Talk:winterfylleþ

(An anonymous comment on the entry page about the pronunciation:) This cannot be correct. Did Old English have /i/ and /y/? Were consonant sounds doubled/extended? Surely this is four syllables, not two?

/y/ merged into /i/ in the early Middle English period, but Old English did still have /i/ and /y/ as separate phonemes (some dialects separated /e/ and /ø/ as well). /i/ and /y/ are properly separated in Old English on etymological grounds also. And as for geminated consonants, it's likely that they still existed in the OE period. They definitely did when the -jan verb ending in late Germanic caused gemination of the previous consonant. Can anyone give more insight on this? --CodeCat 16:07, 27 May 2008 (UTC)