Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
English phonology is the system of speech sounds used in spoken English. Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar (but not identical) phonological system.
Probably occurred in the seventh century as evidenced by eighth century Anglo-Saxon missionaries' translation into Old Low German, "Gospel" as Gotspel, lit. "God news" not expected *Guotspel, "Good news" due to gōdspell > gŏdspell. /ĭŭ/ and /iu/ were lowered to /ĕŏ/ and /eo/ between 800 and 900 AD.
Received Pronunciation (RP) is the accent traditionally regarded as the standard and most prestigious form of spoken British English. [1] [2] For over a century, there has been argument over such questions as the definition of RP, whether it is geographically neutral, how many speakers there are, the nature and classification of its sub-varieties, how appropriate a choice it is as a standard ...
The first phase of the Great Vowel Shift affected the Middle English close-mid vowels /eː oː/, as in beet and boot, and the close vowels /iː uː/, as in bite and out. The close-mid vowels /eː oː/ became close /iː uː/, and the close vowels /iː uː/ became diphthongs. The first phase was completed in 1500, meaning that by that time, words ...
Old English phonology is necessarily somewhat speculative since Old English is preserved only as a written language.Nevertheless, there is a very large corpus of the language, and the orthography apparently indicates phonological alternations quite faithfully, so it is not difficult to draw certain conclusions about the nature of Old English phonology.
The International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects complies all the most common applications of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent pronunciations of the English language . These charts give a diaphoneme for each sound, followed by its realization in different dialects. The symbols for the diaphonemes are given in ...
For the distinction between [ ], / / and , see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. The phonological system of the Old English language underwent many changes during the period of its existence. These included a number of vowel shifts, and the palatalisation of velar consonants in many positions. For historical developments prior to ...
In Early Middle English, partly by borrowings from French, they split into separate phonemes: /f, v, θ, ð, s, z/. See Middle English phonology – Voiced fricatives. Also in the Middle English period, the voiced affricate /dʒ/ took on phonemic status. (In Old English, it is considered to have been an allophone of /j/).