English Digraphs History

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English Vowel Digraphs and Their History

Steven Mahon

Linguistics

LIN 4970

With help from Dr. Jules D. Gliesche

20th December 2011


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With our Western, post-Renaissance emphasis on historical preservation, one of

the primary battles when attempting to tackle the fickle topic of spelling reform is of that

between a strict phonetic system and preserving the historical system being discussed.

There are endless pros and cons for both sides, and this thesis is not meant to decide

on one over the other. In fact, most people are not even aware of how the term

historical system can even be applied accurately in English. How did our system

come about and why? Author Vivian Cook gives a brief rundown of the nature of

English orthography. He claims that Modern English spelling is actually comprised of

three different systems (Cook, 69). He defines these as the original Old English or

basic system, the French/Latinate or Romance system, and the foreign system kept

for recent borrowings from exotic languages (Cook, 72). Cook also notes that this

third system could possibly be considered more of a waste bin for words which have

not yet been fully assimilated into English since there are no set orthographic rules for

this set, but rather the leftover rules which cannot be accounted for by English or

Romance phonology/orthography. The first system is comprised mainly of words

inherited from Proto-Germanic which existed in English prior to the Norman Invasion of

1066 such as for, man, go and say. In Modern English, this system is arguably the

most phonetic out of the three with many words (such as the examples) having one-to-

one sound-spelling correspondences. The above examples are all basic content and

function words. The second system is comprised mostly of words borrowed from

Norman French and Latin after the Norman Invasion of 1066 and before the modern

spelling system was standardized such as gem, appeal, strangeand science. This

influx of words came as a result of the language of the elite in England being switched


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to French. Many cultural and technical terms in Modern English came as a result of this

mass borrowing since people at that time were also educated in French. This system

often tries to follow the original Latin spellings. Since English in the Middle Ages was

not a highly-regarded language, the idea was that by retaining the original French and

Latin spellings one could Latinize English and thus make it more attractive and

educated to the Romance-speaking elite (Barber, 51-3). The third and final system is a

grab-bag of assorted borrowings from various non-French and non-Latin languages

such as cello, Iraq, dhobi andkhaki. These words were often borrowed after the

standardization of English spelling and as aforementioned are on the borderline

between the original language and being totally assimilated into English. They tend to

retain at least some of the characteristics of the spelling system from which they were

borrowed and usually have an exotic look to them, marking them clearly as loanwords.

Now the question must be posed: which systems are necessary to keep and

which ones can be done away with? Often times a spelling convention is used for

different reasons across different systems. An example of this would be consonant

doubling. In the Germanic system (call by Carney the Basic system), consonant

doubling is mostly used as a method to show a) that the syllable containing the double

consonants is stressed and b) that the preceding vowel is short (ie. puzzle, button and

glassy) (Carney, 113-4). However, in the Romance system, consonant doubling is

often used to show where a prefix from Latin was assimilated to the following consonant

(ie. obclude from Latin ob + clude and assent from Latin ad +sent) (Carney, 119).

Most of these Latin affixes have long lost their use in Modern English. Their only

purpose is to serve as a reminder that in Latin they did in fact have a purpose. In the


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opinion of the author, in order to accurately appropriate the term historical to specific

spelling conventions in English, only spellings that ever had a distinctive use in English

will be considered historical. Spelling conventions that represent defunct practices

from other languages that have never had a practical use in English at any point in its

lengthy history will not be considered historical. This decision will help provide a basis

for distinguishing actual phonological changes that occurred during the development of

English orthography and what was implemented by scholars during the Renaissance as

a way to Latinize English (Barber, 51-3). A thorough and in-depth discussion of some of

the traditional dialects of Modern English can shed some light onto the current salience

of some of these spellings. Examining certain phonological distinctions maintained in

these dialects that have long since been lost in the standard language will allow one to

take a glimpse into past spoken Englishes so as to provide proof and a historical basis

for why Modern English orthography developed in the manner that it did.

This thesis will focus solely on the orthography of English vowels, specifically that

of digraphs. The author deems that this topic is the one of most importance due to the

vast possibilities available for a single sound. Describing Standard Modern English

phonology is a topic that has been beaten to death by linguists. However, even though

English has had a rigid, standardized orthography for almost half a millennium, due to

the wide variation in the spelling system (particularly for vowels) it is rather difficult to

pinpoint what the standard phonological representations for each grapheme are. In

fact, defining what the native graphemes for Modern English are also quite the task.

Here I will use Edward CarneysA Survey of English Spellingas my source for

determining the basic vowel representations (whether single letters, digraphs or even


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trigraphs) for Standard Modern English. These graphemes are not isolated to specific

lexical items (such as in two, in beauty, or in would, could, and

should) and can often be found in new word coinings or in loan words entering English.

The following vowel graphemes will be considered individually in this thesis: . These were chosen

based on the Rules section in Carneys book if they were given a regular representative

sound as opposed to being considered and exception (Carney, 280-381). Certain

consonant pairs can sometimes also function as a single unit in this category, such as

in chaste and in range. However, these will hardly affect our graphemic

analysis and are often a result of phonological shifts unrelated to the general vowel

lengthening in open syllables.

Next, a brief history of English orthography will be outlined to provide the reader

with some historical background for this thesis. This will make the correlation between

sound and spelling much clearer when the graphemic analysis begins. The first known

written records of English are from the Old English, or Anglo-Saxon period. This period

lasted from about the fifth century AD till the Norman invasion of 1066 (Cook, 153-4).

