# English sources for German from a etymological/cognate point of view?



## killerbee256

I've developed some interest in German, does anyone know any English sources that look at German from a etymological/cognate point of view? This method helped me greatly when I've studied romance languages and visited countries that speak them. So I thought this approach might work with German, thought I know I will run into some problems considering both the near total loss of declension and simplification of contagion in English. For instance the simple phrase _Mir geht es gut_, literal translated "Me goes it good," helps me understand German word order, that _e_ in pronouns equals _ir_ in German.


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## Nino83

When I study a new language I make a list of words of common use, for example about everyday life, food, work, school, restaurant, and so on, and make sentences with all the verbs they commonly take (for example, you can drive a car, go by car, the car can break down, and so on). 
Seeing that the English core vocabulary is Germanic, you could search the etymology of these words.
A good thing is en.wiktionary.org where for every word you can find all the descendants. 
For example the German word Buch derives from Proto-Germanic bōks.
In this page you find all the Germanic cognates, _book (English), boek (Dutch), Buch (German), bók (Icelandic), bok (Norwegian, Swedish, Danish)_. 
If you're interested in more Germanic languages, you could study the base and the core vocabulary of them, doing so you can make a list of cognates, simple sentences and you can learn at the same time 4-5 written languages and it's good for syntax, because the Dutch syntax is very similar to the Germanic one, like that of Norwegian, Swedish and Danish is, more or less, equal. 

This is how I studied French, Spanish and Portuguese some year ago. 

For grammar and word order, I think Routledge's "an essential grammar" series is a good one. 
Routledge Essential Grammars - Routledge


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## Ljudevit

I like A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages by Carl Darling Buck, 1949, ISBN: 0-226-07937-6 (ppbk).


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## Dan2

Just for the record...


killerbee256 said:


> _e_ in pronouns equals _ir_ in German.


_we -> wir 
me -> mir _or _mich, _depending on case
_she -> shir  _(it's _sie_)
_he -> hir _ (it's _er_)
So it certainly isn't a "rule"...


killerbee256 said:


> _Mir geht es gut_, literal translated "Me goes it good," helps me understand German word order


This is an example of a word order or construction that _sometimes _occurs in German.  The phrase means "I'm fine" but "I'm tall/old/smart/tired/American/a good doctor/..." would use the same word order as English.


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## berndf

Dan2 said:


> _me -> mir _or _mich, _depending on case


Though _mē_ originally was only dative. Accusative _meċ_ lost the final consonant in late OE and merged with the dative form.


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## Nino83

@berndf
Is there a great amount of cognates between English and German, in core vocabulary (i.e the most used 500-1000 words, those used in everyday conversation)?  
Is it a good way to learn German vocabulary (the comparative "method") or there are few words with the same root and a similar meaning?


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## berndf

If you know the sound shift there are more than you will recognize without prior knowledge (I am not should you would recognize _through _and _durch _or_ though _and_ doch_ or_ enough _and _genug _as cognates without some knowledge of the history of German and English).


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> without some knowledge of the history of German and English


Yes, this is what I meant. 
For example I can recognize Spanish, Portuguese, French words knowing historical sound shifts and there are many, many cognates between Romance languages.  
I'd like to ask you if, in percentage, the number of cognates between English and German are comparable to those between Romance languages or if there is only a little part of shared/common core vocabulary.


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## Delvo

English is more distant than that from any other Germanic language. So many of our words came from Latin or French that sometimes it's easier to spot cognates of English words in Spanish than it is in German. And many of the cognates we do still have left with other Germanic languages have shifted so much in either meaning or sound or both that you would never recognize one from the other without first being told about it.


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## Nino83

Thank you, Delvo.  
So, it's not very useful to use a comparative method when learning Germanic languages.


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## Dan2

Nino83 said:


> I'd like to ask you if, in percentage, the number of cognates between English and German are comparable to those between Romance languages or if there is only a little part of shared/common core vocabulary.


As you know, when you go _beyond _the "core vocabulary", English looks more Romance than Germanic.  But even in the core vocabulary, many of the most common everyday words of English are non-Germanic (almost always Romance).  (Edit: I see that Delvo has made a similar comment.) Below I repeat (from another forum) some natural-sounding English sentences I constructed that don't contain a single Germanic word.  I'd be interested to see someone try to do something similar in French, Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese (interesting, meaningful sentences without a _single _Romance word).

_Researchers consider family dinners very important.
Group insurance covers necessary doctor visits (including required hospital charges).
Polite people generally discuss personal money matters privately.
Hello! Really nice blue dress!_

If one allowed oneself Germanic function words (articles, pronouns, prepositions, forms of "to be"), one could probably write a whole novel in Romance English without the average reader being aware of anything unusual.


