The History of English Spelling (Upward/The History of English Spelling) || The Old English Roots of Modern English Spelling

3

The Old English Roots ofModern English Spelling

Although in this chapter Old English spelling will be looked at as a system in its own right, we will nevertheless be analysing it very muchfrom the perspective of Modern English. We will, therefore, not takeaccount of the multiplicity of forms found over a period of more than400 years (which would in any case be impossible in a book of this size)but rather concentrate on those forms that have significance for the evolution of Modern English.1 The examples of Old English spelling given in this chapter are, therefore, mostly chosen for their recognizableaffinity to equivalent Modern English words.2 Where the two forms differ, the Modern English forms will usually be shown after the OldEnglish form (e.g. Lod ‘good’). In this way we will see to what extentModern English spelling patterns can be traced back to Old English.Two important points should, however, be noted:

• Firstly, it must be remembered that, through developments that will be described in Chapter 4, Modern English derives mainly fromthe East Midlands dialect of Middle English, which derives fromAnglian Old English rather than the West Saxon dialect that becamethe literary standard before the arrival of the Normans and in whichthe majority of surviving Old English texts are written. With a fewexceptions, therefore, West Saxon words are not direct ancestors ofthe modern forms (for instance, Modern English cold, cheese and lightderive from Anglian cald, cese and liht, not the West Saxon forms

The History of English Spelling, First Edition. Christopher Upward and George Davidson.© 2011 Christopher Upward and George Davidson. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 33

The Old English Roots

ceald, cyse and leoht), but the West Saxon forms serve adequately forexemplification, the differences between Old English dialects beingrelatively slight compared to dialect differences that developed later.

• Secondly, it must be kept in mind that similar spellings in Old English and Modern English do not necessarily represent similar pro-nunciations: Old English Lod ‘good’ was pronounced with the vowel[o] (therefore like Modern English goad in a Scottish, rather than asouthern British, accent), not [p] as in Modern English god.

Having noted these points, we can now undertake a detailed letter-by-letter consideration of the Old English roots of Modern Englishspelling. Readers are reminded that long and short values of vowels arenot graphically distinguished in the examples in this chapter, althoughwhere relevant the examples will be clearly grouped and analysed accord-ing to vowel length. Many sound and spelling changes that occurredafter the end of Old English, particularly during the Middle English andEarly Modern English periods, are discussed in more detail in Chapter 6.

A

The OE letter A had short and long sound values.3

Short A

• OE short , pronounced /a/, generally leads to in ModE, with vary-ing sound values: catt ‘cat’, daLas ‘days’, hara ‘hare’.

• Short final - was a common noun ending (e.g. mona ‘moon’; tima‘time’; stan ‘stone’, stana ‘of stones’). These endings were typicallyreduced to - in ME and survive as final silent - in ModE formslike time, stone, where they now generally function as indicators of thelength and quality of a preceding vowel (compare pin/pine, rod /rode).

• OE short may lead to ModE forms with : OE camb, fram > comb,from; also long, song, strong, thong, throng. Variants with are foundat an early date, e.g. and/ond, hand/hond, land/lond.

Long A

OE long , pronounced /oj/ has ModE reflexes with long , with severalspellings:

34

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 34


• in initial or medial position: ar ‘oar’, rad ‘road’; OE brad producesthe expected ModE spelling ‘broad’, but with a different sound value.

• (+ consonant) + : sar ‘sore’, ban ‘bone’. ModE one, from OE an,is anomalous in its pronunciation (see p. 187).

• Word-final -: da ‘doe’, sla ‘sloe’.• In a few words, alone: e.g. haliL ‘holy’.• preceding /w/ in OE typically produces ModE or pronounced

/uj/: hJa ‘who’, tJa ‘two’, sJapen ‘to swoop’.° ModE - with the vowel /q/ derives from OE -: cildhad

‘childhood’.• ModE may have alternative forms from a single OE root, e.g. loath/

loth from la2.• In compounds, ModE has a short value: bonfire not *bonefire,

holiday not *holyday (see p. 40). The OE is preserved in tadpole(not *toadpoll ).

Æ

OE had short and long sound values.

• The letter and its sound may occur as mutations (that is, alter-ations in quality caused by a following vowel) of in different formsof the same word in OE, depending on the following sound: dæL ‘day’,plural daLas ‘days’; habban ‘to have’, hæfde ‘had’. Similarly, note, forexample, seLe6/sæLe6 ‘sayeth, says’.

Short Æ

• OE short leads to ModE : æfter ‘after’, bæ6 ‘bath’, fæder ‘father’,6æt ‘that’; with a preceding /w/: hJæt ‘what’, Jæter ‘water’.

• OE short generally merged with in ME; ModE forms give noindication whether their OE antecedents were spelt with or : OEcatte/rætt, ModE cat/rat.

• Short followed by 2 results in ModE , thus bræLn ‘brain’, fæLer‘fair’, tæLl ‘tail’.

Long Æ

• Examples of OE long and its ModE reflexes are: clæne ‘clean’,dæd ‘deed’, hælan ‘to heal’, læce ‘leech’, lædan ‘to lead’, sæd ‘seed’.

35

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 35


As can be seen, some of these OE words give rise to ModE spellingsand some to . The choice was not arbitrary: the Anglian dialectfrom which ModE ultimately derives distinguished two differentvowels among the words for which WSax had only long .4

• In the words æmerLe ‘embers’, ærende ‘errand’, flæsc ‘flesh’ and -læcan(> - in knowledge), OE has produced ModE .

• Dialect variations have given rise to the anomalous sound–spellingcorrespondences in ModE any, many, Thames: the forms æniL, mæniL,Tæmese were characteristically northern, while the ModE pronunci-ation is of southern origin. In ME the forms were (Southern) eny,(Midland) any and ony, (Northern) ony.

• Other developments are seen in hlædel ‘ladle’, hær ‘hair’ and mæst ‘most’.

B

The letter usually occurs with the same sound value in OE as in ModE;it is never silent.

• Initial : bacan ‘to bake’, bæc ‘back’, bed, biddan ‘to bid’, blis ‘bliss’,brecan ‘to break’.

• Final was pronounced in OE after in camb ‘comb’, dumb, lamb,Jamb ‘womb’ (also climban ‘to climb’) where it is usually silent inModE.° OE had no in crume ‘crumb’, lim ‘limb’, 6uma ‘thumb’; the was

added later at various times, e.g. in thumb in the 13th century, incrumb in the 16th.

• Some ModE words contain a pronounced after medial whereOE lacked it: æmerLe ‘embers’, numol ‘nimble’, scæmel ‘shamble(s)’,6ymel ‘thimble’, slumere ‘slumber’; this is due to a natural tendencyto pronounce a /b/ after /m/ in such positions (OE already had bræmbel ‘bramble’ and timber, although there was no /b/ in the earlierGermanic forms).

• Medial could be geminated (i.e. written and sounded as a doubleconsonant): habban ‘to have’.

• In one case, final > : OE Lodsib > ModE gossip.• There was some blurring of the distinction between the consonants

/b, v, f/, especially in early OE texts. For instance, in the Northumbrianversion of Cædmon’s hymn (see p. 21) the word for heaven occursonce as hefaen and once as heben.

36

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 36


C

OE had two main values, /k/ and /tx/, and some subsidiary values.However, the distinction between its two values was not entirely sys-tematic: cin, for instance, could represent the equivalent of kin or chin,pronounced as in ModE, and the two different values of were not sys-tematically distinguished in OE manuscripts. In comparison to ModE ,however, the pronunciation of OE was fairly predictable.

C pronounced /k/

• Before a consonant always had the value /k/: clif ‘cliff ’, cneo ‘knee’,cnif ‘knife’, cradel ‘cradle’, cJen ‘queen’. ModE has kept before and (cliff, cradle), but uses silent instead of before , and

(introduced by Anglo-Norman scribes) instead of V.• usually had the value /k/ before and after , , : OE cam ‘came’,

corn, curs ‘curse’; sac ‘sack’, boc ‘book’, buc ‘buck’.• could be found doubled: racca ‘rigging’ (contrasting with raca ‘rake’).

° The OE source (acursed) of ModE accursed, however, did not havethe double consonant, consisting rather of a compound of cursewith the prefix - (compare across); spellings with , attested fromthe 15th century, arose by analogy with Lat-based forms such asaccuse.

