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Dont forget there was almost certainly very wide variations in pronunciation in different areas - people would be used to hearing different treatments of these consonants from anyone who lived even twenty miles away Sally Sally Evans http://www.poetryscotland.co.uk http://groups.msn.com/desktopsallye http://www.myspace.com/poetsallyevans ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robin Hamilton" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2008 1:15 AM Subject: Re: Beowulf's Yogh >> So, Dr. Hamilton, is this your question: "Why does the author of Beowulf >> treat, for alliterative purposes, two distinct sounds ['y' as in 'yet', >> and >> 'g' as in 'get'] as if they were the same? > > Yup. > >> And, further, you wonder: "Were voiced and voiceless velar fricatives >> distinct in Proto-Germanic?" > > I think that is what is puzzling me. > > (a) In Old English of the Eighth Century AD, as reflected in the text of > Beowulf as we have it, voiced [<g>] and voiceless [<y>] velar fricatives > [both represented by the yogh character in script] were distinct sounds. > > (b) Was there a period in Proto-Germanic (the ur-language which later > divided up into English, German, Norse, etc.) when there was a single > sound which later split into voiced and voiceless velar fricatives? > > (c) Hypothetically, does the composition, as opposed to the earliest > written text, of Beowulf, represent a period before this split? > > R.