Talk:Old English phonology

message: From the text: 
   Consonant allophones
   The sounds marked in parentheses are allophones:
I don't see any parentheses in the subsequent list, though. Only brackets. Is this what was meant? --Godtvisken 18:10, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. The symbols ( ) are called parentheses in American English, which this article is written in. Angr/talk 19:23, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: In The Cambridge Old English Reader by Richard Marsden (Cambridge 2004), it says that these letters are voiced ‘at the start of a word or medially’ (he gives the examples þis and hwæþer), whereas this article seemes to say that they were voiced only medially.  Is Marsden wrong?  Widsith 10:51, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: English is pretty conservative with consonants (except for c, g, and h). This means that you should be able to use your knowledge of Modern English to infer the voicing in Old English. So the OE ancestors of the, this, that, there, and then would have been voiced, and the ancestors of thane, thatch, thin, think, three, and through would have been unvoiced. Does Marsden say þ and ð are always voiced medially? My understanding is that they were not voiced when doubled or adjacent to an unvoiced consonant. (I can’t think of any NE examples, but siþþan and æfþanc are OE examples.) --teb728 09:01, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: the story i've normally heard is that the initial voicing of þ did not occur until middle english, at the time when þ and ð split phonemically.  note that southern middle english dialects showed a similar voicing of initial /f/, which comes down to modern english in certain words like "vixen" (cf. "fox") and "vat".  it's likely that the /f/, /v/ distinction became phonemic as a result of borrowing from french, and that this was reinforced by certain late middle english changes (loss of final vowels and double consonants) that also introduced phonemic /z/ and /ð/.  Benwing 02:41, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Voiced þ and ð 

message: Another question.  The article says that [ç] and [x] are allophones of /h/ ‘after front and back vowels respectively’.  But surely /h/ also changed after liquids?  E.g. a word like þurh ‘through’ must surely have sounded something like /θurx/, no?  Widsith 16:46, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  allophones of /h/ 

message: There was no thing such as "Old English" per se. We have records of various dialects, as well as cases such as the Beowulf which may have originally been set in one dialect (Anglian), but later preserved in another (West-Saxon). The phonology of modern English is largely derived from non-West-Saxon dialects, so at the very least it would be more responsible to indicate in the article that it is discussing just one dialect which acted as the standard written form (I doubt there was a standard spoken form) for several centuries. Of course a few lines about some of the major differences in phonology (West-Saxon vs. Kentish vs. Anglian) would not be amiss, even in a short article.Jakob37 05:51, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  be more specific! 

message: It'd be nice if there were a section on OE phonotactics. Anyone know of any sources where someone could get this info? True (talk) 19:25, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Phonotactics?

message: I made changes to the diphthongs section to provide a more balanced array of information on the iy/ie question. I have also found at least 2 examples in Bosworth and Toller of ie being spelt as ye, which could further sugggest that ie being spelt as y in latter OE texts did not mean anything of the sort that the diphthong was pronounced iy (because it is the primary element - the element not under question - that was represented as a y in these two examples, not the latter, which is the one being alleged to have been a y sound). Gott wisst (talk) 11:44, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  ie/iy 

message: The vowels need to be hyperlinked.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.103.217.159 (talk) 05:24, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: No, they don't. Nobody knows their exact pronunciation. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 13:18, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vowels 

message: I think it would be beneficial to split the description of sound changes to another article, and to outline the more important changes in this article. The article is ridiculously long now, and too complex for a non-specialist. For description of phonemes, only brief information is needed: a list of the sound changes that gave rise to diphthongs, palatalized consonants, umlauted vowels, etc. — Eru·tuon 22:05, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Split 

message: Palatal diphthongization changed e, æ and a, ǣ, u and o, ē to the diphthongs ie, ea, ēo, ēa respectively hwæt? It changed 5 groups of sounds to 4 groups, respectively? Please rephrase like "e changed to ie" etc.--2.200.163.37 (talk) 15:15, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: does not parse

message: There are some words that show outcomes not following the rules of allophony, as a result of syncope:
*  is , distinguished from hypothetical *
*  is , distinguished from hypothetical *
This shows that /j/, /ɣ/, /ɡ/ and /dʒ/ all contrast after a nasal. Rua (mew) 17:48, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Post-nasal allophony rules are not correct in case of syncope 

message: Why is there an ∅ in the "first consonant" of the "Old English syllable-initial consonant clusters" table? Isn't it a vovel? Excuse me if I'm wrong because it really isn't my area of expertise but I need to get the phonotactics of this language correctly and it seems to be incorrect. 
Besides that, the "coda" section seems to be missing.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gofarlung (talk • contribs) 00:11, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: See Zero (linguistics). Nardog (talk) 06:12, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phonotactics 

message: I'm not sure if the version of the Lord's Prayer in Old English on this page is in a particular OE dialect or from a particular OE source; if so - it needs a reference. The version frequently found elsewhere and taught in colleges has differences, notably:
Urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg. (also corroborated by the recording)
versus this article's:
Ūrne dæġhwamlīcan hlāf sele ūs tōdæġ
Example references:
* https://www.wtamu.edu/~mjacobsen/lp.htm
* https://faculty.uca.edu/lburley/the_lord%27s_prayer.htm
Chernorizets (talk) 21:44, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lord's Prayer needs either a citation or corrections 

message: The inventory of consonant surface sounds ...
Can somebody please explicate the term surface which is supposed to be explicated in. this. article.
Frankly I am sick and tired of coming here to find what I would consider essential information either removed or simply glossed over. 220.235.95.84 (talk) 05:11, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phonology/Consonants