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## Nino83

Dan2 said:


> I'd be interested to see someone try to do something similar in French, Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese (interesting, meaningful sentences without a _single _Romance word).


It's difficut, because all function words (articles, prepositions) are Romance.

Il maresciallo rubò birra, speck, stoccafisso, strudel, aringhe, zuppa, brindò alla loggia trincando birra fresca e, buttando il guanto da guerra bianco e blu sulla tovaglia, si grattò la guancia.

The marshall stole beer, speck, stockfish, strudel, herring, soup, toasted the lodge drinking fresh beer and, throwing the white and blue war glove on the tablecloth, scratched his cheek.


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## Dan2

Very nice!

Interesting: I used "blue" because, although ultimately Germanic, _we _got it from French.  _You _used "blu" because Romance got it from Germanic.  I think we're both justified in our use!

But there is this important difference between my sentences and yours, beyond your being forced to use native function words.  Other than "blue" (allow me to replace it with "violet") monolingual speakers of other Germanic languages would recognize almost nothing in my sentences (maybe "group"), whereas my knowledge of French and Spanish allows me to understand most of your sentence.


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## berndf

Dan2 said:


> As you know, when you go _beyond _the "core vocabulary", English looks more Romance than Germanic. But even in the core vocabulary, many of the most common everyday words of English are non-Germanic (almost always Romance).


It seems "looks more Romance than Germanic is a bit of of an overstatement. In the above quote I underlined the Romance words. It surely doesn't like predominantly Romance. Your samples are valid but constructed.


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## Frank78

Dan2 said:


> But there is this important difference between my sentences and yours, beyond your being forced to use native function words.  Other than "blue" (allow me to replace it with "violet") *monolingual speakers of other Germanic languages would recognize almost nothing* in my sentences (maybe "group"), whereas my knowledge of French and Spanish allows me to understand most of your sentence.



I don't think so. Latin/Romance words used in English AND German are often recognizable more easily because they were not subject to the sound shift, e.g. private(ly), visit, personal, discuss, doctor.


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## Dan2

Dan2 said:


> As you know, when you go _beyond _the "core vocabulary", English looks more Romance than Germanic.





berndf said:


> It seems "looks more Romance than Germanic is a bit of of an overstatement. In the above quote I underlined the Romance words. It surely doesn't like predominantly Romance.


I'm just a regular guy.  I tend not to go beyond the core vocabulary...

Seriously though, you've misinterpreted my statement.  Consider a sentence like:
_You seem to be trying to invalidate all the work she and her collaborators have already done._
True, the only words you'd underline as non-Germanic are "invalidate" and "collaborators".  The _sentence as a whole _looks very Germanic.  But the only non-everyday words, the only words not in the "core vocabulary", are just those non-Germanic words.  "As soon as you eliminate (go beyond) the core vocabulary, English looks very Romance."

Put another way, consider a student of English who has learned the basic grammar and a thousand words or so and wants to expand his vocabulary.  He starts reading novels, technical reports, etc., and writes down every new word he encounters.  _That list_ would look very Romance.  That's really all I meant.


berndf said:


> Your samples are valid but constructed.


Of course they're constructed.  The point is that it's _possible _to construct such natural-sounding sentences, without a single Germanic word, even function word.  (Americans not interested in language would find nothing out of the ordinary with the sentences and would have no idea what point they were constructed in order to illustrate.)  The possibility of imposing the no-Germanic-word constraint and still being able to write natural-sounding text is simply a very interesting and surprising fact, given that English is always unequivocally classified as a Germanic language.  That's all.


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## olaszinho

I'm a bit sceptical about your previous statements. English uses plenty of phrasal verbs and they don't sound romance at all. Besides, everyday English tends to avoid latin-based words. As for novels, it depends upon the author's style, while it is obviously true that lots of Latin (even Greek) cognates can be found in scientific and  technical English. As a matter of fact, English is basically a germanic language with a very mixed vocabulary (Latin via French and Germanic). However, English structure is very similar to Scandinavian languages, in my view.


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## Dan2

olaszinho said:


> English uses plenty of phrasal verbs and they don't sound romance at all.


Agreed.  But they tend to be distinctly more "everyday" forms and to have more-formal Romance equivalents:
Less formal (more formal):
_throw out (discard), throw up (vomit), pick out (select, choose), go in/out/up/down (enter/exit/ascend/descend)..._


olaszinho said:


> everyday English tends to avoid latin-based words.