C leading to ModE CH

• OE pronounced /tx/, typically leading to ModE , usually occurredbefore , , : ceaJen ‘to chew’, ceorl ‘churl’, cild ‘child’, cyse ‘cheese’.° OE - may give rise to ModE forms with initial -: e.g. ModE

chary < OE ceariL, chaff < OE ceaf, chalk < OE cealc. (- is anunusual spelling for words of OE origin, ModE words beginningwith - generally being of Fr derivation.)

• = /tx/ also often occurred in final position, where it typically anti-cipates ModE after a short vowel: dic ‘ditch’, pic ‘pitch’, 6æc‘thatch’. ModE final from OE = /tx/ occurs regularly after ,

, : ælc ‘each’, hJelc ‘which’, benc ‘bench’, berc ‘birch’.° The of ModE rich (rather than *ritch) may be influenced by

Fr riche.° Note also bishopric with final (< OE bisceoprice); - has also

been spelt -rick and -ricke (16th–18th centuries).

37

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 37


• Medial = /tx/ could be doubled after a short vowel: streccan ‘tostretch’, Jicca ‘witch’, Jrecca ‘wretch’.

Exceptions and variations

• The OE adjectival/adverbial suffix - became ModE -: freondlice> friendly; similarly ic, bærlic > I, barley.

• OE ciecen ‘chicken’ should have given ModE *chichen. It is not cer-tain why the ModE form has /k/.

• In drencan ‘to drench’, ræcan ‘to reach’, streccan ‘to stretch’, theinfluence of a pre-OE /j/ following the causes to become a palatalconsonant (essentially like the /k/ in kit as opposed to the /k/ in coot)and later the value /tx/.

• The value of could vary within the same root: e.g. in boc ‘book’= /k/ but in bec ‘books’ = /tx/. Such /tx/ and /k/ values could also alternate according to dialect or in later development, resulting insuch ModE cognates as bake/batch, break/breach, drink/drench, dyke/ditch, leak/leach, make/match, speak/speech, stink/stench, wake/watch,wreck/wretch. (See also p. 29.)

• Before a front vowel that had mutated from a back vowel (that is,had become a front vowel under the influence of a following frontvowel), remained /k/: e.g. cyninL ‘king’ < a Germanic root *kuning-.

• The above rules notwithstanding, Anglo-Saxon scribes sometimesclarified the pronunciation of using two devices still familiar in ModE:° One device was to show the /tx/ value where it might otherwise

not be apparent by inserting an or after the ; thus 6encan ‘tothink’ (/”wentxhn/) could also be written 6encean.

° The other device was to replace by to show its /k/ value beforea front vowel: cyn ‘kin’, cyninL ‘king’, cycen ‘kitchen’ were some-times written kin (so contrasting with palatalized in cin ‘chin’),kyninL, kicen. Likewise the genitive case of folc ‘people’ could beeither folces or folkes ‘of the people’.

• Some 70 per cent of instances of are found at the end of wordsof Germanic origin (e.g. watch, stretch; kitchen is exceptional in hav-ing medial ). Such OE-derived words saw considerable variationin ME (e.g. being spelt with , , , etc.) before achievingtheir present spelling with typically by about 1600.

38

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 38


D

The use of in OE is essentially as in ModE:

• Word-initially: dæL ‘day’, deofol ‘devil’, dohtor ‘daughter’, drincan ‘todrink’, dust.

• Medially: cildra ‘children’, bodiL ‘body’, ende ‘end’; doubled: biddan‘to ask, bid’.

• Finally: bed, Llæd ‘glad’, sJeord ‘sword’; (widely in past participles)Leendod ‘ended’.

• ModE alder, elder (= ‘species of tree’), lend, spindle, thunder haveacquired an intrusive not present in OE aler, ellærn, lænan, spinelor (usually) in 6unor. Compare also early ME cunredden, ModEkindred.

• In early texts there was some ambiguity in the pronunciation of medialand final , which varied between the values of /d/ and /2/. With the increasing use of eth (1, 2) and thorn (5, 6) for the values/w, 2/, this ambiguity was in principle overcome in later OE, but pronunciation sometimes also changed before ModE from /d/ to /2/,with a corresponding spelling switch from to : fæder ‘father’,Laderian ‘to gather’, hider ‘hither’, modor ‘mother’. (The reverseswitch, from thorn or eth to , also occurred, e.g. ber2en > burden; seeunder ‘’.)

E

The letter had short and long sound values, and also occurred inunstressed final syllables with the value /h/. It was a common noun end-ing (e.g. ende ‘end’; finger, dative fingre). These -endings for nouns havesince disappeared entirely from pronunciation and, mostly, spelling(e.g. spere ‘spear’), but may survive as final silent - in ModE forms likesieve < OE sife.

Short E

• Short in OE generally produces short in ModE: bed, betera‘better’, helpan ‘to help’, hnecca ‘neck’.

• Short before in OE tends to produce ModE : hlenc ‘link’, menLian‘to mingle’, strenL ‘string’, 6encan ‘to think’.

39

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 39


° In the case of enLlalond ‘England’, enLlisc ‘English’ the change insound to /i/ has not in the end been marked by a change in spelling,leaving ModE with a sound–symbol anomaly. Spellings with initial and (e.g. Ingland, Yngelond) were found in ME.

° Where a modern or follows the , neither the sound northe spelling of the vowel has changed from OE: benc ‘bench’, stenc‘stench’, lenL2 ‘length’, strenL2 ‘strength’.

• Modern also develops from OE when precedes: hreddan ‘to rid’,though prettiL ‘pretty’, like enLlisc, keeps its despite the change ofvowel sound to /i/.

• Short in OE could also lead to other vowels in ModE:° , as in beran ‘to bear’, tredan ‘to tread’, and /ij/ spelt in bicJe2an

‘to bequeath’, etan ‘to eat’, mete ‘meat’, Jefan ‘to weave’.° ModE /ij/ spelt : feld ‘field’, Leldan ‘to yield’.Further variations are seen in secLan ‘to say’, JeL ‘way’.

• The contrasting long/short vowels in the ModE pair break/breakfastrepresent a recurrent pattern, whereby an OE-derived word (in thiscase brecan ‘break’) appears with a short vowel in the first elementof a compound, although the ModE base form has a long vowel. Inmany cases this is reflected by the spelling. Other examples, with various vowels, are bone/bonfire, Christ/Christmas, coal /collier, dear/darling, goose/gosling/gossamer, good /gospel, holy/holiday, house/husband,moon/Monday, nose/nostril, old /alderman, sheep/shepherd, throat/throttle,toad/tadpole, wild/wilderness, wind (‘to coil or twist’)/windlass, wise/wisdom/wizard.

• In a number of words, spellings with OE subsequently changedto , and have kept that spelling into ModE (the letter name itselfhas changed from ‘er’ to ‘ar’). The - of ModE harbour derives fromOE here ‘army’, bern (< earlier berern) > barn. There were similarchanges in later words derived from Fr, e.g. ferme > farm.

Long E

• Long , pronounced /ej/ in OE, typically produces ModE long ,now pronounced /ij/ and most often spelt : cepan ‘to keep’, cJen‘queen’, Lrene ‘green’, metan ‘to meet’, sped ‘speed’; plurals fet ‘feet’,Les ‘geese’, te2 ‘teeth’; and, with mostly single , the personal pro-nouns me, Le ‘ye’, he, 6e ‘thee’, Je ‘we’.

• OE JeriL ‘weary’ has in ModE.• ModE here (< OE her) shows yet another spelling development.

40

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 40


EA

EA represented a diphthong in OE, with short and long variants. In anumber of words it coincides with ModE .

• Long with the value /ij/: beacen ‘beacon’, beam, bean, beatan ‘tobeat’, east, leaf, stream; but in bread, dea6 ‘death’ ModE has acquiredthe value of short , /e/, and in earn < earnian has the value /2j/.

• In ModE cold, hold (verb), old, sold, told, the derives from Anglianforms in (ald, ‘old’, cald, ‘cold’, etc.) as opposed to WSax formsin (eald, ceald, etc.); see pp. 33–4.

• A wide range of other ModE vowels also result from in OE, someagain clearly reflecting non-WSax forms (e.g. ModE sheep < Anglianscep, WSax sceap): bearn ‘bairn’, ceas ‘chose’, eaLe ‘eye’, eahta ‘eight’,eall ‘all’, Lear ‘year’, Leard ‘yard’, Leat ‘gate’, heard ‘hard’, mearh ‘mare’,sceaft ‘shaft’, seah ‘saw’, Jearm ‘warm’.° OE suffix - > ModE -.

