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
Man (word) Romanian, where ' refers to a 'human', vs. " (male). The inflected forms of Old English " are: The inflected forms of Old High German word for "man" (without i-mutation) are: The inflected forms of the Old Norse word for man, "maðr", are: The word "man" is still used in its generic meaning in literary English. The verb "to man" (i.e. "to furnish [a fortress or a ship] with a company of men") dates to early Middle English. The word has been applied generally as a suffix in modern combinations like "fireman", "policeman" and "mailman". With social changes in the