I think it would be more accurate to say that *when *Germanic/Romance pairs *exist*, there is a strong tendency for the Germanic alternative to be the one used in everyday English.  But even the most uneducated native speaker of English doesn't avoid Romance words like
_very, important, interesting, people, person, money, poor, place, space, possible, country, simple, family_ (and many others)
There are either simply _no _reasonable Germanic alternatives for these words, or they are in fact _less _common and often inexact ("weighty" for "important", "kin" for "family")


olaszinho said:


> As a matter of fact, English is basically a germanic language with a very mixed vocabulary


I don't think I suggested otherwise in anything I wrote.  I simply made the point (surprising and interesting, I think) that in _spite_ of its being basically a Germanic language, it's possible to write entirely natural text while _totally _avoiding Germanic words.


olaszinho said:


> However, English structure is very similar to Scandinavian languages, in my view.


Here we are in a different realm, that of syntax.  But I agree that English is syntactically similar to Scandinavian.  However, English doesn't have obligatory "verb second" (often V2 is not even an _option_), while V2 is really quite central to the Scandinavian languages.  And of course, English and Romance have a lot of syntactic similarities.  (English students find Romance syntax "a piece of cake" compared to that of German or Slavic.)

In summary, while I basically agree with your comments, I don't see that they negate anything I said earlier.


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## Delvo

Nino83 said:


> Thank you, Delvo.
> So, it's not very useful to use a comparative method when learning Germanic languages.


Among the others, I think it is. English is just the family freak. And particularly within the North Germanic branch (Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish), they're similar enough that native speakers of one have sometimes told me that understanding the others doesn't require any formal study at all, but just a bit of extra work while listening... which would make them dialects of a single language.



Dan2 said:


> If one allowed oneself Germanic function words (articles, pronouns, prepositions, forms of "to be"), one could probably write a whole novel in Romance English without the average reader being aware of anything unusual.


The fact that the two sets of words belong to different "registers" (meaning they're associated with different economic classes or degrees of formality or such) would get conspicuous. For example, characters could give each other a cordial greeting but not a hearty welcome, and their actions could be rapid or velocitous but not fast, quick, swift, or speedy, and they could have spouses but not husbands or wives. The audience would understand the concepts but wonder why they kept getting expressed so awkwardly.


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## Nino83

Delvo said:


> And particularly within the North Germanic branch (Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish), they're similar enough


Yes, true. I was wondering if there were many cognates between Dutch, German and Nordic Germanic languages.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> Yes, true. I was wondering if there were many cognates between Dutch, German and Nordic Germanic languages.


I am a bit surprised about the question. West and North Germanic languages are not that different. If I know the subject matter, I can usually read Swedish or Danish text and understand most of it without ever having studied it. But this is in part because these languages are full of West Germanic loans, mostly from Low German. Icelandic that does not have those loans is much more difficult to read though not because there are no cognates but because they are less obvious.

Understanding spoken Danish or Swedish is an entirly different ballgame, though. Phonetically, the language families have developed quite differently. Especially Danish has a quite unique phonology. E.g., with a bit of background knowledge about Germanic shifts you could guess that Danish _gade _and German _Gasse _are cognate seeing the words written but for hearing them (follow the links for sound samples)? I don't think so.


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## olaszinho

Dan2 said:


> _very, important, interesting, people, person, money, poor, place, space, possible, country, simple, family_ (and many others)
> There are either



It is not that easy to grasp the meaning of very, money, poor, country for many "Romance" speakers.



Dan2 said:


> Less formal (more formal):
> _throw out (discard), throw up (vomit), pick out (select, choose), go in/out/up/down (enter/exit/ascend/descend_



I agree..



Dan2 said:


> And of course, English and Romance have a lot of syntactic similarities. (English students find Romance syntax "a piece of cake" compared to that of German or Slavic.)



Personally, I find English syntax tricky, it has a very rigid word order. On the other hand, I don't reckon the position of adjectives and verb syntax in the Romance languages are a piece of cake for English students, either. Regarding Slavic syntax (I'm referring mainly to Russian) is not difficult at all, it is extremely free, thanks to the cases. German syntax has its own pecularities but it is also very logical.


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## Dan2

Frank78 said:


> Latin/Romance words used in English AND German are often recognizable more easily because they were not subject to the sound shift, e.g. private(ly), visit, personal, discuss, doctor.


I think you mean that it's more obvious to English and German speakers that these words are related to their counterparts in the Romance languages than it is to them that pairs like "durch" and "through" are related.  Totally agree.


olaszinho said:


> Dan2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> But even the most uneducated native speaker of English doesn't avoid Romance words like
> _very, important, interesting, people, person, money, poor, place, space, possible, country, simple, family_ (and many others)
> 
> 
> 
> It is not that easy to grasp the meaning of very, money, poor, country for many "Romance" speakers.
Click to expand...

Interesting observation.  I listed these words only  to illustrate that some Romance borrowings are among our most common, everyday words.  A separate question is the one you raise.


Delvo said:


> The fact that the two sets of words [Germanic vs Romance -Dan] belong to different "registers" (meaning they're associated with different economic classes or degrees of formality or such)...