• After and , the digraph was used instead of , e.g. to showpalatalization of C or a /j/ value for G: ceaf ‘chaff ’, Leaf ‘gave’, sceal‘shall’.

• The addition of the noun hirde to sceap has produced a change ofvowel between ModE sheep/shepherd (see above, p. 40, for break/breakfast and similar length variations involving other vowels).

• ModE shade < OE sceadu; ModE shadow < the inflected formscead(u)we.

EO

• Long has led to ModE EE in many words: beo ‘bee’, beor ‘beer’, cneo‘knee’, deop ‘deep’, treo ‘tree’, hJeol ‘wheel’; with single E, beon ‘to be’.

• There are, however, ModE words with other spellings correspondingto OE :° in ceorfan > carve, deorc > dark, deorling > darling, steorfan > starve,

steorre > star;° in cneoJ > knew;° with various pronunciations in deor > dear, eorl > earl, eor6e >

earth, heorte > heart;° long (/ai/) in feohtan > fight, teoLe2a > tithe;° (with various values) in feond > fiend, freond > friend, Leleofan >

believe, leoLan > to lie, 6eof > thief;

41

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 41


° long in aceocan > to choke;° in ceosan > choose, sceotan > shoot;° in feoJer > four (but just in feoJertiL > forty);° long in fleoLan > to fly;° in several words such as sJeord > sword, Jeorc > work, Jeor2 >

worth.• Note that deor/deorling have produced different vowels in ModE dear/

darling (see p. 40 for break/breakfast and similar pairs involving othervowels).

F

OE had only one letter, , to serve for the sounds [f ] and [v], whichwere not contrasting speech-sounds in OE, the speech-sound /f/ being pro-nounced [f ] or [v] depending on its position in the word (compare ModEfine/vine, safe/save, in which /f / and /v/ are contrasting speech-sounds).

• Word-initial : fæder ‘father’, feccan ‘to fetch’, fisc ‘fish’, fleax ‘flax’,folc ‘folk’, frost, ful ‘foul’, fyr ‘fire’.° occurred initially before in a few words in OE. One example

is fneosung ‘sneeze’ related to an unattested verb *fneosan ‘to sneeze’.In ME the verb existed in the form fnese, but went out of use inthe 15th century, being replaced by a probably related verb nese.ModE sneeze is first attested in the 16th century, possibly basedon nese and reinforced by confusion between <f> (= ) and < x>,the former long form of .

• Between vowels or between a vowel and a voiced consonant, single was pronounced [v] ( was always [f ]), and typically leads to ModE: æfre ‘ever’, ceorfan ‘carve’, deofol ‘devil’, endleofan ‘eleven’, hærfest‘harvest’, lufu ‘love’, ofer ‘over’, yfel ‘evil’.

• Medially, is seen before in æfter ‘after’ and oft; and pronouncedas a double consonant, as in offrian ‘to offer’, pyffan ‘to puff ’.° The of Lefur2ian > afford was doubled by analogy with Lat-derived

words such as affect (compare the similar doubling of inaccursed, in allay, in anneal).

• A voiceless at the end of a word such as fif ‘five’, tJelf ‘twelve’ becamevoiced when a voiced ending such as a vowel was added, as in thevariants fife, tJelfe, and if the ModE form derives from the voicedvariant, it is spelt with : thus five, twelve.

42

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 42


° In one set of words, however, where OE has a singular noun with pronounced [f ] ( Julf ‘wolf ’) but the corresponding plural with pronounced [v] ( Julfas), ModE writes for /f / in the singular(wolf ) and for /v/ in the plural (wolves): so OE cealf but ModEcalf /calves, cnif but knife/knives, elf but elf /elves, half but half /halves,hlaf but loaf /loaves, leaf but leaf/leaves, lif but life/lives, self but self /selves, sceaf but sheaf /sheaves, 6eof but thief/thieves, Jif but wife/wives.For hof ‘hoof ’, hJearf ‘wharf ’ and turf, ModE has alternative plurals with (hooves, wharves, turves) and (hoofs, wharfs, turfs).Roof is anomalous in that roofs is the only written form now con-sidered correct (rooves is attested in the 15th century), but roofsmay be pronounced with / f / or /v/.

• In some cases, OE has no counterpart in ModE spelling: hæfde ‘had’,hæf2 ‘hath’, heafoc ‘hawk’, heafod ‘head’, hlafdiLe ‘lady’, hlaford ‘lord’,Jifman ‘woman’.

• The lack of a letter caused OE some difficulty in spelling Lat loan-words with initial pronounced [v]. In the case of Lat uannus/vannus, OE used , producing fann, which has been retained as ModEfan; and Lat Eua, uersus (Eva, versus) were similarly spelt as OE efa,fers, though was later restored to give ModE Eve, verse.

Anomalies

• is voiced in the preposition of /pv/, the form with the voiceless equivalent /f / eventually coming to be distinguished as off with .Historically, the [v] and [f ] pronunciations reflect uses of of with dif-ferent degrees of stress: OE of, originally an unstressed preposition,began to be used as an adverb, and as such was often in a stressed posi-tion in a sentence. Although the word, whether stressed or unstressed,continued to be written of even into the early part of the ModE period,from about the beginning of the 15th century the off spelling beganto be used more and more frequently for the stressed adverb form,and the separation of the two spellings was gradually established.

• The initial of vixen, despite in fox, arose in the 16th century fromrespelling OE fyxen according to a southern dialect pronunciation with /v/.° Similarly ModE has vial/phial (ME also fiol), with alternative /v/

and /f / pronunciations, to designate essentially the same object.° Similar, but not evidently anomalous in ModE, is the in vane, vat

which derives from a southern dialect pronunciation of OE fana, fæt.

43

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 43


G

In late OE times appears to have had four different sound values,depending on its phonological environment: velar [u] and [r], and palatal[*] pronounced further forward in the mouth (but developing into [ j])and [dv]. Late northern Eng rune-masters devised a new rune to enablethe palatal and velar values to be distinguished, and when <g> was intro-duced beside <L> in ME the Eng alphabet too was able to make thatdistinction.

• In general, Eng has continued to use simple from OE to ModE inwords only where it was pronounced as [u], e.g. before , , and, , : LaLel ‘gale’, Llæs ‘glass’, Lold ‘gold’, Los ‘goose’, Lræs ‘grass’,Lut ‘gut’.° Although initial is silent before in ModE, GN implies the full

/un/ value of both letters in OE: Lnætt ‘gnat’, LnaLan ‘gnaw’.• OE had the value [u] when written and pronounced double

between back vowels: doLLa ‘dog’, froLLa ‘frog’, staLLa ‘stag’.• In ModE, can be pronounced either /t/, as in long, or /tu/, as in

longer, but always had the latter value in OE: brinLan ‘bring’, enLlisc‘English’, lanL ‘long’, lenL6 ‘length’.

• Before the front vowels , , , OE initial mostly did not persistinto ModE. In those environments it developed the value [ j], and isrepresented in such positions by the modern consonantal : Lear ‘year’,Leard ‘yard’, Leolu ‘yellow’, LeonL ‘young’, Lese ‘yes’, Lieldan ‘to yield’,Linian ‘to yawn’.° In some circumstances this left no trace at all in ModE, as when

the following stressed vowel was (or became) , and the OE [ j]was assimilated to it: Lif ‘if ’, Lyccan ‘itch’, is-Licel ‘icicle’.

° Similarly, the OE past participle prefix 2-, being unstressed, wasprogressively lost through the ME period: OE Leboren ‘born’,ME iboren, ModE born. Elsewhere the prefix was reduced to anunstressed vowel: in Lelice ‘alike’, LelanL ‘along’, LemonL ‘among’,LeJær ‘aware’; in LenoL ‘enough’; in handLeJeorc ‘handiwork’.

Scandinavian preservation of G

ModE contains a number of spellings which appear to conflict with theabove patterns, by which one would have expected that OE Lietan ‘toget’, Liefan ‘to give’ would produce ModE *yet, *yive. Although those

44

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 44


words were sometimes written with initial in ME, it appears thatScandinavian influence on northern Eng speech resulted in velar [u] even-tually (by 1500) becoming the standard pronunciation, with thereforeretained in the spelling.

