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Moving forward in time, the two Middle English vowels /a/ and /aː/ correspond directly to the two vowels /a/ and /ɛː/, respectively, in the Early Modern English of c. 1600 AD (the time of Shakespeare). However, each vowel has split into a number of different pronunciations in Modern English, depending on the phonological context.
The bad–lad split is a phonological split of the Early Modern English short vowel phoneme /æ/ into a short /æ/ and a long /æː/. This split is found in some varieties of English in England and Australia. In Modern English, a new phoneme, /ɑː/, developed that did not exist in Middle English.
The following table shows the 24 consonant phonemes found in most dialects of English, plus /x/, whose distribution is more limited. Fortis consonants are always voiceless, aspirated in syllable onset (except in clusters beginning with /s/ or /ʃ/), and sometimes also glottalized to an extent in syllable coda (most likely to occur with /t/, see T-glottalization), while lenis consonants are ...
For example, cniht ('boy') /knixt/, may have been phonetically realized as [kniçt]. The use of the sound [ç] in this position is supported by developments in English pronunciation seen from the thirteenth century onward: original /x/ sometimes became /f/ after a back vowel (e.g. rough, tough, trough), but this change is never seen after a ...
The Sound Pattern of English (frequently referred to as SPE) is a 1968 work on phonology (a branch of linguistics) by Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle. In spite of its title, it presents not only a view of the phonology of English, but also discussions of a large variety of phonological phenomena of many other languages. The index lists about 100 ...
Thus, the English of south-eastern England could then have had nine diphthongs. By the late 16th century, the inventory of diphthongs had been reduced as a result of several developments, all of which took place in the mid-to-late 16th century: [4] /ɛw/ merged into /ɪw/ and so dew and due became homophones.
The phonological system of the Old English language underwent many changes during the period of its existence. These included a number of vowel shifts, and the palatalisation of velar consonants in many positions. For historical developments prior to the Old English period, see Proto-Germanic language.
Middle English phonology is necessarily somewhat speculative since it is preserved only as a written language. Nevertheless, there is a very large text corpus 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 ...