Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
This affects words such as lamb and plumb, as well as derived forms with suffixes, such as lambs, lambing, plumbed, plumber. By analogy with words like these, certain other words ending in /m/, which had no historical /b/ sound, had a silent letter b added to their spelling by way of hypercorrection. Such words include limb and crumb. [35]
Several sound-changes in Anglo-Latin are due to the presence of the "semivowel", an alteration of certain front vowels. Originally ordinary vowels, they acquired at different points in history the value of the glide /j/ (a y-sound like that in English canyon). Subsequently, their value has fluctuated through history between a consonant and a ...
NG-coalescence – reduction of the final cluster [ŋɡ] to [ŋ], in words like hang, which has occurred in all but a few English dialects. G-dropping – reduction of the final cluster [ŋɡ] to [n] in weak syllables, principally in the verb ending -ing, which has occurred in many English dialects, although not in the modern standard varieties.
Words like rally, shallow and swallow are not covered here because the /l/ is followed by a vowel; instead, earlier rules apply. Nor are words like male covered, which had long /aː/ in Middle English.) /ɑː/ when followed by /lm/, as in palm, calm, etc. (The /l/ has dropped out in pronunciation.)
The letter y has double function (modifying the vowel as well as being pronounced as [j] or [i]) in the words payer, balayer, moyen, essuyer, pays, etc., but in some words it has only a single function: [j] in bayer, mayonnaise, coyote; modifying the vowel at the end of proper names like Chardonnay and Fourcroy.
The sounds [ɡ] and [ɣ] were mostly in complementary distribution. However, either sound could occur after /n/, since phonetic [nɣ] occurred as the result of syncope in some words such as syngian. [21] The phonemic transcription used in this article ignores such exceptional cases and treats [ɣ] and [ɡ] as allophones of a phoneme /ɣ/.
Silent e , like many conventions of written language that no longer reflect current pronunciations, was not always silent. In Chaucer's Balade, the first line does not scan properly unless what appears to current eyes to be a silent e is pronounced: Hyd, Absolon, thy giltè tresses clerè. Gilte ends in the same sound as modern English Malta.
Within the chart “close”, “open”, “mid”, “front”, “central”, and “back” refer to the placement of the sound within the mouth. [3] At points where two sounds share an intersection, the left is unrounded, and the right is rounded which refers to the shape of the lips while making the sound. [4]