Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English pe ...

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

is necessarily somewhat speculative since it is preserved only as a

written language A written language is the representation of a language by means of writing. This involves the use of visual symbols, known as graphemes, to represent linguistic units such as phonemes, syllables, morphemes, or words. However, written language is ...

. Nevertheless, there is a very large

text corpus In linguistics and natural language processing, a corpus (: corpora) or text corpus is a dataset, consisting of natively digital and older, digitalized, language resources, either annotated or unannotated. Annotated, they have been used in corp ...

of Middle English. The dialects of Middle English vary greatly over both time and place, and in contrast with Old English and Modern English, spelling was usually phonetic rather than conventional. Words were generally spelled according to how they sounded to the person writing a text, rather than according to a formalised system that might not accurately represent the way the writer's dialect was pronounced, as Modern English is today. The Middle English speech of the city of

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

in the late 14th century (essentially, the speech of

Geoffrey Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer ( ; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...

) is used as the standard Middle English dialect in teaching and when specifying "the" grammar or phonology of Middle English. It is this form that is described below, unless otherwise indicated. In the rest of the article, abbreviations are used as follows:

Sound inventory

The surface sounds of Chaucer's Middle English (whether

allophones In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plosi ...

phonemes A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...

) are shown in the tables below. Phonemes in bold were added across Middle English; those in ''italics'' were removed during the period.

Consonants

1. The exact nature of Middle English ''r'' is unknown. This article uses indiscriminately.

Consonant allophones

The sounds marked in parentheses in the table above are allophones: * is an allophone of occurring before and **For example, ''ring'' ('ring') is ; did not occur alone in Middle English, unlike in Modern English. * are allophones of in syllable-final position after front and

back vowel A back vowel is any in a class of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the highest point of the tongue is positioned relatively back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be c ...

s, respectively. *Based on evidence from

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

and

Modern English Modern English, sometimes called New English (NE) or present-day English (PDE) as opposed to Middle and Old English, is the form of the English language that has been spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England England is a Count ...

, and apparently had velarised counterparts or allophones and . These occurred after back vowels or the consonant .

Voiced fricatives

In Old English, , , were allophones of , , , respectively, occurring between

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

s or

voiced consonant Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refe ...

s. That led to many alternations: ''hūs'' ('house') vs. ''hūses'' ('of a house') ; ''wīf'' ('woman') vs. ''wīfes'' ('of a woman') . In Middle English, voiced allophones become phonemes and have become solidly established in Modern English as separate phonemes by several sources: #Borrowings from foreign languages, especially

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

and

Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th Kentish) that voiced initial fricatives and the more standard dialects that did not. Compare ''fat'' vs. ''vat'' (both with ''f-'' in standard

) and ''fox'' vs. ''vixen'' (

''fox'' vs. ''fyxen'', from Proto-Germanic vs. ). #Analogical changes that levelled former alternations: ''grass, grasses, grassy'' and ''glass, glasses, glassy'' with replacing the original between vowels (but ''to graze'' and ''to glaze'', still with , originally derived from ''grass'' and ''glass'', respectively). Contrast ''wife'' vs. ''wives''; ''greasy'', still with a in some dialects (such as that of

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

) and ''staff'', with two plurals, analogical ''staffs'' and inherited ''staves''. #Loss of final , resulting in voiced fricatives at the end of a word where only voiceless fricatives had occurred. That is the source of the modern distinctions ''house'' vs. ''to house'', ''teeth'' vs. ''to teethe'', ''half'' vs. ''to halve''. #Reduction of double consonants to single consonants, which explains the contrast between ''kiss, to kiss'' (Old English ''coss, cyssan'', with a double ''s'') vs. ''house, to house'' with in the verb (Old English ''hūs, hūsian'', with a single ''s''). #A

sandhi Sandhi ( ; , ) is any of a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on nearby sounds or the grammatical function o ...

