The change is known as breaking or fracture. Slide 48

The glide, together with the original monophthong formed a diphthong. Slide 46.

If a front vowel stood before a velar consonant there developed a short glide between them, as the organs of speech prepared themselves for the transition from one sound to the other. Slide 45.

The front vowels [i], [e] and the newly developed [æ], changed into diphthongs with a back glide when they stood before [h], before long (doubled) [ll] or [l] plus another consonant, and before [r] plus other consonants, e.g.: [e] > [eo] in OE deorc, NE dark. Slide 47.

Breaking produced a new set of vowels in OE – the short diphthongs [ea] and [eo]; they could enter the system as counterparts of the long [ea:], [eo:], which had developed from PG prototypes. Slide 49.

Breaking was unevenly spread among the OE dialects: it was more characteristic of West Saxon than of the Anglian dialects. Slide 50.

Diphthongisation of vowels could also be caused by preceding consonants: a glide arose after palatal consonants as a sort of transition to the succeeding vowel. Slide 51.

After the palatal consonants [k’], [sk’] and [j] short and long [e] and [æ] turned into diphthongs with a more front close vowel as their first element, e.g. OE sc æmu > sceamu (NE shame). Slide 52.

In the resulting diphthong the initial [i] or [e] must have been unstressed but later the stress shifted to the first element, which turned into the nucleus of the diphthong, to conform with the structure of OE diphthongs. Slide 53.

This process is known as “diphthongisation after palatal consonants”.

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