2 STUDIES IN ENGLISH SPELLING. 
enough letters to express our vowel sounds. One of the 
results of the Norman Conquest was that the English discarded, 
gradually, their own alphabet, and adopted that used by the 
Romans.* 
The Roman alphabet contained but six vowel letters, whereas 
the old English alphabet contained fourteen vowel letters in pairs, 
each pair containing an accented and an unaccented letter. I 
will shew you the sounds represented by these letters. 
a as in haul, brawn. 
aie ae se) eT 
ee ,, brae, maid, gaol, say. 
2g wane Smacs 
(eee -. ,, meet, neither, belief, bead. 
e€ yy Vinet: 
wee a », aisle, eye, sleight, guile, buy. 
ita nee a A. Silke 
(op beer x 5, Oak, foe, stow. 
oO noe 
lit a ey ,, boot, fruit, soup, accrue, feud, new, due, 
beauty. 
ie Be eee Peuits 
The other pair, y and y, is only a duplicate of ij andi. As to 
the sound of a and 6, I follow Rask, the Danish grammarian. 
Now, these double vowels are used to express the old long or 
accented vowels which are not contained in the Roman alphabet, 
the ordinary vowel letters being used to express the old shallow 
or unaccented vowels. 
English writers compelled to use the Roman alphabet found 
themselves with only six letters to express at least double that 
number of vowel sounds. ‘They used these double vowels to 
supply the deficiency. The following table will show the matter 
pretty clearly : 
* See Transactions of this Society, Vol. I., p. 68. 