G replaced by GH

The in ghost (ME gost < OE gast) was introduced by Flemish printerson the basis of Flemish spelling (gheest); the spelling of ghastly is influ-enced by ghost. Aghast (< agast ‘to frighten’) first appears in Middle Scots(the ME dialect of lowland Scotland) in the early 15th century and inEng in the 16th.

• After the introduction of the spelling of ghost we see this spellingused to indicate /u/ in other words,5 e.g. gherle ‘girl’, ghoate ‘goat’(also in the plural forms gheate and, in Caxton, gheet ‘goats’). Betweenthe 14th and 17th centuries we see examples of - for /u/ whereModE has , as in ghess, ghest(e), and even -, as in ghuest.

• There is no in the Dutch word from which is derived gherkin, firstrecorded with in Eng in the 19th century.

Medial and final G leading to ModE W, I/Y or GH

Particularly between back vowels, was typically pronounced [r] in OE.This has typically developed either to or to / in ModE, generallydepending on the phonetic environment.

• OE non-initially before and/or after , , normally becomes ModE: aLan ‘owe’, draLan ‘draw’ (contrast its Scandinavian-influencedcognate ‘drag’), LnaLan ‘gnaw’ (Scandinavian cognate ‘to nag’), laLu‘law’, boLa ‘bow’ (as in ‘bow and arrow’), ploL ‘plow’ (Americanspelling6), sloL ‘slew’ fuLel ‘fowl’.° Similarly in two-syllable words in ModE: feoloLa ‘fellow’, folLian

‘to follow’, LalLa ‘gallows’, halLian ‘to hallow’, sorLian ‘to sorrow’,sJelLan ‘to swallow’.

° Where there was no word-ending in OE, the also becomes modern -: belL ‘bellows’, mearL ‘marrow’.

° OE druLa6, neaLan, by contrast, have in ModE drought, neigh.• After the front vowels , medial typically fell silent or became

incorporated into a vowel by the time of ModE, written : fæLer ‘fair’,

45

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 45


hæLel ‘hail’ (also hæLl), læLde ‘laid’, leLer ‘lair’, mæLden ‘maiden’, næL(e)l‘nail’, ræL(e)n ‘rain’, sæLde ‘said’, seL(e)l ‘sail’, slæLen ‘slain’, tæL(e)l‘tail’. The form æLJæ2er on the other hand has produced ModE

in either. An example of loss of after is stiLrap ‘stirrup’.• In final position this led to ModE after OE front vowels: cæL ‘key’

(commonly written and pronounced ‘kay’ until the 18th century),clæL ‘clay’, dæL ‘day’ (contrast the development to after the backvowel in related daLian ‘to daw = become dawn’), græL ‘grey/gray’,hieL ‘hay’, pleLan ‘to play’, JeL ‘way’, driLe ‘dry’, bodiL ‘body’, haliL‘holy’, maniL ‘many’.° OE byrLan > bury.° ModE is found with a following (perhaps to avoid spelling these

words with only two letters) in dye < deaL, eye < eaLe, rye < ryLe.° Final after back vowels produces some instances of modern

-: boL ‘bough’, daL ‘dough’, ploL ‘plough’, hreoL ‘rough’, troL‘trough’, while JeLan ‘to weigh’ provides a solitary parallel after afront vowel.

° In the case of dJeorL ‘dwarf ’, the final consonant has from the14th century increasingly been written in accordance with a pronunciation changed to /f / (see p. 183).

Palatalized G leading to ModE DG

The fourth possible value of in OE was [dv]. Typical are geminated(‘doubled’) forms written with the digraph (later ), which can beseen as the precursor of modern : brycL ‘bridge’, cycLel ‘cudgel’, ecL‘edge’, hecL ‘hedge’, hrycL ‘ridge’, mycL ‘midge’, secL ‘sedge’, JecL ‘wedge’.

° Another development, typically in verbs, is ModE : bycLan‘buy’, lecLan ‘lay’, licLan ‘lie’, secLan ‘say’.

H

• In initial position before a vowel normally survives into ModE: ham‘home’, help, hund ‘dog, hound’.

• has been lost from initial position before a consonant:° hlædel ‘ladle’, hlæder ‘ladder’, hlaf ‘loaf ’, hlud ‘loud’;° hnæLan ‘neigh’, hnecca ‘neck’, hnut ‘nut’;° hræfen ‘raven’, hrinL ‘ring’, hrof ‘roof ’.

46

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 46


disappeared before , , long before it could be fixed by print-ing. It appears that it was already falling silent in this position in theOE period, as it was sometimes omitted in writing, and it is rarelyattested after the 11th century, though there are occasional instancesof reversal (similar to becoming ) in the ME period: lheape‘leap’, nhicke ‘neck’, rhof ‘roof ’.

• In ME was reversed to : hJæl ‘whale’, hJit ‘white’, hJy ‘why’.° The letter sequence has been extended to whole, whore (< hal,

hore) where it is justified neither by word-origin nor by currentsound value.

• In two common words, initial before a vowel has disappearedentirely: OE hit, hem have become ModE it, ’em, the latter in representing elided colloquialisms as in expressions like get ’em (themis of Scandinavian origin).

OE H leading to ModE GH, etc.

• following a back vowel was pronounced [x]; after a front vowel,[ç]. Especially in final position, could alternate with , as inburL/burh ‘borough’, sloL/sloh ‘slew’. In many cases, was respelt during the ME period and has usually persisted in this form into ModE, although no longer pronounced: burh ‘borough’ (thoughnow written - in numerous place-names), heah ‘high’, neah‘nigh’ (also in neahLebur ‘neighbour’), 6eoh ‘thigh’, 6eah ‘though’,6ruh (or 6urh) ‘through’, with variant 6uruh as the source of thorough.° Many examples of this OE are found before (or sometimes

OE W): ahte ‘ought’, bohte ‘bought’, brohte ‘brought’, bryht ‘bright’,dohtor ‘daughter’, eahta ‘eight’, etc. The OE variants noJiht, naJihtforeshadow the variants nought/naught.

° Not every ModE has its origin in OE; some were created underthe influence of words in the above categories: delight (< OFrdelit + light), haughty (< Fr haut), slaughter (< ONorse slatr), andsimilarly caught, distraught, fraught, freight, furlough, inveigh,onslaught, naughty, sleigh, sprightly.

• OE could be written and pronounced doubled in a medial position:crohha ‘crock’, hliehhan ‘to laugh’.

• Final may not be represented at all in ModE: fah ‘foe’, scoh ‘shoe’.• ModE anchor (OE ancor) has taken the from anchora, a misspelling

of Lat ancora.

47

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 47


I

OE had short and long values. The long value changed its quality dramatically in the course of the Great Vowel Shift around the 15thcentury (see pp. 176–8): the OE distinction is as heard in tin/routine,whereas in ModE it is as in din/dine.

• OE short : biten ‘bitten’, brinLan ‘to bring’, drinc ‘drink’, fisc ‘fish’, etc.• OE long : bitan ‘to bite’, lif ‘life’, min ‘mine’, hJit ‘white’.• Different forms of the same word, such as the infinitive and past

participle of verbs, may show alternation between long and short sound values of , a variation much more striking in ModE than inOE in terms of both pronunciation and spelling: ModE bite/bitten,drive/driven, hide/hidden, strike/stricken, write/written, etc. In OE, bycontrast, both riden ‘ridden’ with short and ridan ‘to ride’ with long have a single ; see also bitan/biten in the above examples.° Other cases of related long/short pairs in ModE echo the OE length

differences, but often arose at a later date: child/children, Christ/Christmas, drive/drift, five/fifteen/fifth, white/Whitsun, wide/width,midwife/midwifery, wild/wilderness/bewilder, to wind/windlass, wise/wisdom/wizard (see p. 40 above for break/breakfast and similar pairsinvolving other vowels); also by analogy strive/striven, despite itsderivation from OFr. There is some evidence that give, live, sievefor a time had long vowels, but today their vowels are short. In drive, white, etc. the long /ai/ value is distinguished in ModEby final , which is therefore now anomalous after the /i / of give,live, sieve.

• In one case a double transmutation has taken place: Jifmann hasvariously changed both its vowel sound and vowel letter to becomeModE woman.

K

The letter was rarely used in OE, although it occasionally served todisambiguate before a front vowel, e.g. Kent rather than Cent. It hasretained this function in ModE (e.g. cat, kitten).