I agree, as long as it's recognized that that's only a _tendency_.  Again, the words in my list above _(very, important..._) are used by all classes of speakers, at even the lowest level of formality.


olaszinho said:


> Personally, I find English syntax tricky, it has a very rigid word order. On the other hand, I don't reckon the position of adjectives and verb syntax in the Romance languages are a piece of cake for English students, either. Regarding Slavic syntax (I'm referring mainly to Russian) is not difficult at all, it is extremely free, thanks to the cases. German syntax has its own pecularities but it is also very logical.


OK, I'm willing to step back on this issue; people perceive it differently.  I follow the German Forum and there just this constant stream of English and Romance speakers who struggle with German syntax.  I don't seem to see it as much with English NS's studying Romance languages.  But you're right; there are challenges there too, and for Romance students of English.

The free word order in Russian is a mixed blessing.  It means that you're less likely to produce spectacular failures like "Je vois te", but on the other hand knowing which word order is most appropriate among the several that are "not ungrammatical" can be very difficult.


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> West and North Germanic languages are not that different. If I know the subject matter, I can usually read Swedish or Danish text and understand most of it without ever having studied it.


So, is it possible to study, at the same time, Dutch, German and Swedish, studying one common/shared core vocabulary, like it happens in Romance languages?
I remember another thread where we spoke about mutual intelligibility between Germanic languages and there I linked a paper (this). Looking at the table A1 (pag. 36) the percentage of non-cognates between Swedish and Dutch is near to 19%, and that between Swedish and German is near to 12% (similar to that between Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and French).
It seems that Danish is like French, it is the most different in pronunciation.


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> If you know the sound shift there are more than you will recognize without prior knowledge (I am not should you would recognize _through _and _durch _or_ though _and_ doch_ or_ enough _and _genug _as cognates without some knowledge of the history of German and English).





			
				Frank78 said:
			
		

> I don't think so. Latin/Romance words used in English AND German are often recognizable more easily because they were not subject to the sound shift, e.g. private(ly), visit, personal, discuss, doctor.=


@berndf and @Frank78  Do you all know where I could find a list or analysis of these systematic changes between German and English?  If there was an old thread about it I can't find it.
It was just recently that I realized that German /s/ is English /t/ and it has really helped to spot numerous cognates:  essen = eat,  beissen = bite, es = it,  weiss = white,  etc..   I'm sure there many more of these sound shifts, but as you say they are not as obvious as the changes between Romance languages.


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## Ljudevit

Could anybody explain/expand on /g/ to /y/ sound shift? Fly=fliegen, lay=legen, day=tag, away=weg, yellow=gelb, yesterday=gestern, etc...


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> @berndf and @Frank78 Do you all know where I could find a list or analysis of these systematic changes between German and English? If there was an old thread about it I can't find it.
> It was just recently that I realized that German /s/ is English /t/ and it has really helped to spot numerous cognates: essen = eat, beissen = bite, es = it, weiss = white, etc.. I'm sure there many more of these sound shifts, but as you say they are not as obvious as the changes between Romance languages.



A few thing off by head:

Consonants:

1) Replacement of _th_ by _d_ in German: Compare _Bru*d*er-Bro*th*er, *d*urch-though, *D*orf-*th*orp_. Occurs in High and Low German.

2) The famous High German consonant shifts:
2a) _t>z/zz/ȥ/ȥȥ_. Occurs and Middle and Upper German but not in Low Geman. German _z_ is [ts] and _zz_ is [tts], in certain positions de-affricated to _ȥ_ = [ s ] and _ȥȥ_ = [ss]. In late Middle High German _s_ (apical _s_ like in Iberian Spanish or in Dutch) merged with _ȥ_ = [ s ] is some positions and with sch = [ʃ] in others (in initial consonant clusters). This produced pairs like German _*Sch*nee_-English _*s*now_ and orthographic changes of _ȥ _(of course, the little hook is a modern device to distinguish affricate and non-affricate _z _and not historical spelling, there was only one _z_ with allophonic variants that were not represented in spelling) to _s_ or _ß_ or _ss_ like _uȥ>aus, uȥen>außen, waȥȥer>Wasser. _In places with original affricate _z_ or _zz_ the modern spelling is _z _and _tz_, as in _Zeit<tid_ (=time) or _jetzt < iezuo_ (=now). Note that modern _tz_ is not always an original _zz_.
2b) _p>pf_. Occurs only in Upper German. Is part of standard German spelling but pronounced properly only in Upper German regions. In other regions, the p in pf is mute when it occurs in the beginning, like in _Pferd < perd_ (=horse), pronounced [pfeɐtʰ] my Upper German standard speakers and usually [feɐtʰ] by others. Cognates: _*Pf*lanze-plant, a*pp*le-A*pf*el_. Note that in _*Pf*lan*z*e _you have both, 2a) and 2b).
2c) _k>ch_ (_ch_=[x] or [ç]) as in _maken>machen, ik>ich_, etc. Merged with original non-initial _h_ as in _Licht < liht_. Occurs in Middle and Upper German but not in Low German. There is also, like with 2a), a fricative version _k/kk>kch_ but that did only survive in certain dialects and in some of them (mostly in Switzerland), _kch_ moved on to _ch_.

