vowels, for [j] before and after front vowels, for [γ] between back vowels and for [g'] mostly when preceded by c: OE daз [j]

The letter h stands for [x] between a back vowel and a consonant and also initially before consonants and for [x’] next to front vowels: OE niht [x’]

The letter n stands for [n] in all positions except when followed by [k] or [g]; in this case it indicates [ŋ]: OE sinзan.