• was not used in OE to ‘double’ , as in ModE ; thus ModE sackcorresponds to OE sacc, or simply sac. Samuel Johnson was therefore

48

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 48


wrong when he insisted on the final in musick, critick, historick, etc.on the grounds that the Eng spelling should ‘always have the Saxonk added to the c’.7 There never was a ‘Saxon ’ in this position in OE.

L

In OE the letter had essentially the same value as in ModE:

• It is seen before vowels in land, læs ‘less’, le2er ‘leather’, leac ‘leek’,leoht ‘light’, lifer ‘liver’, los ‘loss’, lytel ‘little’.

• It can follow other consonants: blind, clif ‘cliff ’, flyht ‘flight’, Llæd ‘glad’,plume ‘plum’, slippan ‘to slip’.° OE differs from ModE in that can follow and : hlid ‘lid’,

Jlispian ‘to lisp’.• occurs before other consonants: meolc ‘milk’, eald ‘old’, ælf ‘elf ’,

elm, cyln ‘kiln’, help, meltan ‘melt’.• The letter could be geminated (i.e. written and pronounced

doubled): sellan ‘sell’, tellan ‘tell’; but in final position both and are found: eall/eal ‘all’.° The OE source of allay (alecLan) did not have a double , but

consisted rather of the verb lay with the prefix - (comparealight); spellings with , attested from the 15th century, arose byanalogy with Lat-derived forms such as allegation (compareaccursed, afford, anneal at ‘’, ‘’ and ‘’).

• could be syllabic after another consonant at the end of a word: æpl ‘apple’, midl ‘middle’, nædl ‘needle’, seLl ‘sail’, tæLl ‘tail’, also written æppel, middel, nædel, seLel, tæLel.° The ModE spellings with final - (e.g. middle rather than middel)

arose in ME by analogy with Fr-derived words like people.• was pronounced in words where in ModE it has fallen silent: cealc

‘chalk’, Jealcan ‘walk’, folc ‘folk’, sceolde ‘should’, Jolde ‘would’ (theword from which ModE could derives had no in OE), cealf ‘calf ’,healf ‘half ’, palm, psalm.° In a few cases the fell silent before it became fixed in the spelling

(forms without were well established 200 years before printingbegan to stabilize spelling), and is therefore not seen in the ModEforms; such cases typically involve the non-appearance of beforeor after ModE : hJilc ‘which’, sJilc ‘such’, ælc ‘each’, mycel ‘much’,Jencel ‘wench’.

49

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 49


M

• was generally used in OE as in ModE:° Before vowels: mænan ‘to mean’, mann ‘man’, menn ‘men’, mearc

‘mark’, meos ‘moss’, middel ‘middle’, modor ‘mother’, murnan‘mourn’, mys ‘mice’.

° Before final /b/: lamb.° Initially after : smæl ‘small’.° Finally after the consonants , : helm ‘helmet’, Jyrm ‘worm’.° Syllabically after other consonants: blostm ‘blossom’, bosm ‘bosom’,

fæ2m ‘fathom’.• could be written and pronounced doubled: sJimman ‘to swim’.• In æmete ‘ant’, the medial vowel was eroded, leaving the consonant

sequence /mt/, which became /nt/, as in ModE ant. In other cases/mt/ became /mpt/: OE æmtiL > ModE empty. A similar intrusion of after is seen before in ModE glimpse, and in sempstress, besideseamstress.

N

• was generally used in OE as in ModE, though it could be pre-ceded by a pronounced , , , in words where the preceding con-sonant is silent, lost or changed in ModE: cneo ‘knee’, fneosung ‘sneeze’,Lnæt ‘gnat’, hnutu ‘nut’.

• It could occur as in ModE before vowels: næp ‘neep’, nama ‘name’,nest, niht ‘night’, nu ‘now’, nypele ‘nipple’; and with consonants: afterinitial , as in snaJ ‘snow’, and before (and ) and T (minte ‘mint’),as well as after L (cyln ‘kiln’) and R (corn).

• As in ModE, it was assimilated to [t] before /k/ and /u/: 6anc [watk]‘thank’, sinLan [”situhn] ‘to sing’. However, if the following or was palatalized (i.e. pronounced further forward in the mouth),the may retain its [n] value: 6encan ([”wentxhn]) ‘to think’, senLan‘to singe’.

• Like and , the letter could be used to indicate a syllabic /n/,often alternating with non-syllabic spellings: thus hræfn ‘raven’ andhræfen, ofn ‘oven’ and ofen, ræLn ‘rain’ and ræLen, JæLn ‘wain, wagon’and JæLen.

• Like other consonant letters, could be written and pronounced doubled: spinnan ‘to spin’.

50

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 50


° The form anneal, however, derives from OE anælan; spellings ofthis word with are first attested in the 17th century, by analogywith Latinate forms such as annex (compare similar doubling of, , in accursed, afford, allay).

Subsequent loss of N

Many OE words have seen the subsequently lost or changed:

• Loss of has occurred word-finally from OE beforan ‘before’, butan‘but’, bufan ‘above’, Ji2utan ‘without’ and holen ‘holly’. Loss of frommin ‘my, mine’ is seen in the ModE possessive adjective my, but notin the pronoun mine. Also in unstressed word-endings: e.g. brinLan‘to bring’.° In some cases, however, a form with an word-ending has become

the ModE standard: written, ridden. Sometimes alternative formsof words have persisted into ModE: druncen ‘drunk, drunken’.

• With the loss of the second vowel in henep ‘hemp’ (compare cognatecannabis), the final /p/ caused the preceding to be pronounced /m/,with the consequent spelling change to in ME, whence ModE hemp.

• The of the indefinite article has transferred from article to nounin several words: in ME, a naddre (OE næddre) was wrongly redividedas an addre, whence ModE adder rather than *nadder (compare dialectnedder); similarly OE nafoLar becomes ModE auger. The reverseoccurred with OE efeta which attracted from the article to give ModE a newt rather than *an ewt (compare dialect eft).

• A simple elision of (and other letters) has also sometimes occurred,as in OE endleofan ‘eleven’, andlonL ‘along’.

O

• OE short is seen generally as in ModE: coc ‘cock’, doLLa ‘dog’, mo66e‘moth’; and with modification to /nj/ before in ModE: corn, morLen‘morn’.

• The ModE spelling daughter for OE dohtor first appeared in the 16thcentury.

• Long in OE typically led to in ModE, with a range of soundvalues: blod ‘blood’, boc ‘book’, broc ‘brook’, brod ‘brood’, dom‘doom’ (but single in kingdom, etc.), flod ‘flood’, flor ‘floor’, etc.;OE to has led to both to and too in ModE.

51

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 51


• In several cases there is a short vowel in ModE when a suffix follows,contrasting with a long vowel in the base word: collier/coal, gosling/goshawk/goose, gospel/good, Monday/moon, nostril/nose, throttle /throat(see p. 40 for break/breakfast and similar long/short pairs involvingother vowels).

• In a few words, has changed in quality and length: sceolde, Jolde >should, would; in Llof ‘glove’, o6er ‘other’ the vowel is shortened aswell as assuming the value /B/.

• ModE final - often derives from a different vowel altogether: cnaJan‘to know’, nu ‘now’; in other cases was already present in OE: LroJan‘to grow’.

P

• P was used in OE as in ModE: panne ‘pan’, pluccian ‘to pluck’, prut‘proud’, specan/sprecan ‘to speak’, apa ‘ape’, help, heop ‘heap’.

• It could be written and pronounced as a double letter, as in æppel‘apple’, clyppan ‘to clip’.

• From OE loppestre, the has become ModE in lobster.• See under ‘’ above for intrusive after , as in empty, glimpse.

Q

• was rarely used in classical OE; but the Lat loanword reliquias ‘relic’is found in OE writing.

• The letter sequence V was generally written for /kw/ in initial positionin OE (though is sometimes found in early texts), but in wordsthat have survived into ModE V was respelt under the influenceof Norman Fr after 1066, as in cJen ‘queen’. For further examplesof this V/ substitution, see under ‘’ below.

R

• The letter was used in OE as in ModE, and was pronounced inall positions: ridan ‘to ride’, Lrene ‘green’, tredan ‘to tread’, duru ‘door’,corn, fæder ‘father’.° could occur after initial : hrof ‘roof ’. (See under ‘’ above for

further details.)