Old English had a simple, rather stereotypical Germanic vowel system consisting of

seven short and long monophthongs and two short and long diphthongs (Horobin &

Smith,). The monophthongs are as follows: /a(:)/, /(:)/, /e(:)/, /i(:)/, /o(:)/, /u(:)/, and

/y(:)/. The diphthongs are also as follows: /(:)/ and /e(:)/. The monophthongs were

each spelled with their respective IPA symbols in Old English (no orthographic

indication of vowel length was yet developed) and the diphthongs were spelled

and respectively. The slight asymmetry of the system is likely to due to the


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umlaut, or i-fronting of back, rounded vowels in stressed syllables before front vowels

(Pyles, 115). This would undoubtedly be the cause of //, /y/ and the diphthongs

entering the system.

The Middle English vowel system of around year 1400 has a slightly rearranged

seven-monophthong system while increasing the number of diphthongs to five (Horobin

& Smith, 48). The short vowels are likely to have been as follows: //, //, /a/, //, and

//. The long vowels were probably: /i:/, /e:/, /:/, /a:/,/:/, /o:/, and /u:/. Unlike Old

English, Middle English appears to have had a qualitative as well as a quantitative

difference between long and short vowels. The short vowels were mostly spelled respectively and the long vowels were mostly spelled . Middle English developed a system of digraphs and vowel doubling

to show long vowels. It should also be noted that there was not a distinction in spelling

between the two sets of long, mid vowels in Middle English: /:/ vs. /e:/ and /:/ vs /o:/.

These were not differentiated until the Early Modern English period where the second

letter of each digraph in the orthography was replaced with an , thus providing boat

vs. boot when both were spelled as bootin Middle English and meat vs meet when

both were spelled as meetin Middle English (Pyles, 148). The Middle English of

Chaucer also had about five diphthongs, namely: /a/, //, /a/, //, and // (Horobin &

Smith, 49). These were appropriately spelled

respectively (Barber, 112). A possible sixth diphthong, //, was spelled exactly like //

and could often be interchangeable (as they were for Chaucer) with the latter and thus

will not be considered separately (Horobin & Smith, 67). The diphthongs of Old English

had merged with other monopthongs (// often became /a/ or /e/ and /:/ often became


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/:/ in most dialects) while the new diphthongs were created from vocalizations of

following consonants (such as /j/, /w/ and fricative allophones of /g/) and borrowings

from French (Horobin & Smith, 49). Lastly, there is also a vowel, described as /y:/,

which is not mentioned by Horobin and Smith. In the Oxford English Dictionary, it is

spelled as a single in open syllables and is derived from French and Latin

loanwords commonly borrowed from French (ie. vertuvirtue, rulerule and ruderude)

(OED, 1 of ). In Barber it is listed as having the diphthong // (Barber, 112). The

French tradition of spelling /u:/ as and /y:/ as was retained in Middle

English and adopted as the norm. Although it is not 100% certain what phonological

value this sound had (if it was even distinct at all in Middle English), it can be easily

identified by the spellings in Modern English as in crucifix, tune and due

where they represent /ju:/ or /u:/.

As previously mentioned, Old English and Middle English had relatively regular

sound to spelling correspondences. Modern English, on the other hand, is a completely

different story. In order to accurately describe Modern English phonology and its

relation to modern spelling conventions, a thorough description of each grapheme will

be done including the evolution of each of the sounds represented by the graphemes

and the status of these phonological representations in the Modern English dialects of

today.

In nearly every elementary school classroom, children are taught about short

vowels, long vowels and the silent rule. It has become a tradition to regard vowels

which can only be found in closed syllables as short and vowels which can be found in

open syllables as long (Cook himself calls these vowels checked and free,


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respectively) (Cook, 65). An orthographic convention which has developed in English to

distinguish long vowels from short vowels in closed syllables is the silent rule.

Simply put, by adding a silent to the end of a word ending in a consonant, the long

variant of the vowel will be pronounced instead of the short one. Some examples of this

phenomenon for each written vowel can be seen here in this chart roughly based off of

Rule Box 6 in Cook (p. 65):

Short/Checked Long/Free

// fat /e/ fate

//pet /i:/ Pete

// rip /a/ ripe

// con // cone

// plum /(j)u:/ plume

Note the possible variation in the last long/free vowel above. After certain

consonants it always appears as /u:/ and after others as /ju:/. After consonants such as

/t/, /d/ and /l/ it varies between British and American English, British English Received

Pronunciation retaining the historical /ju:/ pronunciation while American English uses the

newer /u:/ (Wells, 247). Some dialects, however, use a more archaic //-type vowel

after all possible English consonants for long and this will be discussed in further

detail in the section below.

In most other languages in the world, the concept of short and long vowels

relates to the literal meanings of the words: some vowels are phonologically short, while

others are long. As one can see from the table above, only two of the long vowels are

actually phonologically long. The other three (or sometimes two, since long after


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certain consonants is /u:/) are actually diphthongs. In languages like German, Finnish

and Persian, the long and short vowels are related, whether by a physical length

distinction or by a tense/lax distinction. The English long/short pairings are not

phonologically related at all. How then, did Modern English develop such a peculiar

vowel system? The answer lies within the Great Vowel Shift.

