History of the English Language Middle English Sounds and Spelling Lecture 1 1.1.

Middle English Spelling After the Norman Conquest, the literary activity in England was restricted to copying the already existing manuscripts. The new scribes gradually introduced the spelling conventions familiar to them from rendering French sounds to render the sounds of the English language. Between 1100 and 1300 no dialect achieved a high enough prestige and there were no general spelling conventions. Early ME texts do differ a lot. In the beginning, the French loan words were written using the French spelling conventions, while the native words retained their original Anglo-Saxon spelling norm. In time, the new spelling was transferred to English words containing similar sounds. The French influence was earliest in the South, from where it spread to practically the whole English speaking area. By the end of the 2nd half of the 14th century all present conventions already existed. This is why Chaucer can be read relatively easily. The Irish handwriting, characterized by the rounded shape of the letters, was replaced by the angular Carolingian style, which started to cause confusion when too many letters consisting of several minims (i.e., symbols) were used: u, n, m, i, w, without any dots. The dot was not originally part of minuscule i, but is a development of the faint sloping line that came to be put above this insignificant letter to distinguish it from the strokes of contiguous letters such as m, n, and u, as well as to distinguish double i from u. It was later extended by analogy to the j, where, because of the different shape of the letter, it performed no useful purpose. There occurred few changes in pronunciation, but the spelling changed a lot. The introduction of French spelling conventions gives the superficial impression that English changed very rapidly, which is not true. Some letters were eliminated: (wynn) [w] u, uu (double u), later w. Double u (uu) had been used for [w] in early OE manuscripts, but was replaced by the runic wynn. In ME it came to be used again. Because the [] (ash) sound disappeared (> a) by a process of retraction (and later a > e > i), the letter was no longer in use: e.g., OE tcan. > ME techen > MnE teach ([i]). (Eth) was abandoned. (thorn) survived in ME as long as a manuscript tradition existed, together with the digraph th (t = dental; h = fricative an interdental fricative). Th had already been used in some of the earliest English texts, written before 900 but was replaced in later OE writing by thorn and eth. The OE symbol (yogh) was an Irish script form. In late OE had three values (velar stop, velar fricative and palatal glide). In ME times, the symbol was used for three sounds ([j], [] and [x]) that came to be spelled y and gh later in the period. Old English, for instance, wrote eldan to yield, cniht knight, and urh through; early Middle English wrote the same words elde(n), cnit, and ur; later Middle English (as in Chaucer) wrote them yelde(n), knyght, and thurgh. The characteristic conservatism of Modern English spelling is reflected in the present day retention of the Middle English gh in the last two words, even though the velar fricative sound that the spelling represented has long disappeared from all types of English except Scots.

The French letter g came to replace OE to indicate [g] in English words; and, with the introduction of French words into English, the newer symbol was used also with the value it had in Old French before e and i ([u])- e.g., in gem and age - which is the same value that it has in Modern English. The fricative [v] did not occur initially in Old English, which used f for the [v] that developed internally, as in drifen driven, hfde had, and scofl shovel. Except for a very few words that entered standard English from Southern English dialects, in which initial [f] became [v] (e.g. vixen, vat), no standard English words of native origin begin with [v]. Practically all the English words with initial v have been taken from Latin or French. The introduction of the letter v (as a variant of u) to indicate the prehistoric OE development of [f] to [v] was an innovation of Anglo-Norman scribes in ME times: thus the ME form of OE drifen was written driven or driuen. In ME, both u and v were used for the vowel [u] and for the consonant [v]. The angled shape of v was most often used at the beginning of a word, and the rounded shape of u elsewhere. Up to the seventeenth century we consequently find us written vs and give written giue. The letter v was frequently used in the neighbourhood of m and n, for the sake of legibility. Ch was used by French scribes, or by English ones under French influence, to indicate the initial sound of child, which in OE had been spelled simply with c, as in cild. Following a short vowel, the same sound might also be spelled cch or chch: catch appears as cache, cacche, and cachche. In early OE times sc symbolised [sk], but during the course of the OE period the graphic sequence came to indicate []. The sh spelling was an innovation of Anglo-Norman scribes (OE sceal > ME and MnE shall), who earlier had used s, ss, and sch for the same purpose. ME scribes preferred the writing wh for the phonetically more accurate hw used in OE times, as, for example, in OE hwt > ME, MnE what. Under French influence, scribes in ME times used c before e and i (y) in French loanwords - for example, citee city and grace - with an earlier French value of this symbol [ts], later becoming [s]. In OE writing c never indicated [s], but only [k] and []. Thus, with the introduction of the newer French value, c remained an ambiguous symbol, though in a different way: it came to represent [k] before a, o, and u and before consonants, and [s] before e and i (y). K, used occasionally in OE writing, thus came to be increasingly used before e and i (y) in ME times (OE cyn(n) race > ME kin, kyn) to indicate the stop sound, so that c might be reserved for the sibilant, as in certain (compare curtain, with c indicating [k] before u). French scribal practices are responsible for the ME spelling qu, which French inherited from Latin, replacing OE cw, as in quellen to kill, queen, and quethen to say, which despite their French look are all native English words (in OE, respectively, cwellan, cwen, and cwean). Also French in origin is the digraph gg, replacing in medial and final positions OE cg (OE ecg > ME egge), later written dg(e), as in MnE edge. While the OE length of vowels was not rendered in spelling, in ME the scribes were very careful to specify it. This is how we came to be aware of the changes that took place in the length of vowels.