52

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 52


• Several words were spelt with and a vowel in OE in the oppositeorder from ModE: 6ærscan ‘to thrash, 6ridda ‘third’, 6rittiL ‘thirty’,brid ‘bird’, Jyrhta ‘wright’, Jorhte ‘wrought’, nosterle ‘nostril’.

• could be written and pronounced as a double consonant, as in steorra ‘star’.

• Like , and , a syllabic could alternate in OE with a spellingwith a preceding vowel: hri6r/hri6er ‘head of cattle’. But forms withvowels predominate: fæLer ‘fair’, winter, wundor ‘wonder’.

S

• Similarly to and W, OE represented both voiceless [s] and voiced[z] pronunciations of a single /s/ speech-sound.° The voiceless value [s] occurred at the beginning and at the end

of words and after voiceless consonants: saJl ‘soul’, slef ‘sleeve’,smercian ‘to smirk’, snæLl ‘snail’, spætan ‘to spit’, strang ‘strong’,sJat ‘sweat’, acsian ‘to ask’, mus ‘mouse’.

° The voiced value [z] occurred medially between vowels or betweena vowel and a voiced consonant: bosum ‘bosom’, cese ‘cheese’, nosu‘nose’, husbonda ‘husband’, clænsian ‘to cleanse’.

° When written and pronounced as a double consonant, as in cyssan ‘to kiss’, was always voiceless [s].

• Two isolated anomalies may also be mentioned here:° One is the later insertion of in OE iLland ‘island’, by false

analogy with Fr-derived isle.° The other is the insertion of in scythe < OE si2e. Scythe is first

attested in the 17th century, based perhaps on the mistaken beliefthat the word was related to Lat scindere ‘to cut’.

Loss of the clear voiced/voiceless distinction in ModE orthography

Unlike [s] and [z] in OE, /s/ and /z / are contrasting speech-sounds inModE (compare cease and seize). While ModE generally satisfactorilyexploits the voiced and voiceless values of and respectively, the samesuccess has not been achieved with for /s/ and for /z/ (compare looseand lose). Moreover, the additional facility of Fr - has been appliedto introduce widespread random spelling variations and pronunciationambiguity (compare mouse and mice, advice and advise).

53

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 53


The reason for the failure is mainly grammatical, arising from massivechanges in the language in ME. Final occurred far more often as aninflection in ME than in OE, and in that position it came to be voicedin many instances where it had previously been voiceless – final becamevoiced where it terminated an unstressed syllable while generally remain-ing voiceless in stressed syllables. ModE -inflections are pronouncedwith /z/ in about 80 per cent of occurrences, after vowels and voicedconsonants (e.g. in sees, hears, bushes, dogs), and are voiceless /s/ onlyafter voiceless consonants (e.g. in cats, clips). On the other hand, manynon-inflected words end in /s/ in ModE, and spelling therefore oftenneeds to distinguish /z / in inflections (e.g. peas, sins) from /s/ in similarnon-inflectional positions (e.g. peace, since). The Eng alphabet as it developed through ME offered several devices for making the voiced/voiceless distinction which were neither needed nor available in OE: voiced could be respelt as or , and voiceless could be respelt as or or . We see all these devices in use in ModE forms deriving fromOE words spelt with simple :

• In OE the final of bræs ‘brass’, for instance, was predictably a voiceless [s], while the medial in bræsen ‘brazen’ was predictablyvoiced [z]. ModE, by contrast, has to distinguish the voiced plural of bras from the voiceless of brass, and uses for the latter; butalthough the voiced medial could still have been used to give ModE*brasen (as in risen, chosen rather than *rizen, *chozen), the letter was substituted to give brazen. Similar patterns are seen in glass(OE Llæs)/glaze and grass (OE Lræs)/graze. But ModE does not apply consistently for OE voiced : it has in dizzy (< OE dysiL),but for the parallel OE form bysiL it keeps the , giving busy, not *bizzy.It changes to in freosan ‘to freeze’, fneosan ‘to sneeze’, Jisnian ‘towizen’, and hæsel ‘hazel’, but writes cheese, weasel, not *cheeze,*weazel.

• If the conversion of voiced in OE to in ModE is inconsistent, theModE device of adding to distinguish voiced and voiceless in wordsderived from OE also leaves ambiguity. The ModE noun house (OEhus, ME hous) has voiceless /s/, although the is not final and mighttherefore be taken as voiced by analogy with arouse. In the plural houses(late OE husas, late ME houses) and the verb to house (< OE husian),on the other hand, the medial is voiced. Consequently, if the purpose of adding is to distinguish voiced and voiceless values, itis self-defeating in the case of house.

54

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 54


• Another pattern is found in ModE louse, mouse with their plurals lice,mice (these -endings were not fully established before ModE), fromOE lus, mus with plurals lys, mys. The use of final - for the sound/s/ derives from Fr and shows unambiguous voiceless /s/; but the /

distinction might then seem to imply that louse, mouse had voiced /z /(by analogy with advice/advise). Thus if - were used consistentlyto show voiceless /s/, louse, mouse should be written louce, mouce.Meanwhile lousy has /z / but mouser retains /s/ and delouse has pro-nunciations with either /s/ or /z /.

• Modern respelling with final -, pronounced as /s/, is found in anumber of other words of OE origin:° There is a group of particles (mostly first attested in ME, though

of OE stems): once (< ones), twice (< twies), thrice (< thries), since(< syns), hence (< hennes), thence (< 6annes), whence (< whennes).

° There are several nouns that now have - for a former pluralinflection - (which today would otherwise be voiced as /z/):bodice (originally a plural of body), pence (< pens, a contracted plural of OE peniL), truce (as a plural of true), as well as a num-ber of words of Fr derivation (see Chapter 5, p. 97). The formdunce is derived from the name of the 13th-century churchmanDuns Scotus.

• Further sound–symbol discrepancies in ModE arising from varyingdevelopments of OE are seen between cyse/cese ‘cheese’, fleos‘fleece’, Les ‘geese’, is ‘ice’, to lose contrasting with the adjective loose,to choose and its past tense chose. These problems were further aggra-vated in ME with the influx of Fr vocabulary leading to pairs suchas lease/please, practice/practise, etc.

• We find voiceless with added in ModE else (< elles), worse (< wiers),horse (< hors).

• A single case of OE initial changing to is sinder which was influencedby the unconnected Fr cendre to become ModE cinder.

SC

The letters were probably pronounced /sk/ in early OE as they werein Lat; but they were then palatalized, first before front vowels and by900 generally, to take on the value /x/, as spelt in ModE: see thecomments on bishop, p. 10, and note other examples such as scacan‘to shake’, scea6 ‘sheath’, sceofan ‘to shove’, scip ‘ship’, scoh ‘shoe’, scur‘shower’, scyld ‘shield’, Jæscan ‘to wash’, enLlisc ‘English’.

55

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 55


• ModE words of Germanic origin beginning with /sk/, whether speltwith or , are often of Scandinavian origin, their OE cognateshaving been respelt in ME times with : screopan ‘to scrape’, forexample, would have been pronounced with initial /xr/ in OE, as aME form shrape attests, but ModE scrape derives from Scandinavianskrapa.° This split between words of OE and Scandinavian origin gives rise

to pairs of ModE words with different meanings, pronunciationsand spellings, although ultimately from a common Germanic root:shabby/scabby, shell/scale, shirt /skirt, shrub/scrub.

° The pair screech /shriek are hybrids (, are typical of Scandinavianderivations, but , typically derive from OE), while shatter /scatter reflect southern/northern dialect differences, with noScandinavian connection attested.

° An oddity is ModE ask, which in OE had many different forms,including ascian, acsian; the modern form implies OE pronunci-ation with /sk/ rather than /x/ (see also under ‘’ below).

T

• OE was used as in ModE: ta ‘toe’, tin, to ‘to, too’, treo ‘tree’, tunLe‘tongue’, tJentiL ‘twenty’, tyrnan ‘to turn’, storc ‘stork’, cetel ‘kettle’,betra ‘better’, æfter ‘after’, heorte ‘heart’, mæst ‘most’.

• could also be geminated (i.e. written and pronounced as a doubleletter): settan ‘to set’.

Y, X (TH)

The letters W, known as thorn, and U, known as eth, normally lead to in ModE (for their origin, see pp. 22–3). In OE, thorn and eth wereused more or less interchangeably for both [2] and [w], though with somepreference for thorn in initial and eth in final position. As with and ,OE W and U could be voiced or voiceless – voiceless in initial and finalposition and when double medially, but voiced when single mediallybetween vowels or voiced consonants:

• Initially: 6æc ‘thatch’, 6ancian ‘thank’, 6eaht ‘thought’, 6encean ‘think’,6eof ‘thief ’, etc.

