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However, this earlier Middle English vowel /a/ is itself the merger of a number of different Anglian Old English sounds: the short vowels indicated in Old English spelling as a , æ and ea ; the long equivalents ā , ēa , and often ǣ when directly followed by two or more consonants (indicated by ā+CC, ǣ+CC, etc.);
Many Greek letters are similar to Phoenician, except the letter direction is reversed or changed, which can be the result of historical changes from right-to-left writing to boustrophedon, then to left-to-right writing. Global distribution of the Cyrillic alphabet. The dark green areas shows the countries where this alphabet is the sole main ...
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.
Vowels other than /a/ are often syncopated in unstressed word-internal syllables, especially in contact with liquid consonants or, to a lesser extent, nasal consonants or /s/, as in /ˈanɡulus, ˈkalida, ˈspekulum/ > /ˈanɡlʊs, ˈkalda, ˈspɛklu/.
The Modern English descendants sleep and sheep reflect the Anglian vowel; the West Saxon words would have developed to *sleap, *sheap. The vowel affected by this change, which is reconstructed as being a low back vowel ā [ɑː] in Proto-West-Germanic, was the reflex of Proto-Germanic /ɛː/.
Certain English accents feature variant pronunciations of these sounds. These include fronting , where they merge with /f/ and /v/ (found in Cockney and some other dialects); stopping , where they approach /t/ and /d/ (as in some Irish speech); alveolarisation , where they become /s/ and /z/ (in some African varieties); and debuccalisation ...
English spelling was also influenced by Norman in this period, with the /θ/ and /ð/ sounds being spelled th, rather than with the Old English letters þ (thorn) and ð (eth), which did not exist in Norman. These letters remain in the modern Icelandic and Faroese alphabets, having been borrowed from Old English via Old West Norse.
English phonology is the system of speech sounds used in spoken English. Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation , both historically and from dialect to dialect . In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar (but not identical) phonological system.