The phonetics of the Old English period was characterized by a system of dynamic stress. The fixed stress fell on the first root syllable:
agāne (gone); ™esēon (see); ™aderian (gather)
The vowelshad the following characteristic features:
a)The quantity and the quality of the vowel depended upon its position in the word. Under stress any vowel could be found, but in unstressed position there were no diphthongs or long monophthongs, but only short vowels [a], [e], [i], [o], [u].
b)The length of the stressed vowels (monophthongs and diphthongs) was phonemic, which means that there could be two words differing only in the length of the vowel:
metan (to mete, to measure) – mētan (to meet)
pin (pin) – pīn (pain)
god (god) – gōd (good)
ful (full) – fūl (foul)
c) There was an exact parallelism of long and short vowels:
Short: a o e u i æ y ea eo
Long: ā ō ē ū ī æ y ēa ēo
The consonantswere few. Some of the modern sounds were non-existent ([S], [™], [›] , [G]]).
The quality of the consonant very much depended on its position in the word, especially the resonance (voiced and voiceless) sounds: hlāf [f] (loaf) - hlāford [v] (lord, “bread-keeper”) and articulation (palatal and velar sounds: climban [k] (to climb) – cild [k’] (child)), etc.
