 The goal of this e-lecture is to introduce you to the sound system of old English. You might ask how can we set up a sound system of a language where we have no audio recordings, let alone native speakers? Well, the details of the sound system of an extinct language are normally inferred from the written remains and if they don't exist either, the principles of comparative phonology are applied, sound shifts, losses and so on. In the case of old English, we have written records, especially from the later history. But even with these, we can only arrive at an approximation and have to set up a sound system where no auditory verification is possible. Nevertheless, we will try. And even more so, I will produce the sounds of old English. So, let's start. This is what we will be doing. First, we will define a reference variety of old English, then we will look at the old English phonemes in detail. We will take a look at the orthography of old English and we'll finally try and exemplify the sounds of old English on the basis of a written text. So, let's start. Now, surviving texts from the old English period occur in four main varieties. West Saxon, Kentish, Merchant and Northumbrian. Towards the end of the old English period, the West Saxon Kingdom, West-X, became dominant and the West Saxon variety became the literary standard. Thus, most scholars treat West Saxon as the leading variety of old English. Today, the following classes of phonemes are assumed for the West Saxon variety of old English. We have 15 monophthongs that can be subdivided into seven long ones and seven short ones and one central monophthong. We have four diphthongal phonemes and we have 17 consonantal phonemes. The consonantal phonemes had much the same value as they have in present day English, but they have a different distribution. The vowels by contrast differed considerably from their modern counterparts. So, let's look at all phonemes in detail and let's start with the monophthongs here. First of all, with the long monophthongs. We already said there were seven long monophthongs in old English. So, let's look at them in detail. Here is the first one. Tide, the E as in Tide, present day English, this is of course Tide. Then we have an E as in Greene, present day English, Green. Old English had an A as in Dale, present day English, Deal. There was a low back vowel, A as in Gart, present day English, Goat. A mid high back vowel, O as in Foda, present day English, Food. And a high back vowel, O as in Housse, present day English, this is of course House. And then a vowel which did not exist or does not exist in present day English any longer, the rounded high front vowel, U as in Mousse, present day English, Mice. As you can see, orthographically, these long monophthongs were all indicated by means of a Macron on top of the vowel. So, this is the indication of vowel length in orthography. The pattern of the long monophthongs in Old English is a highly congruent pattern. Let us now add the short monophthongs. And as I already said, there are seven short monophthongs too. So, here they are. Each long monophthong had a short counterpart. Presentation is overlapping because we cannot put them in the same position on a chart like that. Here is the first one. Kisson, short E, a high front vowel as in the present day English verb to kiss. Short A, which is slightly lower than the high one. Bed, a mid high front vowel which is approaching the mid position. And a low front vowel, short vowel, A as in that present day English, this is that. And then a low back vowel, here it is. Macian, present day English make. Here is the counterpart of the long mid high back vowel, O as in Hopian, short O. This is the short O, a high back vowel, full, present day English, full of course. And here is the equivalent of the front, rounded front vowel, Phyllian as in present day English, Phil. And last but not least, there was one central vowel, namely the schwa. Sorry, I had to switch off this one. This is the one in Julliver, which means present day English, believe. So in unstressed position, we have this short central vowel. So the whole monofungal system was a relatively congruent pattern. Each front vowel had a back vowel counterpart, however, the quality of the mid high front vowel, E, was a bit lower than that of its back vowel counterpart. The most important difference as compared with present day English was the availability of rounded front vowels, long O and short O, like in German for example. Like present day English, old English also had the central vowel schwa, which occurred in most unstressed syllables, for example in the prefix Ye or in suffixes for example De. Let's continue with the four diphthongs in old English. Now, the diphthongs in old English occurred in two pairs, long and short. They were all centering, that is their second vocalic element was the central vowel schwa. This movement towards the central target can also be referred to as ingliding, so all old English diphthongs were ingliding diphthongs. Here they are, let's start with the short ones. The first one is Er as in Herte, present day English Hart. The second one has a lower onset. It is Er as in Eller, which means present day English all. And the two long ones, here is the first long one, Er, Behr, which means present day English beer. And the second one is Er, which occurs in the word Schaap, present day English sheep. A