Letters and Sounds
Middle English Grammar 1
Chapter 1 · Letters and Sounds
📜 Letters and Sounds
Before the grammar, you need to know what you are looking at on the page. This chapter shows the letters of Middle English and which of them were on their way out, then gives the main rules for saying a word aloud. It uses Wikipedia's Middle English article (its Phonology and Orthography sections) and the Yogh and Thorn (letter) articles. Where they do not say something, the chapter says so. For the history behind the changes, see The History of the English Language, Chapter 3.
The letters that were going
| Letter | Name | What happened (per the articles) |
|---|---|---|
| Æ æ | ash | No longer needed once its vowel merged into /a/; kept as a ligature for ae in Greek and Latin words (the same goes for œ for oe) |
| Ð ð | eth | Out of use in the 13th century, replaced by thorn |
| Þ þ | thorn | Mostly out in the 14th century, replaced by th; scribes sometimes used both eth and thorn for the same sound |
| Ƿ ƿ | wynn | Replaced by w in the 13th century (the Thorn article says wynn was out of use by 1300) |
| Ȝ ȝ | yogh | From the insular form of g; stood for several sounds (below); replaced by gh, y, g or j; the Yogh article gives its use as about 1150 to 1500 |
- Yogh's sounds. The Middle English article lists /ɣ/, /j/, /dʒ/, /x/ and /ç/. The Yogh article lists /g/ and its velar allophones, /j/, /x/ (and palatal [ç], as in niȝt), and sometimes /dʒ/ or /w/. The two lists differ in detail and I show both. The digraph gh appeared in the 14th century for /x/ and eventually won out.
- Why "ye"? The Middle English article says a thorn with superscript letters was a common abbreviation for the and that. The Thorn article says thorn lost its ascender and looked like y, that printers using type with no thorn substituted y, and that "ye" was never pronounced with /j/. It marks the printers-imported-type explanation as disputed.
- Z for yogh. The Yogh article says Scots printers often used z when yogh was not in their fonts, which is why names such as MacKenzie keep a z and why Menzies is "most correctly" pronounced mingis by that article's account.
New letters, and letters that swapped
The article says k, q and z came into common use, and that u and v, and i and j, were interchangeable. So you will see wijf (modern wife) and paradijs, both given as examples in the article. A macron over a letter often meant an omitted n or m.
Vowels
The Middle English article gives these letter-to-sound values. The arrows show where the article says the sound was heading by about 1500, because of the Great Vowel Shift (The History of the English Language, Chapter 6).
| Letters | Value in Middle English | Later |
|---|---|---|
| a | /a/, or /aː/ in lengthened positions | /aː/ becomes [æː] by about 1500 |
| ai, ay | /ai/ | |
| au, aw | /au/ | |
| e | /e/, or /eː/ or /ɛː/ in lengthened positions | |
| ee | /eː/ or /ɛː/ | /eː/ becomes [iː] and /ɛː/ becomes [eː] by about 1500 |
| i, j | /i/, or /iː/ | /iː/ starts to diphthongise by about 1500 |
| o | /o/, or /ɔː/ in lengthened positions | |
| oo | /oː/ or /ɔː/ | /oː/ becomes [uː] by about 1500 |
| ou, ow | /uː/, or /ɔu/ | |
| oi, oy | /ɔi/ or /ui/ |
The article describes these through the table, and gives no separate list of diphthongs. It also says: Old English diphthongs were reduced to monophthongs and new ones appeared through vowel breaking, through /j/ and /w/ becoming offglides, and through French borrowing; Old English /æ/ and /ɑ/ merged into /a/; /æː/ rose to /ɛː/; front rounded vowels unrounded in most dialects; and vowels in open syllables lengthened in the 13th century.
Dialects
For the vowels, the part of the article I read gives only two dialect points: Old English /ɑː/ rounded to /ɔː/ in southern dialects, and the front rounded vowels unrounded "in most dialects". It does not give a vowel chart for each dialect. I will show dialect forms in later chapters wherever the sources give them, and say plainly where they do not.
The final -e and the length of vowels
- A silent final -e marks a long vowel, as in name. The article says the vowel was originally long because it stood in an open syllable, and the final e later became the marker.
- A doubled consonant shows a short vowel, either from real double consonants or by analogy. Double consonants (gemination) were lost as sounds, so they became single.
- Voiced fricatives: /v/, /ð/ and /z/ became separate sounds, not just variants of the voiceless ones.
Consonants that look odd
| Spelling | Value (per the article) | Example |
|---|---|---|
| gh after a vowel | Allophones of /h/, [ç] or [x]; Chancery spellings kept gh even as the sound was being lost | knight [ˈkniçt] |
| kn- | Both the k and the n were pronounced | knight |
| gn- at the start | The g was still pronounced | |
| mb | The b became silent in later Middle English | |
| h in some French loans | Silent in some, such as horrible | horrible |
In use
The four opening lines of the General Prologue, as Wikipedia's General Prologue article prints them (Chapter 3 of The History of the English Language shows them with a paraphrase). The table picks out spellings and shows the article's letter-to-sound values for each. The matching of words to values is my own application and I did not check it against a recording or a reading aid.
| Word | Spelling | Possible value, from the table |
|---|---|---|
| shoures | ou | /uː/ or /ɔu/ |
| soote | oo | /oː/ or /ɔː/ |
| roote | oo | /oː/ or /ɔː/ |
| flour | ou | /uː/ or /ɔu/ |
| droghte | gh | [ç] or [x], before the t |
Reading a word aloud: a short procedure
- Replace the old letters you meet: þ and ð with th, ƿ with w, ȝ according to its neighbours.
- Pronounce the vowels with the Middle English values in the table, not the Modern English ones.
- Pronounce the consonants in clusters such as kn- and gn-, and treat gh as [ç] or [x].
- Treat a final -e as silent in prose, and as a sound in verse if the metre needs it.
- Remember that the spelling may be one of several for the same word.
Words to know
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Digraph | Two letters that stand for one sound, such as th |
| Diphthong | A vowel that glides from one sound to another |
| Monophthong | A vowel with a single, steady sound |
| Geminate | A doubled (long) consonant |
| Allophone | A variant of one sound used in certain positions |
| Ligature | Two letters written joined, such as æ |
✏️ Try It Yourself
Think of the answer first, then click to check.
1. Which Old English letters had been replaced by the end of the Middle English period, and by what?
Show answer
Eth by thorn (13th century); thorn by th (14th century); wynn by w (13th century); yogh by gh, y, g or j.
2. Why was "ye olde" never pronounced with a y sound?
Show answer
The y stood for a thorn, so the word was the; the Thorn article says it was never pronounced with /j/.
3. Name three sounds yogh could stand for.
Show answer
For example /j/, /x/ and /dʒ/ (both articles list /j/ and /x/).
4. What does the final -e do in name?
Show answer
It is silent but marks the vowel before it as long.
5. When might a final -e be pronounced in Chaucer?
Show answer
In verse, to fit the metre; in normal speech it was silent by Chaucer's time.
6. What does a doubled consonant tell you about the vowel before it?
Show answer
That it is short.
7. How was the kn of knight pronounced?
Show answer
Both the k and the n were pronounced.
8. What was the sound of gh in knight?
Show answer
[ç] (or [x]); the article gives knight as [ˈkniçt].
9. Which two spellings show u/v and i/j interchange in the article's examples?
Show answer
wijf and paradijs, spelled with j for i.
10. What does the article say about dialects in the vowels?
Show answer
In the part I read: /ɑː/ rounded to /ɔː/ in southern dialects, and front rounded vowels unrounded in most dialects; it gives no chart per dialect.