that introduced the voiced fricative /ð/, instead of original /θ/, at the beginning of unstressed function words. Contrast ''this'' with initial vs. ''thistle'' with initial . #A sound change that caused fricatives to be voiced after a fully unstressed syllable. That is reflected in the modern pronunciation of the endings that are spelled ''-s'' (the noun plural ending, the ' Saxon genitive' ending and the third-person present indicative ending), which now have the phonemic shape -, having developed in Middle English from - to - and then, after the deletion of the unstressed vowel, to - (e.g. ''halls'', ''tells'' with from earlier ''halles'', ''telles''). The sound change also affects function words ending in original - that are normally unstressed. Contrast ''this'' with vs. ''is'' with ; ''off'' with vs. ''of'' with , originally the same word; ''with'' with in many varieties of English vs. ''pith'' with . The status of the sources in Chaucer's Middle English is as follows: *The first three sources (borrowing, dialect mixture and analogy) were already established. *As indicated by versification, the loss of final was normal in Chaucer's time before a vowel-initial word and optional elsewhere. That is assumed to be a poetic relic, with the loss of final having been completed in spoken English (a similar situation to Modern French; see '' e muet''). *The reduction of double consonants was apparently about to occur. *The sandhi effects on unstressed function words occurred somewhat later, during the transition to Modern English. The strongest distinction was between and because of the large number of borrowings from

Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th [2-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...

. It is also the only distinction that is consistently indicated in spelling, as and respectively. sometimes appears as , especially in borrowings from Greek and sometimes as . Both and are spelled .

Vowels

¹ The Old English sequences , produced late Middle English and had apparently passed through early Middle English : OE ''grōwan'' ('grow') → LME . However, early Middle English that was produced by Middle English breaking became late Middle English : OE ''tōh'' (tough') → EME → LME . Apparently, early became before the occurrence of Middle English breaking, which generated new occurrences of , which later became .

Monophthongs

Middle English had a distinction between close-mid and open-mid long vowels but no corresponding distinction in short vowels. The behaviour of open syllable lengthening seems to indicate that the short vowels were open-mid in quality, but according to Lass, they were close-mid. (There is some direct documentary evidence: in early texts, open-mid was spelled , but both and were spelled .) Later, the short vowels were in fact lowered to become open-mid vowels, as is shown by their values in Modern English. The

front rounded vowel A front rounded vowel is a particular type of vowel that is both front and rounded. The front rounded vowels defined by the IPA include: * , a close front-rounded vowel (or "high front rounded vowel") * , a near-close front rounded vowel (or ...

s existed in the southwest dialects of Middle English, which developed from the standard Late West Saxon dialect of

, but not in the standard Middle English dialect of London. The close vowels and are direct descendants of the corresponding Old English vowels and were indicated as . (In the standard dialect of Middle English, the sounds became and ; in Kentish, they became and .) may have existed in learned speech in loanwords from Old French, also spelled , but, as it merged with , becoming in Modern English, rather than , it can be assumed that was the vernacular pronunciation that was used in French-derived words. The mid-front rounded vowels likewise had existed in the southwest dialects but not in the standard Middle English dialect of London and were indicated as . Sometime in the 13th century, they became unrounded and merged with the normal front mid vowels. They derived from the

diphthongs and . There is no direct evidence that there was ever a distinction between open-mid and close-mid , but it can be assumed because of the corresponding distinction in the unrounded mid front vowels. would have derived directly from

, and derived from the open syllable lengthening of short , from the Old English short diphthong . The quality of the short open vowel is unclear. In early Middle English, it was presumably central since it represented the coalescence of the Old English vowels and . During Middle English breaking, it could not have been a front vowel since rather than was introduced after it. During Early Modern English, it was fronted in most environments to in southern England, and it and even closer values are found in the contemporary speech of southern England, North America and the Southern Hemisphere. It remains in much of Northern England, Scotland and the Caribbean. Meanwhile, the long open vowel, which developed later because of open syllable lengthening, was . It was gradually fronted, to successively , and , in the 16th and the 17th centuries.Dobson (1968), p. 594

