Old English alphabet and pronunciation

НЕИСПОЛНЕНИЕ ОБЯЗАННОСТИ ПО СТРАХОВАНИЮ

ОБЯЗАННОЙ СТОРОНОЙ

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The system of writing in Old English was changed with the introduction of Christianity. Before that, the English used the runes - symbols that were very vague, that might at the same time denote a sound, a syllable or a whole word.

Runes are the 24 letters (later 16 in Scandinavia and 30 or more in Anglo-Saxon England) of an ancient Germanic alphabet used from the 2d or 3d to the 16th century. Perhaps derived ultimately from the Etruscan alphabet, the runic alphabet was used mainly for charms and inscriptions, on stone, wood, metal, or bone. Each letter had a name, which was itself a meaningful word. The rune ^, for instance, could stand for either the sound "f" or the fehu, "cattle," which was the name given to the rune.

They were of specific shape, designed to be cut on the wooden sticks, and only few people knew how to make them and how to interpret them. Runic inscriptions that came down from the oldest settlers on the isles are few, and the language (as it is interpreted) is not what might be called Old English - it was rather an ancient language which might be very close to the languages of other Germanic tribes. The story of runes might be very interesting in itself, yet we are not concerned with the story of the development of the English language, and what we are going to study here was written in an alphabet dating back to the 7th century; it was Latin alphabet with few specifically English additions. Some English sounds had no counterpart in Latin, so three signs developed from runes were added, plus ligature se, now well known as a transcription symbol.

The Latin alphabet was carried throughout medieval Europe by the Roman Catholic church - to the Irish and Merovingians in the 6th century and the Anglo-Saxons and Germans in the 7th. The oldest surviving texts in the English language written with Latin letters date back to c.700

So the letters of the Old English alphabet were as follows, and they denoted the following sounds

1. a [a] zān (go) and (and)

2. æ [æ] δæt (that)

3. b [b] bān (bone)

4. c [k] caru (care) and

[tj] before front vowels cild (child)

5. d [d] dēor (deer; in old times animal)

6. e [e] mete (meat; in old times food)

7. f [f] findan (find) and

[v] in intervocal position lufu (love)

8. Z was one of the remnants of the runic alphabet called joh (yoke),

and it had several readings

[g].Z ān (go)

[j] Z ēar (year)

[G ] at the beginning of the word before back vowels

and after n and between two back vowels:

sor Z ian (sorrow), fol Z ian (follow), Z uma (man, human), da Z as (days)

9. h [h] hām (home), him (him), huntoδ (hunting)

10. i [ι] hit (it), him (him), lim (limb)

11. l [l] lytel (little), līf (life), lufu (love)

12. m [m] man (man), macian (make)

13. n [n] nama (name), nēah (near)

14. o [o] fōn (catch), mōna (moon)

15. p [p] pera (pear), up (up)

16. r [r] riht (right), rin an (ring), wyrcan (work)

17. s [s] sittan (sit), sin an (sing)

18. t [t] trēo (tree), tellan (tell)

19. δ was developed from the rune thorn [θ] δæt (that), δirda

(third), δin (thing);

[δ] in the intervocal position ōδer (other), brōδor (brother)

20. u [u] wudu (wood)

21. w [w] in original Old English texts it was wynn from the rune meaning joy: winnan (win), weorδan (become)

22. x [ks] oxa (ox)

23. y [u] fyllan (fill), lytel (little)

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