To indicate vowel length, ME writing frequently employed double letters, particularly ee and oo, the practice becoming general in the East Midland dialect late in the period. Final unstresed e following a single consonant also indicated vowel length in ME, as in fode food and fede to feed; this corresponds to the silent e of Modern English, as in case, mete, bite, rote, and rule. Doubled consonants, which indicated consonant length in earlier periods, began in ME times to indicate also that a preceding vowel was short. Surviving examples are dinner and bitter, as contrasted with diner and biter. Short u [u] was commonly written o during the latter part of the ME period if m, n, u (v, w) were contiguous. The ME writings sone son and sonne sun thus indicate the same vowel sound that these words had in Old English, when they were written respectively sunu and sunne. O for u (now [v]) survives in a number of MnE words besides son - e.g., come (OE cuman), wonder (OE wundor), monk (OE munuc), honey (OE hunig), tongue (OE tunge), and love (OE lufu). The French spelling ou came to be used generally in the 14th c. to represent English long [u:] - e.g., hous (OE hs) and sometimes represented the short u as well. Before a vowel the u of the digraph ou might well be mistaken as representing [v], for which the same symbol was used. To avoid confusion (as in douer, which was a possible writing for both dower and Dover), u was doubled in this position that is, written uu, later w. This use of w, of course, would have been unnecessary if u and v had been differentiated as they are now. W also came to be used instead of u in final position. Middle English scribes used y for the glide [j] and also, for the sale of legibility, as a variant of i in the vicinity of stroke letters e.g., myn homcomynge my homecoming. Late in the ME period there was a tendency to write y for long [i:] generally. Y was also regularly used in final position. ME spelling was considerably more relaxed than present-day orthography. The foregoing remarks describe some of the spelling conventions of ME scribes, but there were a good many others, and all of them were used with a nonchalance that is hardly imaginable in the era of the printing press. The notion that every word has, or ought to have, just one correct spelling is a relatively recent idea. Some Old to Middle English spelling changes OE cw hw / sc ME qu wh/w/qu th sh OE c u h ME ch, c, and k ou /gh

1.2. Middle English Sounds The main trend in ME is consonant deletion, as in the case of [g], [h], [w] and [l], and vowel shifting, especially in non-northern texts. Vowels are pronounced as if they were French or Spanish. They have more color and do not become reduced (to schwa) as regularly as in Modern English. In addition, in Chaucers knight, all consonants are pronounced, including [kn] and [x], so the word sounds as [knixt].

