> NE The remaining diphthongs developed as follows: , > ENE > NE . is still used in Welsh English. , > NE Vowel equivalents from Old English to Modern English For a detailed description of the changes between Old English and Middle/Modern English, see the article on the phonological history of English. A summary of the main vowel changes is presented below. The spelling of Modern English largely reflects Middle English pronunciation. Monophthongs This table presents the general developments. Many exceptional outcomes occurred in particular environments: vowels were often lengthened in late Old English before , , ; vowels changed in complex ways before , throughout the history of English etc. Vowels were diphthongized in Middle English before , and new diphthongs arose in Middle English by the combination of vowels with Old English w, g > , and ġ ; for more information, see the section below. The only conditional development considered in detail below is Middle English open-syllable lengthening. In the column on modern spelling, CV means a sequence of a single consonant followed by a vowel. The Modern English vowel usually spelled au (British , American ) does not appear in the above chart. Its main source is late Middle English < early and , which come from various sources: Old English aw and ag (claw < clawu, law < lagu); diphthongization before (sought < sōhte, taught < tāhte, daughter < dohtor); borrowings from Latin and French (fawn < Old French faune, Paul < Latin Paulus). Other sources are Early Modern English lengthening of before (salt, all); occasional shortening and later re-lengthening of Middle English (broad < < brād); and in American English, lengthening of short o before unvoiced fricatives and voiced velars (dog, long, off, cross, moth, all with in American English, at least in dialects that still maintain the difference between and ). As mentioned above, Modern English is derived from the Middle English of London, which is derived largely from Anglian Old English, with some admixture of West Saxon and Kentish. One of the most noticeable differences among the dialects is the handling of original Old English . By the time of the written Old English documents, the Old English of Kent had already unrounded to , and the late Old English of Anglia unrounded to . In the West Saxon area, remained as such well into Middle English times and was written