"v" and "u" remained largely interchangeable, although "v" was often used at the start of a word (e.g. (vnder), and "u" in the middle (e.g. haue), quite the opposite of today
"v" and "u" remained largely interchangeable, although "v" was often used at the start of a word (e.g. (vnder), and "u" in the middle (e.g. haue), quite the opposite of today;
"v" and "u" remained largely interchangeable, although "v" was often used at the start of a word (e.g. (vnder), and "u" in the middle (e.g. haue), quite the opposite of today;
because the written "u" was similar to "v", "n" and "m", it was replaced in many words with an "o" (e.g. son, come, love, one);
the “ou” spelling of words like house and mouse was introduced;
many long vowel sounds were marked by a double letter (e.g. boc became booc, se became see, etc), or, in some cases, a trailing "e" became no longer pronounced but retained in spelling to indicate a long vowel (e.g. nose, name);
the long "a" vowel of Old English became more like "o" in Middle English, so that ham became home, stan became stone, ban became bone, etc;
short vowels were identified by consonant doubling (e.g siting became sitting, etc).
The “-en” plural noun ending of Old English (e.g. house/housen, shoe/shoen, etc) had largely disappeared by the end of the Middle English period, replaced by the French plural ending “-s” (the “-en” ending only remains today in one or two important examples, such as children, brethren and oxen). Changes to some word forms stuck while others did not, so that we are left with inconsistencies like half and halves, grief and grieves, speech and speak, etc. In another odd example of gradual modernization, the indefinite article “a” subsumed over time the initial “n” of some following nouns, so that a napron became an apron, a nauger became an auger, etc, as well as the reverse case of an ekename becoming a nickname.
Although Old English had no distinction between the formal and informal second person singular, which was always expressed as thou, the words ye or you (previously the second person plural) were introduced in the 13th Century as the formal singular version (used with superiors or non-intimates), with thou remaining as the familiar, informal form.