The Great Vowel Shift was a phonological chain shift of Middle English long

vowels whereby the Middle English long high vowels became diphthongs and the other

long vowels followed them to fill in the gaps in the sound system (Barber, 105-9). This

is ultimately the reason why the Modern English vowel system is quite unlike that of any

other language in the world, including its close relatives. The following chart in Figure 1,

taken from user Kjoonlee of Wikipedia, shows a visual map of the phonological changes

of the Great Vowel Shift and places them on a timeline from the year 1400:

Figure 1


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As one can see, the short vowels have remained relatively unchanged whereas

the long vowel and diphthong system has undergone a complete transformation. A

further look at the digraph system of Modern English as well the phonological variations

in some of its dialects will help better explain the effects of the Great Vowel Shift on the

Englishes of today.

The first digraph up is one that is actually relatively rare in Modern English.

Carney has its regular sound correspondence as /i:/ in Greek and other Classical

loanwords (Carney, 283). Some examples of this are aeon, archaeology and

encyclopaedia. It should be noted that many of these examples reflect the British

spelling tendencies and have often been simplified to a single in American English

(ie. eon and encyclopedia). Carney considers word-final stressed for /e/ as in

brae and sundae to fall under the category. It is confined to only a few lexical

items and thus a historical analysis isnt possible.

Because and are interchangeable from the Middle English period on,

descriptions of digraphs and other graphemes with one of them will always include the

other as a rule since they always will represent the same sounds in writing (Horobin &

Smith, 63). That being said, the most common phoneme represented by in

Modern English is, by far, /e/ (ie. day, say, paid, maiden) (Carney, 283-5). As said

previously, in Middle English represented /a/. This /a/, however (not to be

confused with Modern English /a/), became /:/ in Early Modern English, merging with

/:/ coming from Middle English /a:/ as a result of the Great Vowel Shift. This /:/ then


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shifted to /e:/ in later Early Modern English before arriving at the Modern English /e/ of

today (Barber, 108 & 114). Although Horobin and Smith describe this vowel as /a/ in

Middle English, the actual phoneme varies in between authors. Another common

representation is // or /i/ which seems to have been more likely around the year

1500 or so (Barber, 114). The reason for this is that was often interchangeable

with in the Middle English period. Although it is possible these two groups of

digraphs represented different Middle English phonemes, the author of this thesis could

not find any information in the literature indicating this. All sources used state that these

digraphs had the same phoneme.

As stated earlier, in most dialects of Modern English represent /e/ along

with long . However, this is not universal. In some dialects of East Anglia,

particularly around Norfolk and Suffolk, and long remain distinct

in every day speech (Wells, 337). Wells describes this phenomenon as an absence of

the Long Mid Mergers, the process by which the long mid diphthongs merged with the

long mid vowels in Early Modern English (Wells, 192-3). In these dialects, the words

with long (such as in face, name and paper) have [e: ~ e]-type vowels

whereas the words with (such as nail, way and eight) have []. This

distinction is mostly maintained in the older, rural populations of Norfolk and Suffolk.

Interestingly enough, in younger people in these areas who do not maintain this

distinction, the merged vowel is not the [e: ~ e]-type vowel, but rather the []-type

vowel (Wells, 337). Wells does not give an explanation for why this may be. This

preservation of vs. long is also found in a few dialects of southern

Wales. In these dialects, long words have a long monophthong [e:] (as in


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[pe:n] for pane) and words have a diphthong [] (as in [pn] for pain)

(Wells, 384). In contrast to the East Anglian dialects, however, in the Welsh English

dialects where these sounds have merged, they are both pronounced as the

monophthong [e:], not the diphthong []. Wells notes that this distinction may very well

not necessarily be that of a historical preservation, but rather that of a spelling

pronunciation from when that area of Wales spoke English as a second language.

However, he does add that this is not certain. Either way, it is definitely apparent that

has a historical and valid reason for being in English.

As stated previously for and , the same seems to hold true for and

when they appear as the second character in a digraph (ie. , and

). Modern English shows the proclivity for using word internally and

word finally, although there are many exceptions to this rule (ie. dawn, thou). The

digraphs appropriately represented the Middle English diphthong /a/ (Horobin

& Smith, 49). This sound developed into /:/ in the Early Modern English period,

replacing the gap left by the shift of Middle English /:/ to /o:/ as a result of the Great

Vowel Shift (Barber, 106-7). In Received Pronunciation, the standard British English

accent, the sound is still /:/ (Wells, 144-5). In Australian English, this sound is

approaching /o:/ (Wells, 595-8). In American English, however, this sound is currently

undergoing a merger throughout the country with short , or // (Wells, 473-4). The

result of this makes words like cot and caught homophones. More likely than not this

merged vowel is // rather than /:/. This merger, however, is far from universal even in


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America and since most countries outside of the United States do in fact keep the

sounds distinct, the digraphs most definitely have a useful function in English.

The digraph has had a rather interesting history in English. It was first

found in Old English representing the aforementioned short and long diphthongs //

and /:/ (Horobin & Smith, 57). These diphthongs soon became monophthongs in the

late Old English period, // merging with // and /:/ merging with /:/. Both of

these phonemes were lost by the Middle English period. Short //, along with short //

became a short /a/ in most Middle English dialects (but rather becoming probably a

short // in the West Midlands of England) (Horobin & Smith, 56). The result of long /:/

is a bit more complicated. Outside of coming from the diphthong /:/, Old English /:/

had two sources: Proto-Germanic /:/ and the i-mutation of pre-Old English /:/ (which

itself came from Proto-Germanic /ai/). The results of this sound in the various Middle

English dialects depend upon the sound value each of these source vowels in the

various Old English dialects, which can be summed up by the following table, taken

from Figure 4.7 on page 56 of the Horobin and Smith:

