Old English had a rich system of vowel and consonant sounds that differ significantly from what you're used to in modern English. Long and short vowels, diphthongs, and unique consonant pronunciations all affected meaning and grammar. Getting comfortable with these sounds is essential for reading Old English aloud and understanding how the language eventually became the English we speak today.
A few differences stand out right away: the letters 'c' and 'g' didn't behave the way they do now, the alphabet included þ (thorn) and ð (eth) for "th" sounds, and the vowel system was more structured, with consistent distinctions between long and short sounds.
Old English Vowel Sounds
Long vs short vowel sounds
Old English made a clear distinction between long and short vowels, and this distinction mattered for meaning. Two words could be spelled almost identically but mean completely different things depending on vowel length. In modern editions of Old English texts, long vowels are marked with a macron (¯) above the letter. Short vowels have no marking.
Long vowels:
- ā as in "father" (fāder)
- ē as in the "ay" of "day" (dēor)
- ī as in the "ee" of "meet" (wīf)
- ō as in the "o" of "home" (mōna)
- ū as in the "oo" of "boot" (hūs)
Short vowels:
- a as in "cat" (dagas)
- e as in "met" (settan)
- i as in "bit" (fisċ)
- o as in "hot" (god)
- u as in "put" (sunu)
The macrons are a modern editorial convention. Original Old English manuscripts didn't mark vowel length at all, so scribes and readers relied on context.
Old English diphthongs
A diphthong is a vowel sound that glides from one quality to another within a single syllable. Old English had three main diphthongs, and each could be either short or long.
- ea pronounced roughly like "eh-ah," starting with an "e" sound and gliding toward "a" (eald, meaning "old")
- eo pronounced roughly like "eh-oh," starting with an "e" sound and gliding toward "o" (ġeong, meaning "young")
- ie pronounced roughly like "ee-eh," starting with an "ee" sound and gliding toward "eh" (ġiefan, meaning "to give")
Long diphthongs are marked with a macron over the first vowel (ēa, ēo, īe). Short diphthongs are unmarked. The difference works the same way as with simple vowels: the long versions are held longer.
These diphthongs don't have clean modern English equivalents, so the approximate descriptions above are just starting points. Listening to recordings of reconstructed Old English pronunciation will help more than any written guide can.
Old English Consonant Sounds
Consonant sounds in Old English
Most Old English consonants were pronounced much like their modern English counterparts. The important exceptions are worth learning individually:
- c was always a hard "k" sound, as in "king." The word cyning ("king") starts with a "k" sound, not an "s." Old English had no soft "c."
- g was always a hard "g," as in "goat." The word gōd ("good") never sounds like "j." However, note that in certain positions (before or after front vowels like i or e), g could be pronounced as a palatal glide, closer to the "y" in "yet." This is sometimes written ġ with a dot above it in modern editions.
- h at the start of a word sounds like modern "h" in "hat" (hām, "home"). In the middle or end of a word, it becomes a velar or palatal fricative, like the "ch" in Scottish "loch" (niht, "night").
- r was always pronounced, including at the end of a word. So fæder ("father") has a clearly sounded final "r," unlike most modern British English dialects.
- s was typically voiceless, like the "s" in "sun." Between vowels, though, it could be voiced to a "z" sound, similar to how the "s" in modern "risen" is voiced.
- þ (thorn) and ð (eth) both represented the "th" sound. They could be either voiceless (as in "thin") or voiced (as in "then"). The two letters were largely interchangeable in manuscripts; scribes didn't consistently use one for voiceless and the other for voiced.
- Double consonants (like pp, tt, ss) were actually held longer than single consonants. The double "t" in settan was pronounced noticeably longer than a single "t," similar to how you'd hold the "n" sound across the word boundary in "pen knife."
Old vs modern English phonology
Vowels: Old English maintained a systematic long/short distinction across all its vowels. Modern English has largely lost this. Instead, modern English vowels differ more in quality (the shape of the sound) than in length.
Diphthongs: The Old English set (ea, eo, ie) disappeared as the language evolved. Modern English developed its own diphthongs ("oy" in "boy," "ou" in "house"), but these are unrelated to the Old English ones.
Consonants: Several consonant behaviors changed over the centuries:
- "c" and "g" developed soft pronunciations (as in "city" and "gem") through contact with French after the Norman Conquest
- The guttural "h" sound in words like niht was lost, leaving behind silent letters or changed spellings ("night")
- Final "r" became silent in many dialects of modern English
- The letters þ and ð fell out of use entirely, replaced by the digraph "th"