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The Pronunciation of Old English

Posted: Sep 18, 2008 17:09;
Last Modified: May 23, 2012 18:05











Consonant IPA Value1 Old English Example Comments
b b bār, ‘boar’  
cg ʤ ecg, ‘edge’  
d d dysiġ, ‘foolish’  
f f wīf, ‘woman’  
g g gār, ‘spear’  
h h hlūde, ‘loud’ Initially
n n nȳd, ‘necessity’  
p p pleoh, ‘danger, risk’  
r r rōf, ‘strong’ Rolled.
s s seġl, ‘sail’  
z cēosan, ‘to choose’  
sc ʃ æsc, ‘ash’  
t t til, ‘good’  
ð cweðan (or cweþan), ‘to say’  





Long vowels


Old English Vowel IPA Symbol1 Mnemonic Old English Example
ȳ French ruse cȳþþ ‘kith, friends’
ī beat wīte, ‘punishment’
ē bait ēþel, ‘homeland, territory’
ō boat gōd, ‘good’
ū boot brūcan, ‘to enjoy’

Listen to the Long vowels and example words

Short Vowels


Old English Vowel IPA Symbol1 Mnemonic Old English Example
y y French tu cynn ‘kin, family’
i ɪ bit scip, ‘ship’
e ɛ bet ecg, ‘ecg, sword’
a ɑ father pað, ‘path’
æ æ bad cræft, ‘skill or trade’
o ɔ bought god, ‘God’
u ʊ book sunu, ‘son’

Listen to the short vowels and example words



Old English Diphthong IPA Symbol1 Equivalent to Old English Example
ea æa æ+a  
ēa æːa ǣ+a  
eo ɛɔ e+o  
ēo eːɔ ē+o  
ie ɪɛ i+e  
īe iːɛ ī+e  




You complete the exercise as follows:


Listen to an exercise involving long vowels

Listen to an exercise involving short vowels





Comment [10]

  1. Kyungsik Joe from S.Korea (Thu Oct 16, 2008 (21:28:58)) [PermLink]:

    You said that ‘H’ of old english is pronounced as a [x]after vowel ‘i’ but it’s actually not [x] but a voiceless velar fricative(or palatal fricative). Check it up.

  2. dan (Sun Oct 19, 2008 (11:15:51)) [PermLink]:

    Thank you Kyungsik Joe for pointing out an error on the site. I meant to indicate a voiceless velar fricative, but it turns out I've been using the wrong IPA symbol (unfortunately for quite a while), so I'm glad for the correction.

    Since this is a teaching site, I hope you'll forgive me for pointing out that there is an error in your comment (the opposite from mine, actually): [x] is the symbol for voiceless velar fricative; the problem was that my site originally had chi [χ], which is the symbol for voiceless uvular fricative. So you are right I was indicating the wrong sound, but the character you list in your comment (which is not the one I originally had) is in fact the correct symbol for the sound I should have (and meant to be) indicating. Whew! Confusing!

    So to sum up: the part of the site in question has now been corrected: the sound of the letter h in contexts like cniht is a voiceless velar fricative and this sound is indicated by the IPA symbol [x].

    Thanks very much again for pointing this out!

  3. Me (Fri Jun 12, 2009 (23:43:58)) [PermLink]:

    [x] had an allophone [ç] after front vowels.

  4. University of Bergen, Engl 303 (Thu Aug 27, 2009 (02:22:56)) [PermLink]:

    Thank you for the helpful guide. We’d like to add that Old English when pronounced [ɣ] is voiced.

  5. dan (Tue Sep 1, 2009 (08:37:05)) [PermLink]:

    Thanks very much. You are right. The problem is actually that I’m wrong about how Dutch is pronounced: everybody I know who is Dutch claims it is voiceless—except maybe in Belgium. So OE can be /ɣ/; Dutch should be /x/. In addition to being an obscure example, it turns out it’s just wrong, too.

  6. Ali (Sun Dec 13, 2009 (03:31:12)) [PermLink]:

    How can you know if y (Aepelbryht, norphyte) is pronounced “Ü” or “i” ?

