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

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