GORDILLO, Eugenia Guadalupe

PRONUNCIATION OF OLD ENGLISH  OE script used seven vowels- symbols: a, e, i, o, u, y, æ(ash)  All of these symbols could represent both long and short vowels

To represent dipthongs, the Anglo- Saxons used digraphs (sequences of symbols) ea, eo, io and ie. OE used consonantal symbols b, c, d, f, g, h, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, p, ₫

 The use of double consonants was different from the one we are used to. In Modern English we use double-consonant symbols to show that the preceding vowel is short. For instance, “written” /ritn/ cooper /k ɒ p ə / which have short vowels. On the other hand, a singl consonant symbol is used if the preceding vowel is long or is a diphthong, as in writer and coping.  But in OE, a single consonant symbol tells us nothing about the length of the preceding vowel.

 OE had no symbol for / v/; the symbol / f/ was used to represent both /v/ and /f/.They are members of the same phoneme. /v/: used when this phoneme occured within a word, that is to say, not initially and finally, before a voice sound and was not double. For example: giefan “to give” seofon “seven” /f/: used in all the others positions. For example fæder “father” fif “five”

The same happened with /s/ and /z/, they were members of the same phoneme too and their rules for their distribution were exactly the same as for /v/ and /f/. Examples: /s/ sæ “sea” hūz “house” /z/ nosu “nose” bōsm “bosom”

Another pair of symbols that behaved in this way were the voiceless /θ/ and the voiced /ð/.To represent this phoneme, OE used them indiscriminately without distinguishing voiceless and voiced sounds. the letter /k/ and /t ʃ / were represented by /c/ Examples: cyssan “to kiss” cinn “chin”

/g/ also represented two sounds: /j/ gēar “ year” /g/ gōd “good” When this phoneme occured undoubled between vowels a different allophone was used: [ ɣ ] fugol “bird” lagu “law”

The pronunciation of / ʃ / had been reached by the end of OE period. Examples: scip “ship” fisc “fish” /ŋ/ was simply an allophone of the /n/ phoneme, occurred before /k/ and /g/ and it did not become an independant phoneme until about the year Example: þancian /θaŋkian/ “to thank”

/h/ had three allophones [h] hæt /hætt/ “hat” [ç] niht /night/ “night” [x] dohtor /d ⊃ xt ⊃ r/ “daughter”

We can say that all the words were probably pronounced as they are by us, but it was the spelling what made them different.