relatively straightforward diphthongal system. Here are the seventeen consonants. And again I want to stress that they are consonantal phonemes. Old English retained all consonants of common Germanic, although the distribution of some of them had been affected by some sound changes. So let us compare the consonantal system with that of present day English. Let's first of all look at the inventory. Now there were some strange or amazing inventory differences. For example, the Schaap, the first one here, as in Licht and the Schaap as in Fucht. Were part of the sound inventory, however, as you can see here, there were allophones of the phoneme H, that is the glottal fricative. Similarly, the R as in Ahran was a special allophone of G. So this is an inventory difference, however, on an allophonic level. Now secondly, we have distributional differences. And this is quite interesting. The voiced fricatives, V, as in Driven, V, as in Bavian, or Z, as in Reason, they were only used in voiced contexts. Elsewhere, for example, word initially, their voiceless counterparts are used. So let's look at them in detail. So here is the labiodental fricative phoneme with two allophones. The V in voiced environments and the voiceless allophone elsewhere. And similarly, we have the dental fricative phoneme again with the voiced allophone in voiced contexts and the voiceless one elsewhere, Bavian versus Thunur. And likewise, the alveolar fricative, voiceless sonar and voiced in a voiced environment, Reason. Thus, we can establish the following rule. A, well, let's call it fricative rule for Old English. Whenever we have one of these fricatives, labiodental, dental, or alveolar, we have two allophones. One allophone occurs in a voiced environment and it is voiced, V, V, and Z. And the second one occurs in voiceless environments. Finally, we have some special sounds in Old English. And these, of course, concern the pronunciation of the R. Now, one thing is assumed for Old English and that is a high degree of roticity, which means that the R was pronounced in all contexts, even after vowels. And secondly, it is hard to say what type of R was used. Was it the alveolar trill as in driven? Was it the alveolar approximate as in driven? Or the alveolar flap as in driven? Well, it is hard to say. Thus, it's up to you which one you use. I normally use the alveolar trill as the primary allophone of the R, but we could say that the allophones of R are in free variation. Further differences between present-day English and Old English concern the use of the Vila nasal and the allophonic realization of K. Well, having talked about the phonemic system, let's now talk about the orthography of Old English. The Anglo-Saxons first used a runic alphabet. Now, this alphabet was called Fudak after the initial letters of the symbols that had all names. And so here we have the phail, the ur, the thorn, the os, the R, and the ken. And so, if you combine these letters, the initial letters primarily, then you get Fudak. Now, each rune was a letter in the alphabet, and it also stood for a word. The earliest use of runes, and this is just an excerpt, was for magical purposes. There were many different Fudaks. The fragment used here is an older Germanic Fudak. Later, Irish monks brought the Latin alphabet to England and some new letters with it. And the Old English writing system was based from now on on a modified Latin alphabet. Now, here are some symbols that were used in Old English but are no longer used in present-day English. I just marked some significant ones. This one, for example, is the so-called ash. You know that from the phonetic alphabet. And then, of course, we have here the macrons as length marks on top of the vowels. Quite interesting is this one here. Here we have representations of the dental fricative, the ev, the second one is the so-called ev. And the first one is a capitalization of a character which is represented normally over here. And that is the character thorn used for dental fricatives. Let's finally exemplify Old English and read a textual excerpt. Now, here I have a little book which is entitled Old English Literature. And it was published by Randolph Quirk, Valerie Adams, and Derek Davy a long time ago. But these texts obviously don't change anymore. And I will read a little passage from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which was published or which was written in 991 as a short excerpt of the famous Battle of Maldon. So, here it is. That was Kaelan Sunu, the son of Forman Man, with his Franken-off shirt. There, Baldlicoste, on Thabritje Stoop. There, Stodon with Wolfstahne, Wien and Forchte, Alvare and Macus, Maudie II. Tha Nolden at Thamforda Flem, Jewirken, a key fast leacher with Thafund Verden. Tha Huile, the he, Wepna, Welden, Moston. This may suffice as an impression of Old English. Now, let us summarize. The Old English sound system is still very much Germanic in character and much closer to German than to present-day English. The 15 monophones, the four diphthones and the 17 consonants constitute the heart of the Old English sound system. In this e-lecture, please consider it only as an attempt. I tried to do my very best to pronounce all these phonemes with their alophonic realizations. And I hope the last passage of the Battle of Maldon gave you some impression about what Old English could have sounded like. Thanks for your attention.