Old English did have voiced fricatives. They were voiced if between vowels or at the end of a word after a vowel. The voicing was not phonemic, but it was present nonetheless. Middle English is the time period when voicing became *phonemic* for fricatives.
Hey you guy in lit class, a short remark on linguistic accuracy: the fricatives in 'this' and 'them' are both voiced - /ð/ - in Present Day English. An example of a voiced dental fricative /θ/ is found in 'thorn'.
You are correct. When I say that Fricatives were always unvoiced in OE I should have qualified that with the exceptions you mentioned, though I think when I wrote this I was trying to make a distinction between phonemes that were always (ie: inherently) voiced, versus phonemes that were only voiced under certain circumstances.
1:29 this is inaccurate, the 'th' sounds in 'this' and 'them' are both voiced. However, the voiceless dental fricative is found in words like 'thunder', 'fifth', and 'teeth'.
I heard that in old English, "f" only made the unvoiced"f" sound at the beginning of a word, and a voiced "v" sound everywhere else, so a word like "feasceaft" would be pronounced like "feashavt" (this is in contrast to what you said about the v sound being introduced in middle english)
F would also be unvoiced at the ends of words. It's being between voiced sounds that has them voiced, not simply being non initial. Feasceaft as you write, would *not* have a voiced V at all in that word, as it's right before an unvoiced T. A better example is something like fugol, meaning bird, which has an unvoiced F, becoming 'fowl' in Modern English and hærfest, which does have a voiced F, becoming 'harvest' in Modern English, the voicedness evidenced by the spelling.
Nice video. I really enjoy this series. I have a question: Where did you get all this information on the pronunciation of Middle English? All the websites I've visited can't seem to agree on the same pronunciations.
1:07 Hold on, what is the intended pronunciation of the 'z sound', because you say it in like 3 different ways? Is it just the alveolar /z/ of modern English, or palatalised /zʲ/, like you pronounce it at 1:08, or the postalveolar /ʒ/, as you pronounce it at 1:15?
Interesting. Was Middle English written 100% phonetically? Meaning you write exactly what you pronounce, and read every letter that is written? Thank you.
+MultiSciGeek pretty much. a combination of phonetic spelling and just spelling stuff as you've seen (or think you remember seeing) it spelled. It continues into Early Modern English too, the first true dictionaries were only published in the 17th century and are pretty inconsistent until Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary. Of course most Shakespeare editions that people read have modernized spelling, but if you look at older editions you find the same inconsistency both with other authors and within the works themselves. Though it does give you a lot of clues as to how things were pronounced, something that actors often wonder as they read modernized spelling editions of Shakespeare. But then you get examples by the less literate of folks that can be pretty funny, like in a book I'm reading about the Maryland colony in the English Civil War (The Plundering Time), one character is noted by court records to have responded to an argument on board a ship provoked by disparaging comments made by a local militia commander and his brother about "Rundheads" by grabbing a pole-axe and cutlass. When the commander asks him "Whoe doe you weight for, doe you weight for my brother?", he gets hostile and kicks the brothers off his ship, takes some other locals hostage, bragging to them that "with this powle axe and cuttlas I seazed the Commaunder of Accomack and his brother." and threatens to "beat downe the dwelling houses of divers inhabitants"
Wish there was a series as good as this for old english (well there are some places but this one looks like one could really learn middle English). I must say that the original language was cooler because there was no French. I wish we could rid ourselves of those Frenchified words as they are a badge of past shame. Middle English really shows how insidious the French were in trying to own a land they had no right to. At least we finally did rise and we left the French way behind.
@ Howard Cassells : Should we also have to remove all the English words in the French language? Come on, don't be silly! Every language in the world is influenced by one or few neighbour tongues, so your wish is just impossible. It would be like removing all the Italian worlds in French, all the Arabic words in Persian, all the Chinese words in Japanese, and so on... If English would "give all the French words the boot", as you say, you wouldn't understand your own daily language anymore! Same here.
I gotta disagree with you a little. English is far more influenced by French than any other language is influenced by another language. And many of English's basic words and its grammar are Germanic origin so one could still be understood without french vocabulary. There is a modern movement for the large removal of French influence from English called Anglish.
Old English did have voiced fricatives. They were voiced if between vowels or at the end of a word after a vowel. The voicing was not phonemic, but it was present nonetheless. Middle English is the time period when voicing became *phonemic* for fricatives.
1:33 "This" and "them" have the same "th" sound. Don't you mean something more like "this" and "thing"?
THis is voiced, a better example would be to say:
THe THing. The is voiced. Thing is unvoiced.
Other than that, great vid!
Hey you guy in lit class, a short remark on linguistic accuracy: the fricatives in 'this' and 'them' are both voiced - /ð/ - in Present Day English. An example of a voiced dental fricative /θ/ is found in 'thorn'.
You are correct. When I say that Fricatives were always unvoiced in OE I should have qualified that with the exceptions you mentioned, though I think when I wrote this I was trying to make a distinction between phonemes that were always (ie: inherently) voiced, versus phonemes that were only voiced under certain circumstances.
