CHAPTER III.

ORTHOGRAPHICAL CHANGES OF ANGLO-SAXON WORDS IN BECOMING ENGLISH.

XIII. The Alphabet.-1. Its Characters.—Three AngloSaxon characters never came into English. Theoretically,

our th in thin stands for the first, and th in thine for the second; though, with certain exceptions, Professor Sweet pronounces both the Anglo-Saxon characters alike, and Professor March assures us that in no Anglo-Saxon manuscript are they uniformly discriminated. The Anglo-Saxon character for which we have substituted w never appears in English; many editors use w for it in their Anglo-Saxon texts.

The English has added to the Anglo-Saxon alphabet, the letters j, v, and z, and the superfluous k and q. We have combined c with h, as in choose; s with h, as in shame; and, as shown above, t with h, as in thin, and t with h, as in thine -each of the four combinations representing a single sound.

2. The Sounds of the Vowels.-The Anglo-Saxon vowels were pronounced nearly as are the German. In coming into English, these sounds were modified; and, what is especially noticeable, others were added-a, for instance, now representing six sounds.

3. The Consonants and their Combinations.-The Anglo-Saxon consonants in English retain nearly their old sounds. But their f medial and final had the sound of v, ours never except in of. The Anglo-Saxons took delight in

combining c and n, and h and t, as in cniht (the h a guttural, as in German); n and g, as in singan; c and g, as in licgan; h and n, as in hnīgan; h and l, as in hläford; h and r, as in hring; w and r, as in wrītan; and w and l, as in wlītan. Then they pronounced both consonants of the combination! We owe it to the Normans that we are not

called upon to attempt these difficult feats. Living in France for generations, they came to dislike all such sounds, especially the gutturals, made far back in the mouth. They could not or would not utter them, and so have saved us the necessity. This they accomplished (1) by dropping the guttural, as g from genoh and fugol,-our enough and fowl; (2) by changing the guttural to another letter,-halig becoming holy; (3) by running the two sounds into one,--the n and g in singan having but one sound, as in sing; (4) by allowing the guttural to remain, but making it a mute,—liht pronounced lit; (5) by softening the guttural into a palatal,— brycg becoming bridge; and (6) by labializing the guttural, and adding a vowel sound to aid pronunciation,-sorg changing to our sorrow.

"Our

Of gh, Meiklejohn has this humorous account : Saxon scribes wrote not light, might, and night, but liht, miht, and niht. When, however, they found that the Norman-French gentlemen would not sound the h and say-as is still said in Scotland—licht, etc., they redoubled the guttural, strengthened the h with a hard g, and again presented the dose to the Norman. But, if the Norman could not sound the h alone, still less could he sound the double guttural; and he very coolly let both alone. . . And so it came to pass that we have the symbol gh in more than seventy of our words, and that in most of these we do not sound it at all."

Gh final and even medial we sometimes pronounce as ƒ; as in, cough, enough, and draught.

To the Anglo-Saxon k sound of c, as in cyning, we have, through Norman-French influence, added the s sound, as in city; to their hard sound of g, as in our give, we have added thej sound, as in gin.

XIV. Other Changes in Sound; and in Orthography.—The changes just spoken of are fitly treated under another head, but they partly illustrate orthographical changes. AngloSaxon a is found in English as o or oe or oa,—hām, dā, and ac are our home, doe, and oak. Frequently, ē appears as ee; ō, as oo; y, as short i; and 7, as long i‚—fēt and ges are our feet and geese; gōd and stōl are our good and stool; syn and dym are sin and dim; and fir and hyd are fire and hide. Anglo-Saxon u appears in English regularly as ou or ow,-hūs, ūt, and scur are our house, out, and shower.

Our w and our th in thin and thine excluded, as was said, the Anglo-Saxon characters. Initial ƒ in Anglo-Saxon often appears in English as v,-fatu and fers as vats and verse; final f in the singular of nouns often is v in the English plural,-wulf has wolves; f between two vowels is v,-efese and efen are our eaves and even. Our j sometimes takes the place of Anglo-Saxon i,-Judea for Iudea. Our ch and k are occasionally substituted for Anglo-Saxon c,-church and cheese for cyrice and cyse, and king, kiss, and knight for cyning, coss, and cniht. Anglo-Saxon cw appears in English as qu,-cwic, cwēn, and cwelan becoming quick, queen, and quell. Their sc is our sh,—scip, scīr, scēp, and fisc turning into ship, shire, sheep, and fish. Their g often becomes our y,-gear, ge, geoc, and geong appearing as year, ye, yoke, and young. Initial h before 1, n, and r is dropped,

―hläf, hnut, and hring turning into loaf, nut, and ring. Initial hw always changes to our wh, though the h breathing precedes the w sound,-hwit, hwylc, and hwal becoming white, which, and whale. The consonant r sometimes changes place with the vowel preceding,-brid and urn appearing as bird and run.

CHAPTER IV.

GRAMMATICAL CHANGES OF THE ANGLO-SAXON IN BECOMING ENGLISH.-THE NOUN.

XV. Changes in the Declension.-There were two Declensions in the Anglo-Saxon, each running through four cases and two numbers-the Vowel, or Strong, Declension, and the Consonant, or Weak. We give, below, the case-endings in both numbers of these declensions.

1. Change of the um Ending.-Even before the Con

quest om, seen to-day in our whilom and seldom (nouns in