Old English vowel system.

All English vowels including diphthongs can be either short or long. The system of vowel phonemes consisted of the following:

i-ī

e-ē

a-ā

o-ō

u-ū

y-ֿ y

å an open or nasalized o[ο], [ֿ õ]

ea, eo, io, ie, ea, eo, io, ie are diphthongs

So we see, the system of vowels was not symmetrical on the phonetic level and the long phonemes in OE outnumbered the short ones.

Consonants in OE consisted of the following: labial p b m, labia-dental f, v, dental t, d, p, ð, n, s, r, l, velar c, z, h. The letter ‘x’ was used instead of the group ‘cs’.

Vowels

Among the most outstanding processes in the OE sound system, the process of assimilation has perhaps had the most important consequences almost all the English diphthongs were originated by various assimilative processes such as fracture, mutation and palatalization. Each of these processes requires fuller explanation.

Old English Fractures (Breaking) преломление.

Fracture occurred most regularly in the Wessex dialect. It consisted in diphthongization of front vowels before certain consonants. As a result a glide- sound appeared as a transitional element from a front vowel to a consonant. It is the vowels ‘a’ [æ] and ‘e’ that undergo fracture.

1) a[æ]>ea before the elucters r+cons, l+cons, h+cons and before h final.

Eg. ærm>earm; æld>eald; æhto>eahta; sæh>seah.

2) e>eo before r, lc, h+a consonant, h final

Eg. melcan>meolcan

herte>heorte

selk>seolk (seal)

feh>feoh (cattle)

The phonetic essence of fracture is that the front vowel is partially assimilated to the following hard consonant by forming a glide, which combines with the vowel to form a diphthong. So, fracture took place in the 6th century, in some dialects, such as Mercian, it did not occur, and the vowel [æ] became ‘a’

Eg. ærm>arm, old, ahta, sah.

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