  7. dan (Mon Dec 14, 2009 (08:30:34)) [PermLink]:


    It depends a little on the period: early on in the period, y is used for a rounded front vowel that is distinct from the unrounded version. Later in the period, y and i become identical, if we are to judge from the spelling confusions in manuscripts.

  8. Ehsan (Sun Jul 10, 2011 (22:49:49)) [PermLink]:

    i need help in describing the each english consonanat

  9. Adrienne (Tue Sep 13, 2011 (12:27:57)) [PermLink]:

    Hi Dan, really interesting and accessible guide. But your comments about short and long vowels don’t ring true. Native American speakers indeed do not seem to hear this distinction – I was amazed when a friend of mine could not hear the distinction between “Mary” and “Merry”! But – I can assure you there are a good few long and short vowels alive and kicking among native English speakers.

  10. dan (Thu Sep 15, 2011 (18:41:21)) [PermLink]:

    Hi Adrienne,

    Thank you very much for your nice comments. I’m glad it was useful.

    Since I am teaching mostly North American (more specifically mostly Western Canadian) students, I’ve written the guide to fit their pronunciation habits.

    But more importantly, when I’m talking about length (i.e. long and short vowels, above), I’m using the term in the technical sense of "meaningful linguistic contrast involving duration as opposed to quality."

    In that specific sense, Modern English (in all dialects) really is usually said to distinguish meaningfully ("phonemically") by quality rather than quantity. So speaking very technically, we don’t have a distinction between long and short vowels, even if they sometimes some _sound_ longer and we common speak informally of "long" and "short" vowels.

    In fact the sounds we informally call "long" and "short" actually differ meaningfully (i.e. "phonemically") in terms of how they sound rather than how long they sound. You might say “short e” more quickly than you would say “long e,” but the important difference is actually that they are said in slightly different places in your mouth and with a difference in relative tenseness or laxness. The sound in merry (which we write as /ɛ/ in the phonetic alphabet) is relatively speaking lower and maybe a little farther back than the sound in Mary (which we write as /e/). But the following /r/ can make this hard to hear for most people. You might hear the difference more clearly in examples like bet vs. bait.

    This is not to say that you are not hearing a difference in length; but rather that this difference in length is not phonemically significant. Not all phonetic differences are phonemically meaningful--in fact most are not. The /k/ sound in cut is different in most varieties of English from the /k/ sound in kit (they are usually said with the tongue in different positions). But although this distinction can be meaningul in other languages, it is not in English: both are just different phonetic realisations of the same phoneme /k/.

    There is a Canadian example that neatly illustrates this distinction between phonemic and phonetic difference. Canadians can hear a distinction between rider and writer that other North Americans can’t. But they do not rely on the thing that most non-North Americans use to tell them apart (i.e. a difference in phonetic realisation of /d/ and /t/): in Canadian English, as in U.S. English, the middle consonant of both words is pronounced as a “flap”--meaning that in both varieties of English, it sounds like a [d] in both words (compare standard American/Canadian and British pronunciations of butter, where the same thing happens).

    Instead, in Canadian English, the words sound difference because of the realisation of the initial diphthong. In Canadian English, the diphthong /aI/ is "raised" to /əI/ whenever it is found before a phonemically voiceless consonant, but pronounced without raising whenever it is found before a phonemically voiced one. In the case of writer and rider, Canadians apply this raising to writer but not rider, even though the realisation of the medial consonant sounds the same (and voiced) in each word.

    What this suggests is that in Canadian English, the medial consonant is phonetically voiced, but phonemically voiceless--or in other words, they say it with voicing, but they think of it as voiceless. If they didn't, they wouldn't apply Canadian raising. I have often shown this is class by saying rider and rider in a variety of different orders and asking students to indicate by hand movements whether they think I mean a person who works with a pen or rides a horse: Canadian students always give the right signal for the word I am intending to say; most of my American students have a much harder time figuring out which one I mean, if they can get it at all.

    Thanks again for some great examples and your kind words!

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