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Old English Alphabet: Letters
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Old English had two distinct dipthongs, with four vowel sounds because of leanth. They were éa, ea, éo, eo. The 'ea' series was a long or short 'æ' sound followed by a schwa off-glide. The 'eo' series had a long or short 'e' sound ... followed by a schwa. This schwa must be distinct for comprehension purposes, but the stress falls on the initial letter of the dipthong.
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Old English (... called Anglo-Saxon) is an early form of the English language that was spoken in Britain some 1,000 years ago. It was a Germanic language. Unlike Modern English, Old English was pronounced very much like it was spelled. The silent letters of Modern English therefore did not often exist in Old English. There is still a lot in common between Old English and Modern English, but the Old English spellings make it look alien. One must learn to interpret the distinctive symbols of Old English.
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One of the daunting things about looking at Old English text is the alphabet. It has, to the modern English speaker, some odd characters. These put people off, although they are not difficult to master. Less obvious is the fact that some modern letters are absent from Old English texts.
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One letter of the Old English alphabet which survived was the thorn, a letter which, by the 16th century, looked a bit like y but was pronounced like a voiced ‘th’. It survived mainly in a few contractions such as ye (the), and yt (that). Note that ‘ye’ was ... used for ‘you’, as in Dowland’s ‘All ye whom loue or fortune hath betrayd’.
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This database is "an electronic version of the first seven letters of the Old English alphabet. It includes the first release of the letter F, containing some 3,016 headwords, as well as revised versions of the six previously published fascicles (1986-1996)". It allows a "multitude of approaches to an extensive body of text, allowing for new research into the beginnings of the English language." (text from site 1/21/05) (GB)
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The old English alphabet made use of twenty-three letters, some of which are no longer present in the modern English alphabet. Many were hand-written quite differently from today, although their evolution into modern forms can be easily traced. They are:
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