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Re: German and English (was Re: Losing languages ...)

From:Tristan McLeay <zsau@...>
Date:Thursday, September 25, 2003, 2:04
On Wed, 24 Sep 2003, Roger Mills wrote:

> Rob Haden wrote: > > > > Here's a question: > > > > Does anyone know what's behind the vowel differences between German and > > English cognates? For example, German "Beide" vs. English "both," "ueber" > > vs. "over," etc.? I saw these words in Estel Telcontar's message and they > > inspired me to ask this question. > > > It's due to "Great Vowel Shifts" in both Engl. and German. There's probably > a table of it somewhere; I suspect it's all rather irregular.
A table of Germanic to old Germanic languages is avaiable at <http://penguin.pearson.swarthmore.edu/~scrist1/scanned_books/html/goth_wright/b0025.html>. Unfortunately, it doesn't show things such as breaking and umlaut, nor does it show modern developments. Umlaut in English is simply o:>e:, u:>y:, a:>&: &>e, e>i. Diphthongs umlauted as well (generally to io), but I'm not as certain... OE > EMnE sound changes are thus (in a rough order, but I don't know it exactly): - Rounding of /A:/ to /O:/ <oa>. - Re-distribution of length. I can't remember the exact conditions, but simplyly, long vowels in closed syllables became short and vice versa. - Unrounding of /y/ (became /i/). - & > a or E. The phoneme previously described as /&:/ in OE is described as /E: in ME - De-diphthongisation: &@ <ea> > E: <ea>, e@ <eo> > e: <ee>, i@ <io> > (i think it was to e: <ie>), after the GVS also au <ag> > O: <au, aw>. - Development of diphthongs, often from Vowel+OE <g> or <w> e.g. ME &i < OE &g (which later merged with /ei/), or iu < e.g. e@w (which later became /ju/). - The great vowel shift: i: > ai u: > au e: > i: o: > u: E: > e: > i: O: > o: A: > a: > E: > e: In some dialects: - Unrounding of /U/ > /V/. - R-affects: short i, e and u are merged before r (other dialects do more extreme things, but I won't include them) So to update the table on the webpage for EMnE, we get something like: a e, a, /ei/ e e i i o o u /V/ &: ea /i:/ e: ee /i:/ i: /ai/ o: oo /u:/ u: ou /au/ ai o: au ea /i:/ eu ee /i:/ iu ie /i:/ (I think) Unfortunately, I don't know much about German's sound changes. They seem to have rounded front vowels almost at random...
> Offhand, _beide-both_ looks similar to _Stein-stone_ which IIRC comes from > Germanic *[long a].
Actually, it comes from Germanic *ai. There was no such thing as Germanic *[long a].
> I do know that Gmc *[long u] diphthongized > aw in both: Haus-house, > Maus-mouse et al., but then there's the peculiar correspondence in-- > Germ. Straum - Du. stroom - Eng. stream > Traum - droom - dream > Baum - boom - beam etc. > and I don't recall what that reflects. As you can see, the Germ. GVS was > different from the Engl. GVS.
Well, even if they were identical, the results would be different because they started with different things. -- Tristan <kesuari@...> Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement. -- Snoopy