Middle English

For various reasons the first change in the phonological system to be mentioned is the leveling of sounds – vowels in the unstressed syllables. OE had a fixed stress on the first syllable. In OE at the ends of the words we might find whatever sound: cara, caru, care – now all the forms merged into one –care (talu OE – tale ME). With the stressed vowels the situation was different. First of all there were quantitative changes in vowels. In ME the quantity of the vowels becomes dependent on the environment, on what follows the vowel. In some phonetic environment only short vowels are possible, in the other the vowels are long. So a long vowel before two consonants is shortened (the exceptions are the clusters mb, ld, nd (short vowels before these consonants were lengthened OE wild – ME wild) or when the two consonants belong to the second syllable of the word. (mæst læst → most least) e.g. OE - f ēdan - f ēdde – ME feed – fed. It should be remembered that while the OE unstressed vowels were thus reduced and lost, new unstressed vowels appeared in borrowed words or developed from stressed ones. (e.g. shifting of word stress and vocalization of [r] in such endings as writer where [er] became [ə]). Short vowels became long in open syllables. This lengthening mainly affected the more open of the short vowels [e] [a] [o]. (OE nama – ME name) These developments show that the gap between the stressed and unstressed vowels has narrowed, so that in ME and NE we can no longer subdivide the vowels into stressed and unstressed.

So the most significant change was monophthongization of OE diphthongs.

Earm – arm ea→æ→a

Heofon – heven eo →e

Some individual changes occurred in the sounds:

æ → a (thæt – that)

ǣ → Ɛ: (sound like i:) strǣt – street

ā→ō (stān →stōne (stone)

Alongside the changed English sounds ME had a number of French unassimilated sounds, nasal. Their fate was to assimilate later. Nature, simple, abandon.

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