Diphthongs

All of the above diphthongs came about during the Middle English. Old English had a number of diphthongs, but all of them had been reduced to monophthongs in the transition to Middle English. Diphthongs in Middle English came about by various processes and at various time periods and tended to change their quality over time. The changes above occurred mostly between early and late Middle English. Early Middle English had a distinction between open-mid and close-mid diphthongs, and all of the close-mid diphthongs had been eliminated by late Middle English. The following processes produced the above diphthongs: *Reinterpretation of Old English sequences of a vowel followed by Old English (which became after back vowels and after front vowels) or with pre-existing , : **OE ''weġ'' ('way') → EME **OE ''dæġ'' ('day') → ME → LME *Middle English breaking before ( after

s, after

front vowel A front vowel is a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages, its defining characteristic being that the highest point of the tongue is positioned approximately as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction th ...

s) *Borrowing, especially from

Phonological processes

The following sections describe the major phonological processes occurring between written Late West Saxon, the standard written form of Old English, and the end of Middle English, which is conventionally dated to around 1500 AD.

Homorganic lengthening

In late Old English, vowels were lengthened before certain clusters: , , , , . Later, the vowels in many of those words were shortened again, which gives the appearance that no lengthening happened, but evidence from the ''Ormulum'' indicates otherwise. For details see Phonological history of Old English#Vowel lengthening, Phonological history of Old English: Vowel lengthening.

Stressed vowel changes

Late West Saxon Late or LATE may refer to: Everyday usage * Tardy, or late, not being on time * Late (or the late) may refer to a person who is dead Music * ''Late'' (The 77s album), 2000 * Late (Alvin Batiste album), 1993 * Late!, a pseudonym used by Dave Groh ...

, the standard written form of Old English, included matched pairs of short and long vowels, including seven pairs of pure vowels (the monophthongs ) and two pairs of height-harmonic diphthongs: and . Two additional pairs of diphthongs, and , existed in earlier Old English but had been reduced to and , respectively, by late Old English. In the transition to Middle English, the system underwent major changes by eliminating the diphthongs and leaving only one pair of low vowels but with a vowel distinction appearing in the long mid vowels: *The diphthongs simplified to and , respectively. Subsequently, the low vowels were modified as follows: ** and merged to a single central vowel . ** and rose to and , respectively. *The diphthongs and (as in OE ''ċēosan'' 'to choose', ''frēond'' 'friend', and ''sċēotan'' 'to shoot') respectively simplified to new front-round vowels and (yielding /tʃøːzən/, /frøːnd/, and /ʃøːtən/ respectively). Everywhere except in the southwest, and were soon respectively backened to and between a palatal consonant and a following syllable (yielding Middle English ''cheosen'' /tʃoːzən/ 'to choose' and ''shoten'' /ʃoːtən/ 'to shoot'), and unrounded to and (yielding Middle English ''freend'' /freːnd/ 'friend') everywhere else. In the southwest, it took 200 or 300 years for the process to take place, and in the meantime, the sounds were spelled in texts there. *The front rounded vowels and unrounded to and respectively everywhere but in the southwest (the former West Saxon area) and the southeast (former Kentish area). **In the southwest, the front rounded vowels and remained, and were spelled . **In the southeast, the vowels had already been unrounded to and respectively in Old English and remained as such in Middle English. That left an asymmetric system consisting of five short vowels and six long vowels , with additional front rounded vowels in the southwest. Some symmetry was restored by open syllable lengthening, which restored a long low vowel .

Reduction and loss of unstressed vowels

Unstressed vowels were gradually confused in late Old English although spelling lagged behind because a standardized spelling system existed. By Early Middle English, all unstressed vowels were written , which probably represented . Also, in late Old English, final unstressed became ; during the Middle English period, this final was dropped when it was part of an inflectional syllable but remained when part of the root like ''seven'' or in derivational endings like ''written''). Around Chaucer's time, final was dropped. Inflectional evidence suggests that occurred first when the following word began with a vowel. A century or so later, unstressed also dropped in the plural genitive ending ''-es'' (spelled ''-s'' in Modern English) and the past ending ''-ed''. The changes steadily effaced most inflectional endings: *OE → ME → LME → NE ''meet'' *OE → ME → LME → NE ''week'' *OE → ME → LME → NE ''name'' In the last two examples, the stressed vowel was affected by open-syllable lengthening.

