Phonological history of Old English Proto-Germanic phonology and Old English phonology. Proto-Germanic had two allophones each: stops and fricatives . The stops occurred: By West Germanic times, was pronounced as a stop in all positions. The fricative allophones are sometimes indicated in reconstructed forms to make it easier to understand the development of Old English consonants. Old English retained the allophony , which in case of palatalization (see below) became . Later, non-palatalized became word-initially. The allophony was broken when merged with , the voiced allophone of . A number of phonological processes affected Old English in the period before the earliest documentation. The processes
Names for the number 0 in English Names for the number 0 in English Zero is the usual name for the number 0 in English. In British English "nought" is also used. In American English "naught" is used occasionally for zero, but as with British English, "naught" is more often used as an archaic word for nothing. "Nil", "love", and "duck" are used by different sports for scores of zero. It is quite common in English to describe decades with a plural of the first year of the decade for example "the nineties" which can be written as "the 90s". There was a debate on what to