West Saxon Old Anglian Old Kentish

: (from Proto-Germanic :) : e: e:

: (from pre-Old English :) : : e:

Thus, the resulting Middle English sound values can be summed up by the

following table, taken from Figure 4.8 on page 56 of the Horobin & Smith:

Southwest England Midlands/North England Southeast England

: /:/ /e:/ /e:/


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: /:/ /:/ /e:/

As one can see, the results of /:/ in Middle English perfectly line up with their

respective dialectal values from Old English. Modern English in fact takes its lexicon

from multiple Middle English dialects so it can be impossible to tell which Modern

English word had which vowel in Middle English. It thus becomes apparent (as

mentioned in the description of Middle English phonology above) that there were two

contrasting long -type vowels in Middle English: /:/ and /e:/. These, however, were

not contrasted in writing, both being spelled as a plain or as (Pyles, 147-8).

The initial effects of the Great Vowel Shift caused these vowels to become /e:/ and /i:/

respectively (Barber, 106-7). These phonemes were not actually distinguished in

writing until the Early Modern English period when the digraph was reintroduced

into the English orthography where it represented the sound value of /e:/ (newly moved

from /:/) (Pyles, 148). The spelling was retained for the long /i:/ sound. In most

Modern English dialects this sound has merged with the aforementioned /e:/ into /i:/

(Barber, 107). In a small group of words, however, this merger did not occur (these

words retaining the original /e:/ which later became /e/, ie. break, steak, great) and

in yet others the vowel was shortened early on to // but the spelling wasnt changed (ie

dead, deaf, thread, etc.) (Barber, 108 & 123). The spelling is a vestige of the

original vowel sound. However, the story does not end here.

Some dialects of British English still maintain this distinction in spoken colloquial

speech. In Northern England, for example, this distinction is traditionally preserved in

the dialect of the area with varying realizations for the two phonemes. In the middle

North [mi:t] for meet and [mt] for meat is found (Wells, 357). In parts of North


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Yorkshire, residents have [mt] for meet and [mt] for meat. In Staffordshire, one

can find [mt] for meet and [mi:t] for meat. This distinction can also be found in parts

of Ireland. Here, in older and rural, working-class speech words spelled have /e:/

as opposed to the standard /i:/ (Wells, 425 & 441). In much of Ireland, the natives use a

monophthong /e:/ for when Standard English has /e/. Thus, steal rhymes with stale

(both having [ste:l]) and meat rhymes with mate as opposed to meet ([me:t] vs.

[mi:t]). Wells also includes some words on his list of the more common words retaining

this distinction that are not spelled with . These words include quay, either and

Jesus (Wells, 425). Quay seems most likely to be an incidental lexical item. It is not

known if other words spelled with like in either are also found to be preserving this

distinction. Barber also lists scene, conceit, completeand conceive in this group

and lists and as modern spelling variants for Modern English (Barber,

105 & 107). The same goes with words that have a single in open syllables such

as in the example Jesus given by Wells. More research needs to be done on this

matter before this distinction is lost entirely in everyday speech to see if other /i:/ words

besides those spelled with (such as or ) have maintained this

phenomenon in these dialects and to what extent.

One of the more common vowel combinations in Modern English, except in

recent loanwords almost universally represents the phoneme /i:/ (Carney, 313).

Tracing back to Old English, this sound was originally a long /e:/-type vowel, retaining

much of its same quality and length through the Middle English period, then through the

effects of the Great Vowel Shift becoming the /i:/ in the Modern English of today


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(Barber, 106). As discussed in the section on this double vowel used to represent

both long mid vowels in Middle English: /e:/ as well as /:/. However, by the Early

Modern English period the digraph was resurrected in English orthography to

represent the more open version of the two vowels, /:/ (Pyles, 148). Even though in

most dialects of Modern English both of these sounds have merged into /i:/, some

dialects still retain this distinction even though they are few and far between. Thus, it is

obvious is a necessary component of the English spelling system.

Deciphering the history of the digraph in English is a tough matter. There

seems to be no set or standard phoneme associated with this grapheme. With varying

consistency it mostly seems to represent the phonemes /i:/ and /e/. Carney has the

main rule as /a/ because of the standard pronunciations of either and neither in

British English but also states that /e/ would make an equally good standard

pronunciation (Carney, 314). One does not seem to take precedence over the other. A

further look into the history of the usage of this digraph for these phonemes may shed

some light on its importance. can be found for/i:/ in a few common words: either,

neither, weird and more consistently in words ending incei- such as receive,

conceive, deceive and also their respective nouns in words like deceit and receipt.

This last group exemplifies the saying in English: I before E except after C, although

the previously mentioned words would seem to break this. Carney lists this on page

313-4 as the main exception rule to the above standard of /a / for . According to

him, 100% of common words with thecei- spelling have /i:/ in them. How did this rule

come about? For one, all of the words which follow the patterncei- are derived from


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Norman French. In Norman and Anglo-French dialects, these words contained a

diphthong which is typically reconstructed as /ei/. This same diphthong developed into

an /oi/ sound in Standard French and later became the diphthong /wa/ in Modern

French (von Jagemann, 71-2). This can be seen in the cognate pair receive-reois (first

person singular of the verb recevoir) and deceive-dois (first person singular of the

verb decevoir). However, there was no /ei/-type vowel in Middle English. It appears

that, based on alternate spellings from the time period after their borrowing into English,

at least some of these words were assimilated to the Middle English long /:/ sound.