Vocalization of and development of new diphthongs

The sound , which had been a post-vocalic allophone of , became vocalized to . This occurred around the year 1200. A new set of diphthongs developed from combinations of vowel+ (either from or from pre-existing ) or vowel+ (from pre-existing ) and also from French loanwords: see

Diphthongs A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...

above.

Breaking

During the 12th or the 13th century, was inserted between a front vowel and a following (pronounced in this context), and a vowel was inserted between a back vowel and a following (pronounced in this context). A short was treated as a back vowel in the process; the long equivalent did not occur in the relevant context. See H-loss below.

Open-syllable lengthening

Around the 13th century, short vowels were lengthened in an open syllable (when they followed by a single consonant that in turn was followed by another vowel). In addition, non-low vowels were lowered: → , → , → , → . That accounts, for example, for the vowel difference between ''staff'' and the alternative plural ''staves'' (Middle English ''staf'' vs. ''stāves'', with open-syllable lengthening in the latter word). The process was restricted in the following ways: #It did not occur when two or more syllables followed because of the opposing process of trisyllabic laxing. #It only occasionally applied to the high vowels and , e.g. OE ''wudu'' → ME → ''wood''; OE ''wicu'' → ME → ''week''. Most instances of and remained as such: OE ''hnutu'' → NE ''nut'', OE ''riden'' → NE ''ridden''. The effects of open-syllable lengthening and trisyllabic laxing often led to differences in the stem vowel between singular and plural/genitive. Generally, such differences were regularized by analogy in one direction or another but not in a consistent way: *ME → NE ''path, paths'', but ME → NE ''whale, whales'' *ME → NE ''cradle, cradles'', but ME → NE ''saddle, saddles''

Trisyllabic laxing

In late Old English, vowels were shortened before clusters of two consonants when two or more syllables followed. Later in Middle English, the process was expanded, and applied to all vowels when two or more syllables followed. This led to the Modern English variations between ''divine'' vs. ''divinity'', ''school'' vs. ''scholarly'', ''grateful'' vs. ''gratitude'', etc. In some cases, later changes have led to apparently anomalous results, e.g. ''south'' vs. ''southern'' with only two syllables (but while trisyllabic laxing applied). The change is still fairly productive in Modern English.

Pre-cluster shortening

In late Old English, vowels were shortened before clusters of three consonants: *OE ''gāst'' → NE ''ghost'' ; OE ''gāstliċ'' → NE ''ghastly'' *OE ''ċild'' → NE ''child'' ; OE ''ċildru'' + OE ''-an'' → NE ''children'' *OE ''gōd'' → NE ''good''; OE ''gōdspell'' → NE ''gospel'' As shown by ''ghastly'', this shortening occurred before the raising of OE to EME , which occurred in the transition to Middle English. Later in Middle English, vowels were shortened before clusters of two consonants, except before and in some cases where homorganic lengthening applied. Examples: *OE ''cēpte'' → ''kept'' (cf. OE ''cēpan'' → ''keep'') *OE ''mētte'' → ''met'' (cf. OE ''mētan'' → ''meet'')

Reduction of double consonants

Double (

geminated In phonetics and phonology, gemination (; from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), or consonant lengthening, is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...

) consonants were reduced to single ones. This took place after open syllable lengthening; the syllable before a geminate was a closed syllable and so vowels were not lengthened before (originally) doubled consonants. The loss of gemination may have been stimulated by its small functional load since few minimal pairs of words existed that were distinguished solely by that feature.Britton, D., ''Degemination in English, with special reference to the Middle English period'', (in:) ''Analysing Older English'', CUP 2011, pp. 231 ff.

H-loss

The phoneme , when it occurred in the

syllable coda A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

, is believed to have had two allophones: the voiceless palatal fricative , occurring after

s, and the

voiceless velar fricative The voiceless velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It was part of the consonant inventory of Old English and can still be found in some dialects of English, most notably in Scottish English, e.g. in ''lo ...

