Professional Documents
Culture Documents
English Sounds
Why does pronunciation change?
The Lazy Principle
Assimilation: e.g. swan
Dissimilation: e.g. diphthong < M.E. dipthong
Simplification: e.g. know
Elision: e.g. OE meten PDE meet; fam(i)ly
Addition of sounds: e.g. Early ME emtie PDE empty
Social influence
Contact with other languages
The influence of spelling: e.g. ME autour PDE
author
Sounds in the past: how we know
Looking at written records usually no strict rules
in past Old English for spelling, so scribes probably
wrote as they spoke.
Comparison with other closely-related languages.
Known sound changes, e.g., OE hit becoming later
it can easily happen as initial h is dropped also in
Modern English (I saw im)
Poetic evidencehow poets use rhyme of
alliteration.
Published works by the contemporary grammarians
and orthopedists
Change in Germanic vowels
sweet moon
clean stone
name
sweet moon
name
Consonants