3) English _gh_ and German _ch_ both represent /x/ that can be palatalized to [ç] in both language. In languages derived from Middle English, this sound has only survived in Scots where it is spelled ch as in German; [x] e.g. in _lo*ch* _and [ç] in _bri*ch*t_ (=_bright_). In Modern English /x/ became either mute with compensatory lengthening as in _light _([lɪçt]>[li:t]>[laɪt]) or it became /f/ as in _enough_.

4) Palatalized _g_. In German non-standard except when devoiced and also there only in certain conditions, e.g. in _lusti*g* _where it is pronounced [ç]. All other fricative g, be it voiced [ɣ] or de-voiced [x] are dialectal. In English, the original fricative (palatalised or not) became _gh_ when devoiced (compare _brin*g*-brou*gh*t_) and merged with original non-initial _h_ (similar to 2c in German). Non-devoiced palatalized g merged with original [j] and is usually spelled _y_. Compare _Ta*g*-da*y*, *g*elb-*y*ellow _and_ *j*ung-*y*oung_.

5) _d_ often became _t_, as in _*T*eig-*d*ough, *T*ag-*d*ay_. This originated in the Bavarian _t-d_ merger which never made it into the standard except in certain words.

Vowels: I think you know the _Great Vowel Shift_ in English. In Modern High German you have some similar developments, like [i:] becoming [aɪ] as in _bi _[bi:] becoming _by_ = [baɪ] and _bei_ = [baɪ] in both languages. You also have diphthongization of [u:]. Compares _hus _having become _Haus _in Modern German and _house _in Modern English. In both languages you have primary umlauts, like _l*e*ngth-L*ä*nge_ from _l*a*ng and m*i*ce-M*äu*se _from _m*u*s_ (mouse). But only German has secondary Umlauts (_ä, ö_ and _ü_ at different places then where earlier _a_ and _u_ umlauts occured). The primary _u_-umlaut was lost in late OE and became, according to dialect, either _i_ (Mercian) as in _h*i*ll<h*y*ll_, German _H*ü*gel _or e (Kentish) as in _*e*vil<*y*fel_, German _*ü*bel _or _u_ (West Saxon) as in _b*u*sy_ _< b*y*sig_ (note that the shift in _busy _is orthographically West Saxon but phonetically Mercian).


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## berndf

Ljudevit said:


> Could anybody explain/expand on /g/ to /y/ sound shift? Fly=fliegen, lay=legen, day=tag, away=weg, yellow=gelb, yesterday=gestern, etc...


See 4) above. The original Germanic _g_ was [ɣ]. In the vicinity of front vowels it was palatalized to [ʝ] which later merged with [j].


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## Dan2

merquiades said:


> It was just recently that I realized that German /s/ *is* English /t/


"is *sometimes*"!
Certainly not at the beginning of words: Sohn = son, Sonne = sun, Sand = sand...
And non-initially: Maus/Haus = mouse/house, weise = wise, küssen = kiss, Nest = nest...

EDIT: crossed with Berndf: he probably has given full details...
EDIT2: more to-the-point wording


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## Delvo

berndf said:


> English _gh_ and German _ch_ both represent /x/ that can be palatalized to [ç] in both language. In languages derived from Middle English, this sound has only survived in Scots where it is spelled ch as in German; [x] e.g. in _lo*ch* _and [ç] in _bri*ch*t_ (=_bright_). In Modern English /x/ became either mute with compensatory lengthening as in _light _([lɪçt]>[li:t]>[laɪt]) or it became /f/ as in _enough_.


In Old English, {h} alone had been /x/. Why would they shift to adding a {g} to form a digraph for the same sound that they already had a single letter for? Was this to escape from a shift in {h} from /x/ to the modern /h/? But then, in that case, why use a letter that otherwise represents voiced sounds instead of {c} or {k}? (It seems more natural to me that adding a written {g} to a letter for /x/ would convert /x/ to /ɣ/, but this is not the first time I've seen {gh} equated with /x/, and it is consistent with the lack of voicing in the modern outcome /f/, and {h} might not have been /x/ anymore by the time they started using this digraph... I just don't follow why it would happen this way.)



berndf said:


