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

This is my understanding:

 Proto-Germanic   German     Old-English  English
      aw            aw           e:@          i:

example:
     *strawm-     /Strawm/     /stre:@m/    /stri:m/

      a:            aj            a:         o:

example:
     *sta:n-       /Stajn/     /sta:n/       /sto:n/

      u:            /aw/         /u:/        /aw/

example:
     *mu:s          /maws/       /mu:s/      /maws/

Elliott Lash


--- Roger Mills <romilly@...> 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.
>
> Offhand, _beide-both_ looks similar to _Stein-stone_
> which IIRC comes from
> 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.

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