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to be precise the first æ is short, like cat or bat or ash (the latter is the name of the rune for this digraph). the second in flæd is long, like in bad, or pad. in Kent the spelling and pronunciation became Eðelfled (with a long final e similar in sound to "flair"). ð or þ were interchangeable, depending on the particular scribal school, since the Latin alphabet lacked a symbol for this sound (modern English /th/, technically this is two different phonemes, but since it didn't develop in Latin, no alternative grapheme was ever used until relatively modern times when ð and þ are (sometimes) used to distinguish voiced from unvoiced). Middle English is a bit of a mess, with Norman scribes trying to figure out new ways of writing English that a French-speaking aristocracy would understand. Thanks for the link :-)

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The original sense of -flæd is only documented in the later high German f. antonym unvlat "dirtiness, untidiness", from which developed the modern German unflat "dirt". This fits the standard meaning given for -flæd and it's continental cognates, of "beauty", even though it is only recorded in names.

This message was edited 5/30/2020, 5:16 AM