1:29 this is inaccurate, the 'th' sounds in 'this' and 'them' are both voiced. However, the voiceless dental fricative is found in words like 'thunder',
'fifth', and 'teeth'.
Thank you Gustavo I have never understood voiced and unvoiced!
I'm glad this helped, thanks for the comment!
I heard that in old English, "f" only made the unvoiced"f" sound at the beginning of a word, and a voiced "v" sound everywhere else, so a word like "feasceaft" would be pronounced like "feashavt"
(this is in contrast to what you said about the v sound being introduced in middle english)
Dunk... From TFC? This is awkward... I'm subscribed to you, I think xD
F would also be unvoiced at the ends of words. It's being between voiced sounds that has them voiced, not simply being non initial. Feasceaft as you write, would *not* have a voiced V at all in that word, as it's right before an unvoiced T.
A better example is something like fugol, meaning bird, which has an unvoiced F, becoming 'fowl' in Modern English and hærfest, which does have a voiced F, becoming 'harvest' in Modern English, the voicedness evidenced by the spelling.
Nice video. I really enjoy this series. I have a question: Where did you get all this information on the pronunciation of Middle English? All the websites I've visited can't seem to agree on the same pronunciations.
"This" and "them" both contain voiced fricatives. This and think, however, is a better example ("this" is voiced and "think" is not)
1:07 Hold on, what is the intended pronunciation of the 'z sound', because you say it in like 3 different ways? Is it just the alveolar /z/ of modern English, or palatalised /zʲ/, like you pronounce it at 1:08, or the postalveolar /ʒ/, as you pronounce it at 1:15?
Interesting. Was Middle English written 100% phonetically? Meaning you write exactly what you pronounce, and read every letter that is written? Thank you.
+MultiSciGeek pretty much. a combination of phonetic spelling and just spelling stuff as you've seen (or think you remember seeing) it spelled. It continues into Early Modern English too, the first true dictionaries were only published in the 17th century and are pretty inconsistent until Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary. Of course most Shakespeare editions that people read have modernized spelling, but if you look at older editions you find the same inconsistency both with other authors and within the works themselves. Though it does give you a lot of clues as to how things were pronounced, something that actors often wonder as they read modernized spelling editions of Shakespeare. But then you get examples by the less literate of folks that can be pretty funny, like in a book I'm reading about the Maryland colony in the English Civil War (The Plundering Time), one character is noted by court records to have responded to an argument on board a ship provoked by disparaging comments made by a local militia commander and his brother about "Rundheads" by grabbing a pole-axe and cutlass. When the commander asks him "Whoe doe you weight for, doe you weight for my brother?", he gets hostile and kicks the brothers off his ship, takes some other locals hostage, bragging to them that "with this powle axe and cuttlas I seazed the Commaunder of Accomack and his brother." and threatens to "beat downe the dwelling houses of divers inhabitants"
nah Very interesting. Kind of reminds me of pidgin or some creole languages. Thank you for your answer
Glad you found it helpful!
Wish there was a series as good as this for old english (well there are some places but this one looks like one could really learn middle English). I must say that the original language was cooler because there was no French. I wish we could rid ourselves of those Frenchified words as they are a badge of past shame. Middle English really shows how insidious the French were in trying to own a land they had no right to. At least we finally did rise and we left the French way behind.
Aethel Wulf Try Anglish, it's english, without the french, latin, and greek loanwords
The only thing this video series is missing is the vocabulary.
and actually he leaves a lot of consonants out. w, u, v, he doesnt teach the middle english sounds of them.
Thanks. This helped me study for a middle english quiz :)
Thanks for posting!
Wow!
Yeah, that's a mistake. Good catch.
The vowels and consonant both sound like the German pronunciation...
so would "wryten" be pronounced "w-ritten?"
No it would be pronounced wree-ten
@ Howard Cassells : Should we also have to remove all the English words in the French language? Come on, don't be silly! Every language in the world is influenced by one or few neighbour tongues, so your wish is just impossible. It would be like removing all the Italian worlds in French, all the Arabic words in Persian, all the Chinese words in Japanese, and so on... If English would "give all the French words the boot", as you say, you wouldn't understand your own daily language anymore! Same here.
I gotta disagree with you a little. English is far more influenced by French than any other language is influenced by another language. And many of English's basic words and its grammar are Germanic origin so one could still be understood without french vocabulary. There is a modern movement for the large removal of French influence from English called Anglish.
Thanks dude.
this and them are both voiced fricatives in the example accent and in my own accent... three, thistle and ethos are unvoiced.
You speak so quicker
The th in this is always voiced. And i really wish english could give all the french words the boot and reinstate the germanic equivalents
Go ahead and try that without "reinstate" and "equivalents". Those were derived from French
My brain hurts
why the fuck am i here?
i was listening to music
Hey I'm thatoneguyinaudioclass and I say to quit using reverb on your commentary. It's distracting as fuck.