----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger Mills" <romilly@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2003 11:43 PM
Subject: Re: German and English (was Re: Losing languages ...)
> 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.
That's OE |ea|[&a]>[i:], don't ask me how.
>