From: "Roger Collett" <[log in to unmask]>
> After some research, during which I managed to confuse myself :-{ with
> thorn and yogh, (sorry folks!) it would seem that the character we are
> calling -yogh- was in fact the OE -g- and -yogh- was a ME innovation.
Another way of putting it would be that when the yogh character in OE script
was replaced by g/j/i/y, the yogh then came to be used to represent the [x]
(as in loch) sound. Thus you get "ni3t" (for "night"), etc. in GGK.
A case of, "Gosh, now we can use yogh for Something Completely Different!"
>This means that the pronunciation rules were the same as today i.e give /
>get, hard -g- because followed by a frontal vowel sound and gybe / genome,
>soft -g- when not. The -y- and Germanic -j- sound are derivatives of the
>latter and derive from the later ME usage or vice versa.
Um ... I'm going to have to think about this. <g>
> There was no OE -yogh-, just the same written character carried over
> before the modern -G- came into use.
See above. Except you can't *simply map OE g/yogh onto ME "g", because some
sounds represented by that character would map onto ME "y". I think.
> This means that for written alliterative purposes both would be the same
> letter and possibly the same sound in the 8th C.
"possibly the same sound" -- exactly the problem I'm trying to get to grips
with.
> How do we know what the actual pronunciation was? All we have is the
> written text.
You can reverse-engineer what would have been the pronunciation of the text
with a fair degree of accuracy. I think.
Robin
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