Barber lists as being a variant spelling of in late Middle English (Barber, 105).

As discussed in the section on , certain dialects of Irish English put the word

either also into the category of words which had long /:/ in Middle English. For now, it

would appear that the for /i:/ in English could be regarded as just a variant of .

The digraph also can represent the diphthong /e/. Words included in this

group are rein, veil, vein, and heinous. These words, like thecei- group above,

also came mostly from French (von Jagemann, 71-2). However, this group of words

almost undoubtedly contained the /a/ diphthong in Middle English due to the resulting

vowel in these words today. all could represent the phoneme /a/ in

Middle English. As discussed above, because of the use of for this sound some

sources claim this sound was actually closer to // in quality by about the year 1500

(Barber, 114). One can wonder whether there is a possibility that /e/ was indeed a

phoneme separate from /a/ in Middle English. However, there are many words which

one would have expected to have fallen into this category but do not (ie array from

Norman French arreie and laid from Old English legde, note the spelling change in the


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first vowel between the source languages and Modern English) (von Jagemann, 72 and

Pyles, 110). This would explain the overlap of use between and as the first

character in the diphthong since // was lost as a phoneme in Middle English.

Nevertheless, the use of for Modern English /e/ seems just to be a typographical

variant of . The fact that two of the most common words in this group, vein and

rein have homophones of the type vain and rain respectively, could support this.

Without the differentiation of the first vowel character rain/rein and vain/vein would

be indistinguishable in sound and spelling. Thus, it has become apparent the in

fact has no salient use or purpose in Modern English, being a leftover category for

homophones and long dead French vowel sounds.

As done for , since have nearly identical histories, they will be

considered here together. This pair of digraphs was first used in Middle English,

representing the diphthong // (Horobin & Smith, 49). There is also some evidence

that there was also a distinct // in the Middle English of Chaucer, but it was isolated to

a few lexical items, such as fewefew and lewedlewed. However, later on in the

Middle English periods the two diphthongs had completely merged into //, thus the

rest of their history is shared between them (Horobin & Smith, 67). Today, this

diphthong has developed into a /ju:/ vowel (Barber, 112-3). For the most part, after //,

/t/, and /d/, this vowel has become a simple /u:/. Thus, words like choose/chews

and through/through are homophones, both being /tu:z/ and /u:/, respectively. In

American English, this smoothing also occurs after /s/, /t/, /d/ and /l/. Some examples of

this are dew and do both being pronounced /du:/ and lute and loot both being


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pronounced as /lu:t/. However, this diphthongal smoothing is not found in all dialects.

In fact, a rather common phenomenon in Welsh English is to retain the /ju:/ vs. /u:/

distinction after all consonants, including //, /t/ and /d/ (Wells, 385-6). In these

dialects, speakers use the original /u/-type vowel in these words with the stress on the

first part of the diphthong as opposed to the off glide-like quality of the /ju:/ diphthong.

Wells notes that the quality of this peculiar diphthong likely came from Welsh; it is a

regularly-encountered diphthong in the language. It is normally spelled and words

borrowed from English into Welsh regularly spell these words with an (Wells, 386).

The distribution of words into this category is quite regular: Modern English words with

/ju:/ or /u:/ and spelled with a single , , or will contain this /u/

diphthong whilst any word containing /u:/ in Standard English and spelled with an ,

or will retain the pure /u:/ monophthong (The digraph will be discussed

in more detail in its own section below). The above distinction can also be found in a

few dialects of the English in Northern England with the same /u/-type vowel, although

Wells notes it is extremely rare today (Wells, 359).

Due to the possible non-overlap between and in the English spelling

system, unlike most of the digraph pairs ending in and these two are considered

separately. As opposed to trading off between representing /e/ and /i:/, when

stressed, is mostly pronounced as the diphthong /e/ (Carney, 317). Some

examples of words like this include prey, grey and the exclamation hey. This digraph

rarely occurs word-initially and word-medially and when it does it is mostly found in


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exotic words and sporadic lexical items such as eye and geyser (where they are both

pronounced as /a/).

As discussed in the above section on , in Middle English was one of

the four ways to write the diphthong /a/ or // (depending upon the source) (Horobin &

Smith, 49). It has already been noted that there does not seem to have been a phonetic

distinction between the spelling and the spelling in Middle English.

Whether or not there ever was a distinction at all in the Middle English period will be left

for further research. There is, however, no evidence of a distinction left in any Modern

English that has been discovered thus far. Words which contained an -type vowel

in Old English or Norman French (such as legdelaid and feifaith) can, in Modern

English, be spelled with .

is a digraph which is very common in todays English. When stressed and

word-finally, it almost always represents the diphthong /a/, as in die, tie and lie

(Carney, 330). When unstressed and word-finally, it occurs mostly as an alternative to

word final and is variously described as having the value of an unstressed vowel,

whether it be written // or /i/ (ie cookie, preppie and brownie). When stressed and

word-medially, however, appears most often to represent the long monophthong

/i:/, as in brief, thief and pier (Carney, 331).

When representing /a/, is a result of the natural evolution through the Great

Vowel Shift of the Middle English long monophthong /i:/ (Barber, 105-6). Often times in

Middle English a double vowel was used to indicate the long counterpart of a vowel.