> Vowels...: I think you know the _Great Vowel Shift_ in English. In Modern High German you have some similar developments, like [i:] becoming [aɪ] as in _bi _[bi:] becoming _by_ = [baɪ] and _bei_ = [baɪ] in both languages. You also have diphthongization of [u:]. Compares _hus _having become _Haus _in Modern German and _house _in Modern English. In both languages you have primary umlauts, like _l*e*ngth-L*ä*nge_ from _l*a*ng and m*i*ce-M*äu*se _from _m*u*s_ (mouse). But only German has secondary Umlauts (_ä, ö_ and _ü_ at different places then where earlier _a_ and _u_ umlauts occured). The primary _u_-umlaut was lost in late OE and became, according to dialect, either _i_ (Mercian) as in _h*i*ll<h*y*ll_, German _H*ü*gel _or e (Kentish) as in _*e*vil<*y*fel_, German _*ü*bel _or _u_ (West Saxon) as in _b*u*sy_ _< b*y*sig_ (note that the shift in _busy _is orthographically West Saxon but phonetically Mercian).


English & German cognates seem to have some other odd vowel outcomes that I can't explain by umlaut, like night/Nacht and king/König. (I thought I had some others where the {i} or {ie} or such was in German and the alternative was in English, but I can't think of them right now.) Even going by English's Pre-Great-Vowel-Shift non-diphthong sound for "i", that's not just a subtle shift but a leap to the far side of the vowel space, by one language or the other. I could still see that those two were cognates somehow, but I'm sure this has blinded me to some other cognate pairs I don't know about, and I know I've ended up reading of some other cognate pairs that this blocked me from seeing for myself at first.

Another thing I never got about German vowels & umlauting was why sometimes two forms of a word would be differentiated not just by umlauts but by total replacement of the vowel. For example, I was told to watch out for gain/loss of umlauts in verb conjugation, but it seemed like, as often as not, if umlauts were gained/lost, the whole vowel was replaced anyway, like dürfen/darf, so why refer to it as part of an umlauting phenomenon?


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## berndf

Delvo said:


> In Old English, {h} alone had been /x/.


There was most likely already an allophonic split in OE between /h/= in the syllable onset and /h/=[x] in the syllable coda. It only became phonemic in ME and warranted a graphic distinction.


Delvo said:


> Why would they shift to adding a {g} to form a digraph for the same sound that they already had a single letter for? Was this to escape from a shift in {h} from /x/ to the modern /h/? But then, in that case, why use a letter that otherwise represents voiced sounds instead of {c} or {k}? (It seems more natural to me that adding a written {g} to a letter for /x/ would convert /x/ to /ɣ/, but this is not the first time I've seen {gh} equated with /x/, and it is consistent with the lack of voicing in the modern outcome /f/, and {h} might not have been /x/ anymore by the time they started using this digraph... I just don't follow why it would happen this way.)


The digraph <gh> is a late Middle English/Chancery English replacement for the letter yoch. The Middle English spelling of _light_ was _liȝt_ , OE was _liht_; and of _young_ was either _ȝong_ or _yong_, OE was _geong; brought _was ME _broȝte_, OE _brohte_. You see already in OE the the merger of the Germanic /j/ with the palatalized /g/ on the one hand and of the Germanic /h/ with the devoiced /g/ (palatalized or not). As a result, the letter yoch had three possible pronunciations [j], [ç] and [x]. All of there were allophonic variants of the OE /g/. The main pronunciation of the non-initial OE /g/ was [ɣ] and that was lost in ME. The letter shape _ȝ _was derived from the predominant form of the letter <g> in OE manuscripts and was supposed to distinguish the specifically OE allophones of /g/ from the Anglo-French pronunciations of the letter <g>. When the letter yoch was replaced, it was replaced by <y> where yoch stood for [j] and <gh> in all other cases. The rationale for the choice of the digraph was probably the same as why <th> was chosen to replace the letters thorn (as in _þat>that_) and eth (as in _boð>both_) and <ch> was chosen in German and Sots to represent [x]: The Greek spirantized aspirated stops chi and theta.


Delvo said:


> I can't explain by umlaut, like night/Nacht and king/König.


The <i> is _night_ is one of many dialectal variants of OE. Mercian had _næht/neht_ and West Saxn _neaht; niht _emerged in Late OE. I don't understand how.
OE is _cyning_. The <i> is the usual outcome of the loss of <y> the monosyllabic form _king_ rather than _kining_ resulted from a merger with Norse _kung/kong_.


Delvo said:


> Even going by English's Pre-Great-Vowel-Shift non-diphthong sound for "i", that's not just a subtle shift but a leap to the far side of the vowel space, by one language or the other.


Yes, but it happened in subtle steps: [i:]>[ij]>[ej]>[ɛɪ]>[aɪ], The Dutch spelling <ij> is testimony of the first step. Phonetically, Dutch is in the middle of the last step. If you listen to how different Dutch speakers pronounce <ij> you will hear that.


