Old English Writings

Old English scribes used two kinds of letters: the runes and the letters of the Latin alphabet, thus the OE letters were sometime very like and sometimes very unlike those used in modern English.

The following symbols are not in use today:

æ – ash (æsc), which represents the vowel in Modern English 'hat' ;

þ – thorn, which represents Modern English 'th' ;

ð – eth (or ðæt), which also represents Modern English 'th'. Capital ð is written Ð;

œ – the combination of o and e;

Ʒ=g (yogh), that could be pronounced in many different ways (see later).

Old English writings were based on a phonetic principle: every letter indicated a separate sound, some letters indicated three or more sounds. The same letters stood for both short and long sounds: it is customary to indicate long vowels in texts by means of a macron – a line over the top.

How Do We Know What Old English Pronunciation Was Like?

We may not have a very accurate idea of Old English pronunciation, compared to how accurately we can describe the pronunciation of languages that are spoken now.

The knowledge that we do have about Old English pronunciation comes from a number of different sources: the Anglo-Saxons' use of the Roman alphabet to represent sounds in their language that must in some cases have been quite different from the sounds of Latin; the forms that words from Latin and other languages take when they are adopted into Old English and the forms that Old English words take when they are represented by Latin-speaking or French-speaking scribes; evidence about English and its dialects from later periods; evidence from the cognate languages of other Germanic peoples. By combining these various different kinds of evidence, we are able to get a very good rough idea of what the usual pronunciation of Old English was, and some idea of pronunciations in different dialects of the language.

The Old English Sound System

The Old English Phonetic system was very much different from the modern one. There existed many sounds that has not survived in the course of time (for example the sound [χ], similar to a rough exhalation); many modern vowels and consonant (like [ei], [ou]) didn’t appear yet.

The phonetic system of Old English preserved in general the Common Germanic structure of sounds. Main phonetic features of Germanic languages – Grimm's Law and Verner's Law – are clearly seen in Old English, as well as many processes which took part among vowels and diphthongs. However, Old English had sometimes moved further in developing the phonetics, and that is why some of its models are a bit hard to trace back to the Common Germanic period.

Old English Vowels

Old English Vowel	Description, Position, Pronunciation	The letter used for the vowel	Example
MONOPHTHONGS
i	Short front vowel; it is pronounced in Old English in much the same way as it is in Modern English (like in still);	i	bindan (to bind)
i:	Long front vowel; like in ModEnglish steal	ī	wrītan (to write)
e	Short front vowel; ModEnglish bed	e	helpan (help)
e:	Long front [e] vowel; it is pronounced like an extended version of the first element in the diphtong [ei] in name; or like in German Meer	ē	cēpan (keep)
æ	Short back vowel; met mainly in closed syllables, or in open ones, if the next syllable contains a front vowel; like in ModE back	æ	wæter (water)
æ:	Long back vowel, like a longer variant of a ModE vowel in bad	ǣ	drǣfan (drive)
a	Short back vowel; mainly in open syllables, when the following one contains a back vowel; like in ModE cup	a	macian (make)
a:	Long back [a] vowel; In any kind of syllables; like in ModE star	ā	stān (stone)
o	Short back vowel; like in ModE cost	o	stolen (stole)
o:	Long back [o] vowel; like in ModE store	ō	scōc (shook)
u	Short back vowel; used only when the next syllable contains another back vowel; like in ModE book	u	hulpon (they helped)
u:	Long back [u] vowel; like ModE stool	ū	lūcan (lock)
y	Short front vowel; i-mutation of u; like modern German vowel in fünf; pronounced as i, with lips in a whistling position	y	wyllen (woolen)
y:	Long front [y] vowel; i-mutation of ū, like in German glühen	ỹ	mỹs (mice)
DIPHTHONGS A diphthong is a glide from one vowel sound to another pronounced as a single syllable. The short OE diphthongs ea, eo, io, ie and the long diphthong īe appeared after phonetic changes in pronunciation of some sounds. These were the processes of mutation, fracture and palatalization (see later). The long diphtong ēa and ēo resulted from Gothic sounds.
ea	The sounds starts with æ and glides to a, with the emphasis on the first sound.	ea	earm (arm)
ea:	The sounds starts with ǣ and glides to a, with the emphasis on the first sound.	ēa	cēas (chose)
eo	The sounds starts with e and glides to o, with the emphasis on the first sound.	eo	meolkan (to milk)
eo:	The sounds starts with ē and glides to o, with the emphasis on the first sound.	ēo	cēosan (choose)
ie	The sounds starts with i and glides to e, with the emphasis on the first sound.	ie	iefan (give)
ie:	The sounds starts with ī and glides to e, with the emphasis on the first sound.	īe	hīeran (hear)
io	The sounds starts with ī and glides to o, with the emphasis on the first sound. This diphthong in most cases is the variant of eo
io:	The sounds starts with ī and glides to o , with the emphasis on the first sound.

The consonants in the Old English language are simple to learn for a nowadays English-speaker. They look the following way:

Labials	p, b, f, v
Dentals	d, t, s, þ (English [th] in  thin), ð (English [th] in this)
Velars	c [k], g/Ʒ, h
Liquids	r, l
Nasals	n, m

Of them the special attention is always attracted to the letter g. In fact though it was written the same way in every position, it was pronounced in three different ways:

1. As English [g] in gift while standing before any consonant or a, o, u (all back vowels). The example is gōd (a god).

2. As Greek 'gamma' [] or Irish gh while standing after back vowels (these very a, o, u or after r, l. For example dagas, folgian.

3. As English [j] in yellow while preceding or following any front vowel (e, i, y). In this case it is no longer velar, but palatal: giefan (to give), dæg (a day). As we see, this g in dæg later turned into the Modern English y.