However, due to the similarity in writing of minims (small strokes like those in lowercase


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is, ms and ns) a double wouldve been confusing to readers in the Middle Ages,

thus either a single was written and context would explain itself or a was used

instead, (/y(:)/ being recently unrounded to /i:/) (Pyles, 44). The use of for this

vowel seems to be an Early Modern English convention, because in Middle English

was most often used as a variant for the long mid monopthong /e:/ (Barber, 105). This

would explain its occurrence as /i:/ in words like brief, thief and pier in Modern

English spelling. Although there is no evidence for this, may have been an early

way of maintaining the /:/ vs /e:/ vowel distinction in writing before came to be

used for the more open of the two long vowels. Most of these words it seems were

borrowed from French where they contained a /ie/-type diphthong in what was to

become Standard French while remaining a simple vowel in Anglo-Norman (von

Jagemann, 75-6). Peculiarly, Modern English retained the Anglo-Norman simple vowel

sound while still using the Standard French spelling. Needless to say it just seems to

be used as a variant of double in the Middle English period. In regards to using

in an unstressed word final position, sometime in Early Modern English writers

developed an aversion for writing word-finally (Pyles, 33). When an unstressed

short // sound was found in these positions, a final silent was sometimes added to

make a word seem more aesthetically pleasing. This was and still is used as an

alternate to the more standard for word-finally. As a result, native English

words ending in an are extremely rare and words which do (ie. khaki, pi, sandhi)

have a certain exotic feel to them and would almost always be classified in the exotic

spelling category discussed above in greater detail. Thus, seems to have a use for

/a/ but not for its other sounds.


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This digraph, for the most part, has the value of the diphthong /o/, such as in

Modern English boat, coat and foal (Carney, 341-2). Much of the history of the

digraph runs parallel to that of the digraph . In Middle English, there were two long

mid rounded back vowels: /:/ and /o:/ (Horobin & Smith, 48). For most of the Middle

English period both of these long vowels were written either as a single in open

syllables or as a double (ie. Both boat and boot could be written as boot) (Pyles,

146-7). The more open of the two monophthongs, /:/, had descended from the Old

English low back vowel /:/ while the higher of the two descended from Old English long

/o:/. As with , it was not until the Early Modern English period that these two

vowels were distinguished in writing so that came to represent the more open of

the two o-vowels, /o:/ (later /o/, the result of /:/ after the Great Vowel Shift) and

was left to represent the more close of the two (this time /u:/, which had been /o:/ before

the Great Vowel Shift).

Today, the digraph has much the same value as the combination

(the capital C being any consonant). As with all of the combinations, however,

these long vowels developed from short vowels lengthened in open syllables in the

Middle English period (Pyles, 150-1). Thus, we have two main sources of Modern

English /o/: Middle English long /:/ (from Old English /:/) and Middle English short //

in open syllables. In most Modern English dialects these sounds are identical.

However, in some of the traditional dialects of the Northern Midlands of England, this is

not the case. The modern reflex of Middle English long /:/ in these dialects is //

while the reflex of short // subjected to lengthening is // (Trudgill, 74). Words like


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bone, loaf and road belong in this first group while words such as coal, coat and

foal belong to this second group. Wells also mentions that certain Standard English

/o/-words might have a []-type vowel in these regions (again, including coat and

coal so this likely correlates with Trudgills // group) but he does not give an historical

explanation for why this is so (Wells, 358). This distinction, unlike many of the others

mentioned previously, is actually not distinguished in the written orthography of today.

Words like bone, which had a /:/-type long vowel in Old English, are spelled in

modern English even though one would think the modern reflex would be boan. The

reverse is true as well, where words which had a short vowel in Old and Middle English

are today spelled with , such as coat, coal and foal, where one would expect

cote, cole, and fole. Thus, it would seem that and could be

interchangeable as a result since this distinction is not preserved in the orthography.

The digraph is peculiar in that it doesnt seem to regularly appear until Early

Modern English. Barber lists it in parentheses as a rare spelling in late Middle English

(Barber, 105). Like above, it almost always represents the diphthong /o/ (// in

Received Pronunciation British English) (Carney, 352-3). However, it is almost always

found word-finally in words which presumably did not have the diphthong //

in Middle English (toe, foe, doe, etc.). In this position, the digraph is rarely

found, except in instances like whoa where the final digraph actually represents a

triphthong /o/. The question can thus be raised as to whether developed as the

word-final variant of in the Early Modern English period. Carney lists it as a

variant of but with a null consonant (Carney, 352). This is reminiscent to the


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example of word-final for /a/ above. No evidence can be found as to why this

digraph was chosen as the word-final grapheme instead of just staying with ,

especially since is found in many words word-finally: plea, flea, sea, yea, etc.

Perhaps because was already used for another vowel quality is why the in

this digraph couldnt be replaced with another whereas is a totally new

digraph in English orthography. Since as the Modern English era progressed the

orthography became more and more inclined to use word-finally in a variety of

ways, it seems likely that the birth of in English spelling could be a result of this

proclivity.

As with a few other examples above, and , due to their almost

indistinguishable history, will be considered here together. is obviously more

common word-initially andinternally and is more common word-finally. This pair

of digraphs in Modern English usually represents the diphthong // except in recent

French loanwords where it has /w:/ (as in patois, coiffure and boudoir) (Carney, 342

& 349-50). It is one of the few vowel sounds in Modern English which has changed little

from the Middle English period. Its sound then was most likely // as well (Horobin &

Smith, 49). As mentioned above, there was probably another diphthong in Middle

English which and represented, namely //. This sound, however, was

restricted to a few lexical items such aspoyntpoint and perhaps boilboil (Horobin &

Smith, 67). By the time of Chaucer the two had already merged in many dialects of

English. There is still debate as to which words contained which sound, but many

words seem to have used the two diphthongs interchangeably. Regardless, the two


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sounds have long been merged in the English of today. There is no evidence

whatsoever of any Modern English dialects retaining a distinction between these two

sounds. Since they have always been spelled exactly the same, a phonological

distinction would not matter much in a discussion about orthography anyway.

