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

From:Joe <joe@...>
Date:Thursday, September 25, 2003, 6:08
----- 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.
>

Reply

Tristan McLeay <zsau@...>