Delvo said:


> like dürfen/darf, so why refer to it as part of an umlauting phenomenon?


That is an _*ab*laut_ not an _*um*laut_ phenomenon and dates back from PIE times. It is the same _ablaut_ as in English _run/ran_. _Dürfen_, like its OE cognate _þurfan, _is a _present-preterit verb_, i.e. it takes its (semantic) present tense from the (morphological) past tense form of the verb. This has to do with semantic shifts in the meaning of verb forms since PIE times (the PIE stative became past tense for most verbs but present tense for present-preterit verbs). Practically all Germanic modal verbs (_can, shall, may_) are of this type. In English you can recognize them by the missing 3rd person singular _-s_ (_he shall_, not _*he shalls_).

The _umlaut_ in _dürfen_ is the shift from OHG/OE _th*u*rfan_/_þ*u*rfan_ via early MHG _d*u*rfen_ to late MHG _d*ü*rfen. _This is a _secondary_, i.e. MHG_ umlaut_. Secondary umlauts cannot always be explained by _i-_mutation.


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## Sobakus

berndf said:


> The digraph <gh> is a late Middle English/Chancery English replacement for the letter yoch. The Middle English spelling of _light_ was _liȝt_ , OE was _liht_; and of _young_ was either _ȝong_ or _yong_, OE was _geong; brought _was ME _broȝte_, OE _brohte_. You see already in OE the the merger of the Germanic /j/ with the palatalized /g/ on the one hand and of the Germanic /h/ with the devoiced /g/ (palatalized or not). As a result, the letter yoch had three possible pronunciations [j], [ç] and [x]. All of there were allophonic variants of the OE /g/. The main pronunciation of the non-initial OE /g/ was [ɣ] and that was lost in ME.


Wikipedia cites both _ȝ_ and _w_ in place of the original [ɣ]->[w], therefore I gather [ɣ] persisted as an allophone between non-front vowels at least in some dialects of ME. The GH orthography seems to me to be based on this allophone.


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## berndf

Sobakus said:


> Wikipedia cites both _ȝ_ and _w_ in place of the original [ɣ]->[w], therefore I gather [ɣ] persisted as an allophone between non-front vowels at least in some dialects of ME. The GH orthography seems to me to be based on this allophone.


You mean like in OE _boga_ > ME _boue/bowe/boȝe_ > ModE _bow_; German _Bogen_? I am not quite sure what that tells us about the existence of [ɣ] in ME. Since _ȝ_ for etymological [ɣ] was normally only a by-form, I don't know if this really means _ȝ=_[ɣ] existed or if this was mere etymological spelling. I don't know. But it could well be that certain dialects had retained [ɣ].

Anyhow, all four allophones mentioned, [ɣ], [ʝ]~[j], [ç] and [x] were spirantized /g/s and all can equally have motivated _ȝ>gh._


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## Sobakus

berndf said:


> Anyhow, all four allophones mentioned, [ɣ], [ʝ]~[j], [ç] and [x] were spirantized /g/s and all can equally have motivated _ȝ>gh._


I think Delvo's objection (which I agree with) was that all instances where it became orthographic GH are voiceless, and if the majority of dialects had already shifted [ɣ] to [w], this means [ç]~[x] were no longer interpreted as mere devoiced allophones of a voiced sound (g), which makes the choice of the GH digraph unexpected. Could it be that the instances where modern GH is silent (_plough, dough_) were originally voiced and thus developed just like _bow_, only with the [ɣ]->[w] shift in the former happening after the orthography had settled?


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## berndf

Sobakus said:


> which makes the choice of the GH digraph unexpected


The graphical separation of the letter shapes _g_ and _ȝ _was not a big bang at the beginning of the Middle English period nor was the replacement of _ȝ _by _gh_. It can be safely assumed that for early users of _gh_ it was still transparent that _g_ and _ȝ _where graphical variants of the same letter.


Sobakus said:


> Could it be that the instances where modern GH is silent (_plough, dough_) were originally voiced and thus developed just like _bow_, only with the [ɣ]->[w] shift in the former happening after the orthography had settled?


If you look at the list of attested variant of _dough _in OE and ME, appears that all sorts of dialectal variants must have existed ([ɣ], [ɣx], [wk], [w] and [x]). There is still no clear rule why some _<gh>_ have become mute and some [f], why _dough_ but _enough_? Your theory looks interesting but has its problems: Why is <gh> mute in _brought_? A voiced pronunciation in ME is extremely unlikely.


