Help:IPA/Old English

Wikipedia key to pronunciation of Old English From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The tables below show how the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Old English pronunciations in Wikipedia articles. For a guide to adding IPA characters to Wikipedia articles, see Template:IPA and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation § Entering IPA characters.

This is the pronunciation key for IPA transcriptions of Old English on Wikipedia.

It provides a set of symbols to represent the pronunciation of Old English in Wikipedia articles, and example words that illustrate the sounds that correspond to them. Integrity must be maintained between the key and the transcriptions that link here; do not change any symbol or value without establishing consensus on the talk page first.

For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

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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.

Key

More information IPA, Examples ...

Consonants^[1]
IPA	Examples	Modern English approximation
b	bysiġ, lamb, habban	busy
ç	niht, tǣhte^[2]	hue
d	dōn, fæder, land, biddan	do
dʒ	senġan, eċġ^[3]	jam
ð	ōþer, eorþe^[4]	other
f	fæder, ƿīf, offrian^[4]	father
ɡ	gōd, gnætt, ġeong^[3]	good
h	hēah, hǣlþ^[2]	heaven
j	ġeong, næġl, ƿeġ, ġēa, bysiġ^[3]	year
k	cyning, cnǣƿ, tusc, hnecca, axian^[3]^[5]	king
l	lufu, hǣlþ, næġl	leaf
ɫ	feallan, eald^[6]	peal
l̥	hlāf, hlehhan^[7]	whispered leaf
m	mōdor, magan, lamb	mother
n	nēah, cnēo, gnætt, land, habban, sunne	near
n̥	hnutu, hnecca^[7]	whispered near
ŋ	ġeong, drincan	young
p	pæþ	path
r	rǣdan, mōdor^[8]	read
rˠ	eorþe, steorra^[6]^[8]	ruff
r̥	hring^[7]^[8]	whispered read
s	sunne, missan, axian^[4]^[5]	sun
ʃ	sċeadu, fisċ^[3]	shadow
t	tīd, hƿæt, settan	stand
tʃ	ċēace, ƿiċċe^[3]	cheese
θ	þæt, pæþ, hǣlþ, siþþan^[4]	through
v	ofer, lufu^[4]	over
ɣ	magan, lagu, dagum	Spanish fuego
w^[9]	ƿīf, cƿic, cnǣƿ	wife
ʍ	hƿā, hƿæt^[7]	what (some speakers)
x	hēah, þurh, hlehhan^[2]	loch (Scottish English)
z	bysiġ^[4]	busy

Vowels^[10]
IPA	Examples	Modern English approximation
ɑ	axian, sċeadu, hnecca^[11]	cot (American English)
ɑː	ān, hlāf, hƿā	father
æ	æfter, fæder	cat
æː	ǣniġ, hǣlþ	dad
e	eċġ, fæder	Spanish te
eː	ēþel	similar to made
i	ilca, cƿic, hāliġ	feet
iː	īsiġ, tīd	need
o	ofer, sċeolde, heofon^[11]	short
oː	ōþer, mōdor	door
ø	eorþe^[12]	hurt
øː	ġemœ̄tan^[12]	blur
u	under, ġeong, lufu^[11]	pull
uː	ūt	pool
y	sċyld, yfel	youth (some dialects^[13]); French tu
yː	fȳr	you (some dialects^[13]); German Dürer
Diphthongs
æɑ	eald	mouth (Cockney)
æːɑ	ēage, nēah	now (Cockney)
eo	eorþe, heofon	bed + rod
eːo	ēoƿu, dēor	snail (MLE)
iy	siex^[14]	feet + French tu
iːy	nīehst^[14]	need + French tu

Suprasegmentals
IPA	Examples	Explanation
ˈ	eorþe [ˈeorˠðe]	stress mark (placed right before the stressed syllable)

Notes

[1]
Old English had geminate (double) consonants, which were pronounced longer than single consonants. Double consonants were written with double consonant letters. The double consonants in habban, missan can be transcribed in IPA with the length symbol ⟨ː⟩ or by doubling the consonant symbol: [ˈhɑbːɑn], [ˈmisːɑn] or [ˈhɑbbɑn], [ˈmissɑn]. The doubled affricate in ƿiċċe should be transcribed as [ˈwittʃe] or [ˈwitːʃe], with the stop portion of the affricate doubled.
[2]
The phoneme /h/ had three allophones that diverged in the later language: it was pronounced [h] word-initially, [ç] when it was single and after a front vowel, and [x] otherwise.
[3]
⟨ċ ċġ sċ⟩, with a dot above, represent postalveolar [tʃ dʒ ʃ] in modern editions; ⟨ġ⟩ usually represents the palatal approximant [j] but represents [dʒ] after ⟨n⟩. The use of a dot to distinguish palatal from velar consonants is a modern convention: in original Old English old manuscripts [tʃ j dʒ ʃ] were written as ⟨c g g/cg sc⟩ and so were not distinguished from the velars [k ɣ ɡ] and the cluster [sk]. [tʃ dʒ ʃ] developed from [k ɡ sk] by palatalization in Anglo-Frisian, but [j] developed partly from Proto-Germanic *j and partly from the palatalization of [ɣ].
[4]
⟨s f ð/þ⟩ represented voiceless fricatives [s f θ] at the beginning and the end of a word or when doubled in the middle but represented voiced fricatives [z v ð] when single between voiced sounds.
[5]
⟨x⟩ represented the cluster /ks/, as Modern English still does.
[6]
/r/ and /l/ probably had velarised allophones [rˠ] and [ɫ] before a consonant (except at the boundary in a compound word) and in some words in which they were geminated.
[7]
The sonorants /r l n w/ had voiceless versions [l̥ r̥ n̥ ʍ], which developed from the earlier consonant clusters /xl xr xn xw/.
[8]
The exact nature of the rhotic /r/ is unknown. It may have been a trill [r], a tap [ɾ] or, as in most dialects of Modern English, an approximant [ɹ] or [ɻ].
[9]
The letter ⟨w⟩ did not exist in the Early Middle Ages, when Old English was spoken. Scribes used the borrowed Runic letter wynn, ⟨Ƿ ƿ⟩.
[10]
Old English had a distinction between long and short vowels in stressed syllables. Long monophthongs are marked by placing the length symbol ⟨ː⟩ after the vowel symbol, and long diphthongs are marked by placing the length symbol after the first vowel symbol. In unstressed syllables, only three vowels /ɑ, e, u/ were distinguished, but /e, u/ were pronounced [i, o] in certain words.
[11]
Sometimes after the palatalized consonants ⟨ċ ġ sċ⟩, ⟨eo⟩ represented /u/ or /o/ and ⟨ea⟩ represented /ɑ/.
[12]
⟨eo o ue⟩ was pronounced /ø øː/ in Anglian dialects but merged with /e eː/ in all others. In addition, ⟨u⟩ was sometimes pronounced /ø/ and ⟨u w we⟩ was sometimes pronounced /øː/.
[13]
These dialects include Received Pronunciation and most forms of English English (with some exceptions such as Yorkshire English), Australian English, New Zealand English, Scottish English, Ulster English, Southern American English, Philadelphia-Baltimore English, Western Pennsylvania English and California English. Other dialects of English, such as General American and most other forms of American English, Welsh English and Republic of Ireland English, have no close equivalent vowel.
[14]
The diphthongs ⟨ie īe⟩ occurred in West Saxon and may have been pronounced /ie iːe/ or /iy iːy/.

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