56

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 56


• Finally (voiceless as final also usually is in ModE): bæ2 ‘bath’,bræ2 ‘breath’, bro2 ‘broth’, cla2 ‘cloth’, dea2 ‘death’, fyl2 ‘filth’, for2‘forth’, etc. This - ending came to be even more widely used inlater centuries: breadth, dearth, depth, girth, growth, etc.° In some cases a voiceless final - in ModE derives from a voiced

medial consonant in OE where a following vowel has been lost,making a previously medial consonant final: beni2an ‘beneath’, eor2e‘earth’, pi2a ‘pith’, Jri2a ‘wreath’. Most of the - endings of ModEordinal numerals derive from a voiced non-final OE consonant:eahto2a ‘eighth’.

• Base words with a voiced medial consonant are numerous, nearly allhaving either a ModE long vowel and final - or a ModE (usually)short vowel and final -: ba2ian ‘to bathe’, bli2e ‘blithe’, cla2ian‘to clothe’, la2ian ‘to loathe’, seo2an ‘to seethe’, etc.; æL2er ‘either’,bro2or ‘brother’, fe2er ‘feather’, fyr2ra ‘further’, hJæ2er ‘whether’, etc.Note also fæ6m ‘fathom’ and hæ2en ‘heathen’.° Many ModE forms which follow this pattern of medial

voicing are first attested in later centuries, sometimes in ME, sometimes in ModE: bother, breathe, farther, heather, neither,slither, tether, wither.

• With a double medial letter representing a voiceless consonant: cy66o‘kith’, mo66e ‘moth’, Jræ22u ‘wrath’, sce66an (‘to scathe, injure’). In the first three instances ModE has lost the OE ending but thevoiceless value remains. ModE scathe and unscathed are of Scandi-navian rather than OE origin, and the represents the voiced consonant /2/.

TH anomalies in ModE

The simplicity of the above sound–symbol correspondences is under-mined in many cases in ModE:

• Initial has become voiced in the ‘grammatical’ words this, that,there, then, thou, thee, though, etc. probably as a result of frequent occur-rence in unstressed positions; the OE equivalents – 6es, 6æt, 6ær, 6onne,6u, 6e, 6eah, etc. – all began with [w].

• While the normal positional contrast between voiced non-final andvoiceless final is shown in ModE in several pairs of words(bath/bathe, breath/breathe, cloth/clothe, heath/heathen, loath/loathe,north/northern, sheath /sheathe, smith /smithy, sooth /soothe, south /southern,

57

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 57


teeth/teethe, worth/worthy, wreath/wreathe), the voiceless non-final

in ModE earthen, earthy, filthy, frothy, lengthen, stealthy, strengthen,wealthy is anomalous.° The following are also anomalous: smooth (< OE sme2e, yet not

spelt *smoothe in ModE) and to mouth, both with /2/, and boothwhich may be pronounced with final /2/ or /w/; by analogy withwreathe, one might expect the OE verb becJe2an to give ModE*bequeathe rather than bequeath which, like booth, may have final/2/ or /w/. With (< OE Ji2), like other common grammatical words such as of and is, is in ModE usually pronounced with a final voiced consonant corresponding to one which had beenvoiceless in OE (although a voiceless /w/ pronunciation may alsobe heard in ModE).

° In some words the ModE plural inflection - may restore to a final - its OE voiced value: in baths, mouths, oaths, paths, truths,wreaths, youths the may have the same /2/ value as in bathe, wreathe, etc. But elsewhere this does not happen: breaths,broths, cloths, deaths, hearths, heaths, lengths, months, smiths,strengths all have /w/.

° There are a few words in ModE where medial is voiceless, anoticeable contrast being that between brother and brothel. ModEnever doubles , and so a form *broththel showing the voicelessvalue is impossible. (If ModE had kept the letter thorn, however,the anomalous sound–spelling correspondence of brothel could havebeen avoided by writing *bro66el.)

TH alternation with other spellings

W, U in OE and in ModE do not always correspond:

• A number of ModE words such as father had rather than U in OEfæder (see under ‘’ for other examples).

• The reverse shift from thorn or eth to , perhaps under the influenceof Norman Fr, is seen in the OE ber2en, mor2or, ru2or, spi6ra,Lefor2ian > ModE burden, murder, rudder, spider, afford; forms with – burthen, murther, ruther, afforthe – were in use until at least the16th century.

• In ModE hustings, nostril, a former thorn (Scandinavian hus6ing, OEnos6yrl ‘nose-hole’) has become . For OE hieh6o, sih6, ModE hasheight, sight.

58

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 58


U

In OE, the letter could have short or long values, pronounced respec-tively /q/ and /uj/.

Short U

The short value in OE typically led to short in ModE, though a vari-ety of spellings and sound values in ModE, overlapping with other vowelsources in OE, confuses the equivalence:

• Examples of OE short with the original pronunciation are seen inful ‘full’, pullian ‘pull’ and *putian ‘put’ (not itself directly attested,but implied by the related noun putung).

• The pronunciation is retained but the replaced by in Julf ‘wolf ’and by in Jul ‘wool’, Judu ‘wood’. The purpose of this changefrom to was not to reflect any change in pronunciation, but toclarify scribal writing in ME (see p. 75). OE, like ModE, used fourdistinct letters to spell Julf ‘wolf ’, but when in ME the letter wyn(V) was replaced by (the early form of ), the effect was that such a word would have appeared as uuulf, with three times in succession. When, furthermore, one takes into account that the‘Gothic’ style of scribal writing reduced many non-capital letters moreor less to short vertical strokes (‘minims’), one can see how difficultthe reading of uuulf could be. If, on the other hand, the vowel is respelt, then the form uuolf is less likely to confuse readers.

• The letter is retained, but with pronunciation in ModE changed(except in northern Eng accents) to /B/: butere ‘butter’, cuppe ‘cup’,dust, hunLor ‘hunger’, hnutu ‘nut’, sunne ‘sun’, 6us ‘thus’, -, under,uppe ‘up’.

• In yet another group of words both the sound and letter arechanged, the sound to /B/, and the letter to (many of these wordswould otherwise have had a proliferation of minims): burh ‘borough’,cuman ‘to come’, huniL ‘honey’, lufu ‘love’, munuc ‘monk’, sum‘some’, sunu ‘son’, tunLe ‘tongue’, Jundor ‘wonder’.

• Before in turf the pronunciation of is modified to /2j/ in ModE.• Duru ‘door’ had an alternative spelling dor from OE onwards. In ME,

we find the forms dure and dor, but also dur and dore. The spelling doorfirst appeared in the 16th century and eventually supplanted dore inwriting, though the ModE pronunciation remains that of the latter.

59

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 59


Long U

The long value of in OE has generally undergone regular change ofboth sound and spelling in its development to ModE: e.g. hus > house.The ModE vowel is usually spelt in medial position and in finalposition: hus > house, cu > cow, and similarly druLa2 ‘drought’, ful ‘foul’,hlud ‘loud’, hu ‘how’, etc. (Compare Franco-Lat ‘’, ‘’, p. 145.)

• Sometimes occurs medially in ModE: brun ‘brown’, crudan ‘tocrowd’, scur ‘shower’, tun ‘town’, ule ‘owl’; and exceptionally isfinal in 6u > ‘thou’.

Length change

Some words have shortened the long or lengthened the short

between OE and ModE:

• Shortening, along with a change from /q/ to /B/, has taken place inthe following: duce ‘duck’, plume ‘plum’, sucan ‘suck’, 6uma ‘thumb’,uder ‘udder’, us.

• The following have acquired the long diphthong spelt /: fuLel‘fowl’, Lrund ‘ground’, hund ‘hound’.

• Two related cases have a short vowel in ModE when a suffix follows, contrasting with a long vowel in the base word: house buthusband, husting (see p. 40 for break/breakfast and similar variationsinvolving other vowels). Note also the long in ut ‘out’ but short in cognate utter.

W//

In early manuscripts (and in the Northumbrian dialect more generally),OE used the letter for the sound /w/, as it had been used in classicalLat; so uard and uundra in the Northumbrian version of Cædmon’s hymn (pp. 20–1). During the 8th century, the runic letter V wasincreasingly used.

