You should know, however, that this convention is a modern invention and is not used in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. king, OE cyning) in many Old English text books, the distinction between the sounds in church and king are indicated by a dot: with a dot ( ċ), the letter is to be pronounced as in church (OE ċyriċ) without it, it is pronounced as the k in king (OE cyning). In Old English k, and z were rarely used: c was used for sounds we now often spell with ch (e.g.The main exceptions are our letters k, v, z, w, the Norman-derived spellings wh, th, sh, and also dg (as in edge), and some differences in the sounds associated with the letters c, g, f, s, and y (For a more detailed discussion of these sounds with example sound files, see my tutorial on the Pronunciation of Old English).

Otherwise the Old English alphabet contained more or less the same letters as the Modern English alphabet, though as we’ll see, several looked somewhat different.

æ ( æsc, pronounced as Modern English ash), a vowel used to indicate the sound we now spell with a in words like bat and mat (the Anglo-Saxons also use the letter a, but only for sounds like that spelled using a in father and au in many non-Canadian pronunciations of aunt).

ƿ ( wynn), a runic character used for the sound we spell using w.

þ ( thorn) and ð ( eth), both of which were used to spell the sounds we now write using the Norman-influenced spelling th.The most important of these additions were These scribes used an alphabet based on the Latin alphabet, but with some native additions and occasionally runes. Old English texts were copied in manuscripts by scribes.

Old english font letter thorn