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## Frank78

merquiades said:


> @berndf and @Frank78  Do you all know where I could find a list or analysis of these systematic changes between German and English?  If there was an old thread about it I can't find it.
> It was just recently that I realized that German /s/ is English /t/ and it has really helped to spot numerous cognates:  essen = eat,  beissen = bite, es = it,  weiss = white,  etc..   I'm sure there many more of these sound shifts, but as you say they are not as obvious as the changes between Romance languages.



th - > d (in all positions): _*th*umb - *D*aumen, ba*th* - Ba*d*, whether - we*d*er_

d -> t (only "-nd" remains the same in both languages): _*d*ale - *T*al, ri*d*e - rei*t*en, re*d* - ro_*t *but _la*nd* - la*nd*en_

t -> z [ts] (initial sound only):_ *t*ame - *z*ahm,* t*in - *Z*inn
tt -> z : k*itt*le - ki*tz*eln
t -> z (after consonants): smel*t*-schmel*z*en_

t -> ß or ss /s/ (middle and final sounds): _wa*t*er - Wasser, bi*t*e -bei*ß*en_

Some words don't seem to follow this rule, e.g. cat-Katze, clot-Klotz

The Germanic b became v or f in English while it stayed a b in German (only true for middle and final sounds and single b's): _bea*v*er-Bi*b*er, loa*f*-Lai*b*_

p -> pf (initial sound, after consonants, and "pp") _*p*ath - *Pf*ad, rum*p* - Rum*pf, *da*pp*er - ta*pf*er_ (but actually "flott"/"quickly")
p -> f  (after vowels): _dee*p* - tie*f*_

Germanic G:
dg - ck (shifted in both languages): bri*dg*e - Brü*ck*e, he*dg*e - He*ck*e
y - g (initial sounds before bright vowels): *y*ellow - *G*elb, *y*ell - *g*ellen
i (or part of a diphthong)- g: hail -Ha*g*el, na*i*l - Na*g*el, ra*i*n- Re*g*en

ch - k (initial sounds): *ch*eese - *K*äse, *ch*icken - *K*üken (actually "young chicken" only), *ch*in - *K*inn

k - ch [ç] or [x]  (middle and final sounds): oa*k* - Ei*ch*e, boo*k*- Bu*ch*

w - w [v] (spelling kept but different pronunciation; initial sounds and after s and t only):  *w*ay-*W*eg. s*w*ine-Sch*w*ein, t*w*itter-z*w*itschern

w - long vowel or lenghening h (middle and final sounds): blo*w*-bl*a*sen, to*w*-zie*h*en


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## Sobakus

berndf said:


> If you look at the list of attested variant of _dough _in OE and ME, appears that all sorts of dialectal variants must have existed ([ɣ], [ɣx], [wk], [w] and [x]). There is still no clear rule why some _<gh>_ have become mute and some [f], why _dough_ but _enough_? Your theory looks interesting but has its problems: Why is <gh> mute in _brought_? A voiced pronunciation in ME is extremely unlikely.


Yes, probably voicing had little to do with it (at least in ME). I think the fact that mute /gh/s are normally accompanied by a long vowel or a diphthong is telling: [wɣ] (with the [w] from earlier breaking) was labialised into [f] whenever there was a [w] present (except before consonant), which accounts for the short vowels of _enough_, _tough_ and AE _laugh_. In _dough_, the glide had been absorbed into the [o] in the [ɔu]~[ɔ:] merger, thus coinciding with all the orthographic [ɣ]–>[w]. So:

[ǝʊ]<–[o:x]<–[ɔu:x]+[ɔ:x]<–[ɑ:x] _dough <– dāh/g_

_Though _is apparently from ON_ þó(h). Through_ is a metathesis from _thurgh_ while the last vowels in _thorough_ and _borough_ were epenthetic [w~u] themselves. _Plough and bough_ are the real exceptions, probably taking the pronunciation from an already-vocalised variant and the orthography from one which preserved the /gh/, or even from ON. The rest of the cases are regular [ʌf]<–[ʊf]<–[u:x]<–[o:x], unless I'm missing something.

As for the /ough/ before /t/, I don't think it's inconceivable that the following consonant blocked the regular development – it was deleted with the only trace being the long vowel it had produced earlier. Maybe the cognate ON /tt/=[ht] or the plain vocalisation of /ight/ played some role in this.

What eludes me still is why some [ɣ]'s were vocalised early on and thus reflected in the orthography, while others were not in the first place. The best explanation I can come up with is dialect variation, seeing as even the aforementioned _plough_ was written in every way possible.


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## berndf

Sobakus said:


> What eludes me still is why some [ɣ]'s were vocalised early on and thus reflected in the orthography, while others were not in the first place. The best explanation I can come up with is dialect variation.


Quite likely. If you look at German and Dutch there you also have dialects that have retained [ɣ] to this very day (in Standard German [ɣ] has become [g] and in Northern Dutch [x]).


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