One of the most common digraphs in Modern English, has a multi-faceted

history representing many different vowel phonemes throughout the history of English.

It was not found in Old English, but was quite common in Middle English orthography.

In Middle English in particular, represented two different vowel phonemes, which

are still often confused by readers of today. The first of which was the long

monophthong /u:/ (Horobin & Smith, 48). A seemingly peculiar way to spell a long

monophthong, the spelling for this phoneme was derived from French usage at

the time (Pyles, 43). This vowel was originally a diphthong /ou/ in older varieties of

French and it was smoothed into an /u/ vowel in the Norman dialect (von Jagemann, 83-

4). As in above, the Standard French spelling was retained for this sound

even though it was phonetically /u:/. The orthography of the long vowel system of

Middle English seems a bit asymmetric with the use of for /u:/ since most of the

other long vowels save /i:/ are spelled by doubling the vowel letter (Horobin & Smith,

48). However, a written double would have undoubtedly caused problems for the

average Middle English reader. Horobin & Smith share that oftentimes an was

substituted for the short sound when that vowel was surrounded by a series of

minims (Horobin & Smith, 47). That is, written all appeared very similar in

the writing of that period so it was very common for other vowels to be substituted to


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make the writing more legible. A digraph such as would have only made matters

worse in this case. It could be perceived as any possible combination of above minims.

There is also the possibility of confusion with the labiovelar approximate , which

was also introduced into Middle English from French (Horobin & Smith, 62). The literal

name of , double-u, is a prime enough example of this since the letter itself was

originally a ligature of . Thus, it can be seen why was adopted as the

standard spelling for Middle English long /u:/ to avoid confusion with other similarly-

written sounds. As a result of the Great Vowel Shift, this /u:/ sound developed into the

Modern English /a/ diphthong which can be found in thou, foul and pouch (Barber,

105-6).

The digraph also commonly represents the /o/ diphthong in Modern

English (this sound is usually transcribed as // in British English). Some example

words are soul, though and poultry. This spelling is directly descended from the

Middle English diphthong // (Horobin & Smith, 49). Although it merged with the result

of the Middle English long vowel /:/ in the Early Modern English period (typically

spelled ), some dialects still retain this distinction between the two vowel

qualities. A more in depth discussion of the phonology of these dialects is discussed

above under .

Because of the divide between representing /a/ and /o/, a further examination

of is necessary. When trying to determine the standard sound associated with it,

it is impossible to tell by historical precedence: both usages appeared in the Middle

English period. In Modern English, the /a/ sound is much more common. In fact, the

/o/ usage tends to be restricted to before certain consonants, most notable of which is


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/l/. Save for possibly a few recent loanwords, for /o/ seemingly never occurs

before any other consonant except for // or /l/, unless there is a syllable boundary

(Carney, 348). for /a/ can occur almost anywhere, even before consonant

clusters like /nd/ and /st/ is in found, groundand joust. Thus, Carney lists /a/ as the

main pronunciation of (Carney, 347-8). It cannot be ascertained why for /o/

is only found in these few specific environments. More research would need to be done

in this area for more definite reasons. It should also be noted too that also stands

for /u:/ in many recent loanwords from French such as douche, boutique and soup

but they were adapted long after English spelling was standardized and thus had no

effect on the development of orthography therein.

The digraph shares much of the same history has the digraph above,

including the confusion between representing both /a/ and /o/. This spelling in

particular is found most frequently word-finally and before , keeping in line with the

English tendency not to allow to appear at the end of words (thou being a notable

exception to this). However, unlike above, the divide between /a/ and /o/ has

more of an even distribution with . Even a single word can have multiple

pronunciations with different meanings, as evidenced by row (which is pronounced

both /o/ and /a/) and bow (which is pronounced both /bo/ and /ba/). Some more

examples are know, stow, blow and grow with /o/ and now, how, brow and cow

with /a/. Carney lists the /o/ pronunciation as the standard but curiously makes

exceptions after (ie. cow, how, now, browand vow) (Carney, 349).

This is not set in stone either (exceptions to the exception being show, know and


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crow). Again, it is futile at this point to determine which sound has historical

precedence with this spelling especially since both can be distinctive in various dialects

of the British Isles. Either way, has a definite use in English.

The digraph appears to be a rather new addition to the English

orthography. It is not found in either Old English or Middle English. Horobin & Smith

make no reference to it. Thus, one can tentatively assume it only began appearing in

written sources in the late Middle English/Early Modern English period when spelling

was beginning to be standardized. Barber lists it as being a variant spelling of // in

late Middle English (Barber, 112-3). Today it has the sound of /ju:/ or plain /u:/ after

consonants where the glide cannot occur, such as the palatal consonants //, /j/, /t/, /d/

and the liquids // and consonant + /l/ (with the addition of the alveolar consonants in

American English) (Wells, 206-7). Some examples of this are due, hue, blue and

cue.