, occurring after

s. The usual spelling in both cases was , which is retained today in words like ''night'' and ''taught''. Those sounds were lost during later Middle English and Early Modern English. The timing of the process depended on the dialect; the fricatives were still pronounced in some educated speech in the 16th century, but they had disappeared by the late 17th.Wells, J.C., ''Accents of English'', CUP 1982, p. 190. Loss of the fricatives was accompanied by some

compensatory lengthening Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda, or of a vowel in an adjacent syllable. Lengthening triggered ...

diphthongization In historical linguistics, vowel breaking, vowel fracture, or diphthongization is the sound change of a monophthong into a diphthong or triphthong. Types Vowel breaking may be unconditioned or conditioned. It may be triggered by the presence of ...

of preceding vowels. In some cases, the velar fricative developed into ; as such, the preceding vowel was shortened, and the of a diphthong was absorbed. Some developments are illustrated below: *OE ''niht'' ('night') → ME → → NE (by the

Great Vowel Shift The Great Vowel Shift was a series of English phonology, pronunciation changes in the vowels of the English language that took place primarily between the 1400s and 1600s (the transition period from Middle English to Early Modern English), begi ...

) *OE ''hlæhhan'' ('to laugh') → ME → LLME → ENE → NE *OE ''tōh'' ('tough') → ME → LLME → NE The variable outcome, along with other variable changes and the ambiguity of the Middle English spelling (either or in Early Middle English, accounts for the numerous pronunciations of Modern English words in ''-ough-'' (e.g. ''though'', ''through'', ''bough'', ''rough'', ''trough'', ''thought'', with ''-ough-'' pronounced respectively). spelled ''-gh-'' is realized as even today in some traditional dialects of

northern England Northern England, or the North of England, refers to the northern part of England and mainly corresponds to the Historic counties of England, historic counties of Cheshire, Cumberland, County Durham, Durham, Lancashire, Northumberland, Westmo ...

and more famously in Scots. Some accents in

lack the and instead exhibit special vowel developments in some such words: ''night'' as (sounds like ''neat'') and in the dialectal words ''owt'' and ''nowt'' (from ''aught'' and ''naught'', pronounced like ''out'' and ''nout'', meaning 'anything' and 'nothing'). The modern phoneme most commonly appears today in the typically-Scottish word ''

loch ''Loch'' ( ) is a word meaning "lake" or "inlet, sea inlet" in Scottish Gaelic, Scottish and Irish Gaelic, subsequently borrowed into English. In Irish contexts, it often appears in the anglicized form "lough". A small loch is sometimes calle ...

'' and in names such as ''

Buchan Buchan is a coastal district in the north-east of Scotland, bounded by the Ythan and Deveron rivers. It was one of the original provinces of the Kingdom of Alba. It is now one of the six committee areas of Aberdeenshire. Etymology The ge ...

''. There, the is usual in Scotland although the alternative is becoming more common among some younger speakers. The same is true in Wales, in names such as ''

Loughor Loughor (; ) is a town in Swansea, Wales. Historic counties of Wales, Historically in Glamorgan, it lies on the estuary of the River Loughor (). The town has a community (Wales), community council under the name Llwchwr. The town is bordered by ...

''. English-speakers from elsewhere may replace the in such cases with , but some use in imitation of the local pronunciations as they may in certain foreign words such as ''

Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (German: �joːhan zeˈbasti̯an baχ ( – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety of instruments and forms, including the or ...

'', ''

Kharkiv Kharkiv, also known as Kharkov, is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city in Ukraine.

'', ''

Sakhalin Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, p=səxɐˈlʲin) is an island in Northeast Asia. Its north coast lies off the southeastern coast of Khabarovsk Krai in Russia, while its southern tip lies north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. An islan ...

'' and ''

chutzpah Chutzpah ( - ) is the quality of audacity, for good or for bad. A close English equivalent is sometimes " hubris". The word derives from the Hebrew ' (), meaning "insolence", "cheek" or "audacity". Thus, the original Yiddish word has a strongly ...

''.

