Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
This results in pronunciation variants in Modern English such as divine vs divinity and south vs. southern (OE sūðerne). Middle English open syllable lengthening: Vowels were usually lengthened in open syllables (13th century), except when trisyllabic laxing would apply.
Old English phonology is the pronunciation system of Old English, the Germanic language spoken on Great Britain from around 450 to 1150 and attested in a body of written texts from the 7th–12th centuries.
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.
The English language changed enormously during the Middle English period, in vocabulary, in pronunciation, and in grammar. While Old English is a heavily inflected language ( synthetic ), the use of grammatical endings diminished in Middle English ( analytic ).
Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, was an early form of English in medieval England. It is different from Early Modern English, the language of Shakespeare and the King James Bible, and from Middle English, the language of Geoffrey Chaucer. See Old English phonology for more detail on the sounds of Old English.
The Great Vowel Shift was a series of chain shifts that affected historical long vowels but left short vowels largely alone. It is one of the primary causes of the idiosyncrasies in English spelling. The shortening of ante-penultimate syllables in Middle English created many long–short pairs. The result can be seen in such words as,
Language portal; Linguistics portal; This category covers History of the English language, primarily: Old English; Middle English; Modern English; Generally it does not cover the evolution of dialects, pidgins, constructed languages, and so on. See also: Category:Dialects of English; Category:Forms of English
Old English is essentially a distinct language from Modern English and is virtually impossible for 21st-century unstudied English-speakers to understand. Its grammar was similar to that of modern German: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs had many more inflectional endings and forms , and word order was much freer than in Modern English.