There are many sound changes between Old English and Middle English. g/ (pronounced as either [] or [j] in Old English). The g/ first becomes a [w] or [j] and merges with the preceding vowels to become a diphthong. g also changes after liquids [l] and [r]. Changes in g/ OE ME OE ME a. boga > bow ploga > plow dg > day fugol > fowl seel > sail fger > fair ngel > nail dragan > draw b. halgian > hallow morgen > morrow h-dropping starts in Middle English, but later this deletion becomes stigmatized. The loss of [h] begins in consonant clusters such as hlaf loaf, hraor rather, hnutu nut and hnacod naked and gradually the version without h becomes the norm. This may be due to French influence. The glide [w] is frequently deleted between a consonant such as [s] or [t] and a back vowel. In Modern English spelling, but not pronunciation, w turns up again in some words. In Middle English, the situation is not settled. Gradual deletion of [w] OE swa [sw] > twa [tw] > sweord [sw] > sweostor [sw] > an(d)swar [sw] >

ME so to sword suster answere

> > > > >

ModE so [s] two [t] sword [s] sister [s] answer [s]

Place names such as Norwich, Greenwich, and Warwick, generally lack the [w] in pronunciation, but in others, such as Ipswich, the [w] has been reintroduced through spelling pronunciation. Frequently, nasals delete, as in a., or assimilate in place, as in b. Liquids are also deleted as in c. or metathesized as in d. Changes in nasals and liquids OE a. hwilum > from > b. Mamchestre > c. swilcel > ilke/lce > d. beorht > grs >

ModE while fro/fra Manchester such each bright grass

The influx of French words with a [v] causes this sound to become a regular English sound, mot one occurring only in voiced environments (through assimilation) as in Old English. There are also many loans with [z], especially in the Renaissance period. The velar nasal [] is still only used before other velars. The sound that is missing, in comparison with Modern English, is [], and the sound that is present in Middle but not Modern English is [x]. Middle English consonants Manner: Place: labial dental alveolar alveo-palatal velar

stop

fricative

affricate

nasal

liquid

glide

p/b t/d k/g

f/v / s/z h/X

m n t/d l,r

In Old English, the vowels have long and short variants. In Middle English, the short vowels change their height and are not just short variants of long vowels. Where short and long vowels have the same position, the long vowel is differentiated by a colon. Some [a:] sounds change to [o] (or [ow]), and the round front vowel, spelled y, as in hydan to hide, ultimately becomes unrounded [i]. The [j] sound, as in joy, comes in through borrowings from French (ME joie, cloistre, joinen) Middle English vowels i e : a a: u o j

1.3. Middle English Pronunciation Guide PRELIMINARY REMARKS - pronounce all the letters: knyght = k-n-ich-t or k-n-ach-t; write = w-r-ee-t-a except words of French origin: gn = n (e.g. signes, sovereigne); - initial h is silent (e.g. honour, heir) - roll the r's - doubling a vowel is the only way to indicate length (e.g. caas, moot) - y - at beginning of word makes past tense (e.g. yloved means loved = ee-l-ov-ed) -gh = like the ch in German "ich" or the ch in Scottish "loch" (e.g. knyght) -ch = as in church (e.g. chivalrie) -yng / ing = modern ing except when syllable is stressed (e.g. thing; singen = s-ing-ayn) - s = as in hiss not as a z (e.g. disshes) Pronounce the first or final e as a schwa: Sound Spelling First or final e As in MnE sofa ME examples: name, yonge, chivalrie

The main difference between Chaucer's language and our own is in the pronunciation of the "long" vowels. The consonants remain generally the same, though Chaucer rolled his r's, sometimes dropped his aitches, and pronounced both elements of consonant combinations, such as "kn," that were later simplified. And the short vowels are very similar in Middle and Modern English. But the "long" vowels are regularly and strikingly different. This is due to what is called The Great Vowel Shift.

Stress in ME The main rule governing word- stress in ME is to place the primary stress on a word s first syllable unless that syllable is an unstressable prefix. wildernes, kingdom vs uncou, bihynden

VOWELS Sound [a] [a:] [] [] [:] [] [i:] [o:] [] [u:] [a] [a] [] [] [] [o] [oi] eu, ew, u ou, ow, oo,o oi, oy Spelling a a, aa, er a, ae e, ee e, ea i, y i,y o,oo u, o ou, ow ai, ay, ei, ey au, aw e, ee as in: what father hat met there mist machine cloth full root my mouse mate, day 7 words only few note boy Examples what fader, name, caas, clerk has, baebe hem, end, gentil bere, sea list, skille wif, ryde, shires dom, foot ful, nonne, love hous, flour, vertu, how fair, may, feith cause, drawe grene, sete, me, be, she fewe, lewed, dew, shewe, beute, hewe, shrewe new, reule thought, know, good, roote, bote point, joye