Great Vowel Shift

The

was a fundamental change in late Middle English (post-Chaucer) and

Early Modern English Early Modern English (sometimes abbreviated EModEFor example, or EMnE) or Early New English (ENE) is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transit ...

that affected the pronunciation of all of the long vowels. The high vowels and were diphthongized, ultimately producing the modern diphthongs and , and all other vowels were raised.

Diphthong loss

This is not normally considered a part of the Great Vowel Shift, but during the same time period, most pre-existing Middle English diphthongs were monophthongized: * → ENE → → NE * → ENE * → ENE → NE The remaining diphthongs developed as follows: *, → ENE → NE . is still used in

Welsh English Welsh English comprises the dialects of English spoken by Welsh people. The dialects are significantly influenced by Welsh language, Welsh grammar and often include words derived from Welsh. In addition to the distinctive words and grammar, ...

. *, → NE

Vowel equivalents from Old English to Modern English

For a detailed description of the changes between Old English and Middle and Modern English, see the article on the

phonological history of English Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar (but not identical) phonological system. A ...

. A summary of the main vowel changes is presented below. The spelling of Modern English largely reflects Middle English pronunciation.

Monophthongs

This table presents the general developments. Many exceptional outcomes occurred in particular environments. For example, vowels were often lengthened in late Old English before , , , and vowels changed in complex ways before throughout the history of English. Vowels were diphthongized in Middle English before , and new diphthongs arose in Middle English by the combination of vowels with Old English , → , and . For more information, see the section below. The only conditional development considered in detail below is Middle English open-syllable lengthening. In the column on modern spelling, ''CV'' means a sequence of a single consonant followed by a vowel. The Modern English vowel that is usually spelled (

Received Pronunciation Received Pronunciation (RP) is the Accent (sociolinguistics), accent of British English regarded as the Standard language, standard one, carrying the highest Prestige (sociolinguistics), social prestige, since as late as the beginning of the 2 ...

: ,

General American General American English, known in linguistics simply as General American (abbreviated GA or GenAm), is the umbrella accent of American English used by a majority of Americans, encompassing a continuum rather than a single unified accent. ...

: ) does not appear in the above chart. Its main source is late Middle English < early and , which come from various sources: Old English and (''claw'' < , ''law'' < ); diphthongization before (''sought'' < , ''taught'' < , ''daughter'' < ); borrowings from Latin and French (''fawn'' <

Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th

). Other sources are Early Modern English lengthening of before (''salt'', ''all''); occasional shortening and later relengthening of Middle English (''broad'' < < ); and in American English, lengthening of short ''o'' before unvoiced fricatives and voiced velars (''dog'', ''long'', ''off'', ''cross'', ''moth'', all with in American dialects that still maintain the difference between and ). As mentioned above, Modern English is derived from the Middle English of London, which is derived largely from Anglian Old English, with some admixture of West Saxon and Kentish. One of the most noticeable differences among the dialects is the handling of original Old English . By the time of the written Old English documents, the Old English of Kent had already unrounded to , and the late Old English of Anglia unrounded to . In the West Saxon area, remained as such well into Middle English times and was written in Middle English documents from the area. Some words with the sound were borrowed into London Middle English, where the unfamiliar was substituted with : *''gild'' < , ''did'' < , ''sin'' < , ''mind'' < , ''dizzy'' < , ''lift'' < etc. show the normal (Anglian) development; *''much'' < shows the West Saxon development; *''merry'' < shows the Kentish development; *''bury'' < has its spelling from West Saxon but its pronunciation from Kentish; *''busy'' < , ''build'' < , ''buy'' < have their spelling from West Saxon but their pronunciation from Anglian. Some apparent instances of modern for Old English are actually regular developments, particularly if the is a development of earlier (West Saxon) from i-mutation of , as the normal i-mutation of in Anglian is ; for example, ''stern'' < < , ''steel'' < ''stȳle'' < (cf.

Old Saxon Old Saxon (), also known as Old Low German (), was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Eur ...

). Also, some apparent instances of modern for Old English may actually be from the influence of a related form with unmutated : ''sundry'' < , influenced by "apart, differently" (compare ''to sunder'' and ''asunder'').

Diphthongs

References

Sources

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Middle English Phonology English phonology

Phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...