Even though the spelling has a short history, the sound it represents has a

bit of a longer story to share. As mentioned above on pages 6-7, this /ju:/ sound was

almost wholly borrowed from French and spelled with a single in words like vertu

virtue. The Oxford English Dictionary lists this sound as being pronounced /y:/ but

Horobin & Smith make no mention of the phoneme at all, not even referencing it in their

diddle on and and Figure 1 above does not know of its existence (OED,

Page 1 of ). Von Jagemann mentions that the Norman French sound was probably

a u umlaut but does not say how this was adopted into Middle English (von Jagemann,

86). Barber also lists the and spellings under the phoneme // (Barber,


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112). Regardless, by Modern English it had merged with both the /e/ and //

phonemes of to become /ju:/. This /ju:/ glide was simplified after the palatal

consonants and liquids, along with the alveolar consonants in American English, thus

making do and due homophonous (Wells, 206-7). To learn about dialects in which

the /ju:/ diphthong is still maintained in all positions, see the section above.

There is no evidence found by this author dictating that any living dialect of

English maintains a phonological distinction between the spelling and the

spelling for /(j)u:/. Due to the debatable origins of the former sound anyway,

this is not at all surprising. There has been no dialect documented that distinguishes

due and dew. There is a possible distinction in the Welsh English dialect mentioned

above under , where there is a potential distinction between blue [blu:] and

blew [blu], but this is rather as a result of a slow lexical diffusion as opposed to an

actual historical distinction (Wells, 386).

The last digraph that will be examined in this thesis is that of . This is a

relatively rare digraph and it is confined to a small set of lexical items that includes fruit,

juice,suit, recruit, cruise and bruise where all of them have /u:/ or /ju:/, depending

upon the dialect (except before /d/ and /n/ where they are always pronounced as

separate vowels ie. fluid and ruin) (Carney, 371). Notice that all of these end with

either a /t/ sound or an /s/ or/z/ sound. There are also anomalies like build, guide and

guild, but the first example is rather a freak exception (much like that of friend) and the

in the latter two is actually a marker to indicate that the is hard before front

vowels as opposed to it being a part of a digraph (Pyles, 40-1).


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A closer look at the etymological entries of the above words in the Oxford English

Dictionary does not shed any light as to the origins of this peculiar spelling. They mostly

came from French but did not all have the same vowel phoneme in that language (see

OED dictionary entries). An interesting case is presented in bruise, however. It

contained a long, front, rounded /y:/ vowel in Old English: brsan. The natural

descendant of this sound in Modern English is the /a / diphthong as a result of /y:/

unrounded into /i:/ in Middle English and then undergoing the Great Vowel Shift.

However, /y:/ was not unrounded in all Middle English dialects. In southwestern

England the vowel continued to be rounded and was often spelled after French

usage (see above). For some strange reason that is not entirely understood, the

southwestern variants of these words were adopted into the standard language and

thus remain as such today (OED entry for bruise). The spelling appears to have

been adopted as sort of a compromise between the southwestern variant and the

original in the standard language. There does appear to be any dialects today which

distinguish this sound from its sisters and thus it does not seem

has a useful place in English orthography today.

Conclusion

What hasnt already been said about English orthography? Many attempts, such

as NuSpel or Cut Spelling attempt to rectify the irregularities and inconsistencies of

English spelling. However, none of these systems make any attempt to distinguish

between dialectal differences within English itself. One does not normally think of

English as being multi-dialectal like one would German or Italian but within the British

Isles, the homeland of the English language, one can find a multitude of different


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traditional dialects that many people still use as their daily communicative varieties with

family members, relatives and close friends. These traditional dialects provide a useful

glimpse into the history of the English language and the development of English

orthography and phonology.

As it can be seen from the preceding analyses, English orthography has had

quite an interesting and varied history for it to get to its current state today. A lot of the

seemingly idiosyncratic spelling conventions in Modern English often derive from actual

phonological distinctions present in earlier periods of English history. However, even

taking this into account, a few of the regular digraphs found in Modern English do not

have a particular historical purpose in English as it specifically relates to English itself.

These, as deemed by the author, would be , , and . and

are debatable as well. Obviously this is extraordinarily subjective, but it is certainly a

start that hopefully other linguists can take into account when attempting to create a

new spelling system for English or even just for coming up with an accurate historical

account of the phonology and orthography of it. Yes, the vast majority of dialects of

Modern English do not retain the majority of the phonological distinctions discussed.

However, the important point being made is that having sorted out the historical English

spellings versus the non-historical English spellings, much can be understood about the

evolution of our language and what we can expect of it in the future.


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Bibliography

Barber, Charles. Early Modern English. 2nd

ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University

Press, 1996. Print.

Carney, Edward.A Survey of English Spelling. London: Routledge, 1994. Print.

Cook, Vivian. The English Writing System. London: Hodder Arnold, 2004. Print.

Horobin, Simon & Jeremy Smith.An Introduction to Middle English. New York:

Oxford University Press, 2002. Print.

Kjoonlee. Great Vowel Shift. Chart. Wikipedia. 16 Dec. 2007. Web. 22 July

2011.

Pyles, Thomas. The Origins and Development of the English Language. New

York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964. Print.

Trudgill, Peter. Language in the British Isles. New York: Cambridge University

Press, 1984. Print.

U. The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. 1971. Print.

von Jagemann, Hans C. G. On the Relation of the Anglo-Norman Vowel System

to the Norman words in English. Transactions of the American Philological

Association (1869-1896) Vol. 15 (1884): 66-87. Web. 18 Dec. 2011.

Wells, J.C.Accents of English. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Print.

Documents

English Digraphs History