M E Phonetic And Orthographic Changes
I. CHANGES IN THE ORTHOGRAPHIC SYSTEM One of the consequences of the Norman Conquest was the French influence on the English spelling. 1. Those letters which the French did not employ gra-dually went out of use. They were: e, p,,. 2. New letters were introduced: g, j, k, q, v. 3. Many new digraphs and combinations of letters came into use, such as th, sh, ch, gh, ph, dg, ck, gu, qu, ou/ow E.g. wip>with, fisc>fish, cin>chin, niht>night, ecg>edge, loc>lock, g est>guest, cwen>queen, hus>hous,nu>now. Note: There was a tendency to use ow at the end of a word and ou in other positions. 4. It was usual to mark the length of a vowel by doubling it, especially in closed syllables. 5. Many letters changed their signification. A) The letter u, for instance, which had denoted only one sound in OE – [u], was employed, after the French fashion, to denote also the labial front vowel [u] formely expressed by y. E.g. OE bysig> ME busy. The corresponding long vowel was usually marked ui. E.g. OE fyr>ME fuir (E.fire) The letter y came to denote the sounds [i] and [j]. E.g. OE his > ME his, hys; OE d eg > ME day. B) The letter c began to signify not onlyy the sound [k] as in OE coc, but also, in accordance with French usage, the sound [s] before the letters i, e, y. So, OE cyning, for instance, could no longer be written with the letter c, for it would be read [sining]. It became necessary to employ the letter k in similar cases: king. C) The letter o came to be used not only for the sound [o], but also for [u]. That happened mostly in such words as ME cumen, where too many vertical lines made reading difficult. This is why words like MnE come, some, son have the letter o instead of u. II. CHANGES IN THE PHONETIC SYSTEM
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