West Saxon Side Story

After the Beowulf performance, I found myself doubting my memory about certain features of the Anglo-Saxon language (I dislike the term Old English, as it implies more comprehensibility than it ought). So I took myself to the library to refresh my knowledge of Anglo-Saxon grammar and phonology. The most peculiar feature of Anglo-Saxon, in comparison to other Germanic tongues, is something called "vowel breaking", which affects the already rounded vowels /ae/, /e/, and /i/. By virtue of this process, the aforementioned vowels gain a following schwa and the new spellings /ea/, /eo/, and /io/, orthographic sequences which contribute the written aesthetic of the Anglo-Saxon tongue and confound the poor freshman studying pre-Norman history.

After I had relearned the constructed pronunciation of these diphthongs, both short and long, it occurred to me the peculiar (to my ear) vowels of West Country English owe much to vowel breaking. West Country English derives from the West Saxon dialect of Anglo-Saxon and it was that dialect which had the greatest degree of vowel breaking. When I was at boarding school, I had many opportunities to hear the staff using their West Country dialect, which I did not understand but nonetheless did not hold in contempt. At that time, I knew little about it except that these dialects tended to give voice to the voiceless consonants at the beginnings of English words; thus "fox" comes from the main dialect of Middle English, but "vixen" (a female "fox") comes from the West Country.

More recently, it also occurred to me that the perennial problem of English-speakers learning a Continental tongue, that is, the ubiquitous admonition of teachers and textbooks to pronounce long vowels as "pure" rather than with the characteristic semi-vocalic glide of the Englishman, may have its origin in vowel breaking. Although West Saxon exhibited the greatest degree of vowel breaking, none of the Anglo-Saxon dialects lacked it. This is speculation, however, and I do not presume to have evidence sufficient for a conference presentation.