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.

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