Words with in ModE are predominantly of OE origin: of the 100most commonly occurring ModE stems containing , nearly 75 per centcan be traced back to OE forms with V; about half the rest were speltwith , or in OE; a few, like power, view, war, were words of Frderivation which became established in the ME period.

60

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 60


• The sound /w/ occurred mostly in initial position in OE, as it does inModE: Jæpn ‘weapon’, Jeorc ‘work’, Jif ‘wife’, Joruld ‘world’, Julf ‘wolf ’.° Like in ModE, initial V could also precede in OE; both

letters were pronounced. The eventually fell silent, but not untilprinting had fixed the spelling: Jræ2 ‘wrath’, Jrecan ‘wreak’, Jrist‘wrist’, Jritan ‘write’, Jri2an ‘writhe’, etc.

° Initial V also occasionally preceded in OE, but fell silent in MEtimes before being fixed by the spelling conventions of print: thusJlisp for ‘lisp’ is last attested from the 14th century.

° The in ModE whole (OE hal ) began to be inserted in the 15thcentury; the in ModE whore, OE hore, became common in the16th. Similar spellings, such as wholy, whood, whord (= ‘holy’, ‘hood’,‘hoard’) were introduced but dropped out of use again.

W after consonants

• OE V was found after initial , , , and :° The sequence V was replaced after 1066 by , but in OE was

found as in cJacian ‘quake’, cJellan ‘quell’, cJæ6 ‘quoth’, cJen‘queen’, cJic ‘quick’; and after a prefix in becJe2an ‘bequeath’.

° I occurred after initial as in dJeorL ‘dwarf ’, dJellan ‘stay, dwell’,dJinan ‘waste away’.

° Initial is seen before OE V as in hJæt ‘what’, but the two let-ters have since been reversed, giving in ModE – see under ‘’(p. 47) for further discussion and examples of this pattern.

° ModE forms with initial dating back to OE include sJete ‘sweet’,sJearm ‘swarm’, sJelLan ‘to swallow’, sJerian ‘swear’ (also andsJarian‘to answer’), sJin ‘swine’.

° Initial before V is seen in words relating to two (tJa, tJeLen ‘two’,tJelf ‘twelve’, tJentiL ‘twenty’) and in tJiL ‘twig’, tJiccian ‘twitch’,tJin ‘twine’, tJinclian ‘twinkle’.

• In three cases, andsJarian ‘to answer’, sJeord ‘sword’, tJa ‘two’, the, though written, is no longer pronounced in ModE. In other cases,the original OE V is no longer written: OE sJilc > ModE such, OEsJa > ModE so.

W after vowels

• When ModE words with final correspond to OE words with V,the latter typically have a suffix, as in feaJe ‘few’, niJe ‘new’, or

61

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 61


verb-endings such as the -an, -ian infinitive in breoJan ‘to brew’, sceaJian‘to show’.

• Some ModE words with a medial and final are not of OE origin(e.g. pawn, pewter, powder, flaw, Jew, allow), and the of many othersrelates to a , or in OE (e.g. laLu ‘law’, furh ‘furrow’).

• In a few words, OE V yields ModE (): cliJen ‘clue’, hieJ ‘hue’, hreoJ‘rue’, treoJe ‘true’. In ME, - was the normal spelling for such wordsand also for words spelt with - or - in Fr: e.g. blew, crew, glew.In the 16th century, Richard Mulcaster (see p. 296) states his pref-erence for - over - at the end of words, giving examples such as trew (< OE treoJe) and vertew (< OFr vertu). When some of thesewords were later again spelt with final -, this spelling was extendedto some of the - words of OE origin, such as hue and true.° ModE exploits the spelling difference for lexical and semantic

differentiation in clew/clue (< OE cliJen).• V was not doubled in OE, nor is found doubled in ModE.

X

The letter , pronounced /ks/ or perhaps /hs/, was used in OE in spelling a small group of words in which it has persisted into ModE:eax ‘axe’, fleax ‘flax’, fox, oxa ‘ox’, siex ‘six’, Jæx ‘wax’.

• The archaic verb ‘to wax’ (= to grow) showed the OE variants Jeaxan,Jeacsan, Jeahsan.

Y

In OE the letter originally represented the rounded front vowel /y/,with long and short values. However, from about 800 onwards pro-gressively lost its rounding and its sound merged mostly with the valuesof , until by ME it ceased to have a distinctive sound value of its ownat all. In OE manuscripts of certain periods, notably the 8th centuryand the 10th century onwards, it was customary to dot , just as laterit became customary to dot , presumably to distinguish from othersimilar letter shapes, though the evidence is unclear.

• OE short generally leads to ModE short : brycL ‘bridge’, crypel‘cripple’, cycene ‘kitchen’, cyninL ‘king’, cyssan ‘to kiss’, dysiL ‘dizzy’.

62

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 62


OE long generally leads to ModE long : bryd ‘bride’, fyr ‘fire’, hyden‘to hide’, hyf ‘hive’, lys ‘lice’, mys ‘mice’.

• The correspondence OE > ModE reflects the vowel developmentin the Anglian dialect (see further p. 80). A number of OE spellingslead to other vowel letters in ModE, generally because the direct sourceof the ModE form is in another dialect. The mixing of dialect formsand pronunciations also underlies the occasional surprising ModEsound–spelling correspondences:° A few words follow WSax in respelling with : crycc ‘crutch’,

cycLel ‘cudgel’, dystiL ‘dusty’; also ModE blush, burden, church, clutch,hurdle, much, shut, shuttle, thrush, thrust.

° Some follow Kentish pronunciation with : cnyll ‘knell’, hymlice‘hemlock’, lyft ‘left’ (= opposite of right), myrLe ‘merry’; alsoModE fledge, kernel, pebble, shed, merry.

° Two words combine a -spelling with a pronunciation from else-where: bury and busy have the spelling characteristic of the WestMidland and Southern dialects, but the pronunciation of bury(rhyming with merry) is Kentish and that of busy comes from theEast Midlands.

° ModE dent and dint are both reflexes of the same OE word dynt,but reflect developments in different dialects.

° ModE evil (WSax yfel) derives from an East Midland (Anglian)form ivel.8

° The development of to in Jyrm ‘worm’, JyrLan ‘to worry’, Jyrsa‘worse’, Jyrt ‘wort’ may be due to considerations of legibility, asdescribed under ‘’ (p. 59) in connection with wolf.

Following the usual pattern of development, ModE forms would perhaps have been *lift, *mirry, *biry, *bisy, etc.

• In sets of related words OE may be a mutation from another vowel(i.e. a variant caused by the influence of a nearby vowel): cu ‘cow’,plural cye; Lold ‘gold’, adjective Lylden ‘golden’ (compare ModEgold /gild ); ful ‘foul’, fyl2 ‘filth’, afylan ‘defile’.

Z

The letter was scarcely used in OE, and then mainly in loanwordssuch as bæzere from Lat baptista, and the name Elizabeth, ultimately ofGr origin. It was probably pronounced /ts/, as implied by the variantOE spellings milze, miltse ‘mildness’. has, however, been introduced,

63

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 63


sadly inconsistently, in place of voiced in a number of ModE wordsdescended from OE: brazen, freeze, furze, glaze, graze, hazel, ooze, sneeze,wizard, wizen (see discussion under ‘’ above).

Notes

1 Readers who want a complete picture of the spelling development of anyparticular word in English should consult the Oxford English Dictionary.

2 The Modern English words are not necessarily equivalent in meaning to theOld English words from which they derive (for example, Old English cniht‘boy’ > Modern English knight), but this is irrelevant to a discussion of thedevelopment of Modern English spelling.

3 In this analytical section, the abbreviations OE, ME and ModE will be usedinstead of Old English, Middle English and Modern English.

4 For a map of the Middle English dialect areas, see p. 77.5 Scragg (1974: 67, note).6 Plow and plough derive from different parts of the Old English noun and

verb; the former became the standard spelling in American English, the latter in British English.

7 Boswell (1934: 31). Boswell expresses in a footnote the hope that Johnson’sauthority will put a stop to the ‘curtailing innovation’ of critic, public, etc.for critick, publick, etc.

8 Wyld (1936: 207).

64

9781405190237_4_003.qxd 6/15/11 9:03 Page 64

Documents

The History of English Spelling (Upward/The History of English Spelling) || The Old English Roots of Modern English Spelling