The Germanic Language
excerpts from the works of
Dr. Micheal Crafton
Department of English
State University of West Georgia
Carrollton, Georgia
(Spring 2000)

The Change from Indo-European to Proto-Germanic

1. Lexicon:

New words appear at this stage that don’t appear in other branches of IE (e.g. drink, drive, fowl, meat, rain, wife).

2. Verb tense:

Germanic developed a twofold verb tense system, basically past and nonpast.

3. Dental suffix:

Germanic also developed a dental suffix (either a "d" or "t") to indicate past tense. We still have it in weak verb constructions (e.g. walk, walked).

4. Dual, strong and weak, adjective declension:

Germanic developed the strange system of two different declensions of adjectives, called strong (more inflectional changes) and weak (fewer inflectional changes). This system is operative as late as Middle English, but there is really nothing left of it today.

5. Accent shift:

The accent or stress in Germanic became fixed to the first syllable in nearly all cases. English is still stressed that way.

6. Vowel changes:

A few vowel changes: IE o à a

7. Consonant changes.

Many consonant sounds in IE changed in Gmc and these are detailed in Grimm’s and Verner’s laws.

Grimm’s Law

This section is sometimes difficult for students to understand, and it is best to view it in stages.

First of all, we assume that sound changes are systematic. We see that in Modern English as the becomes de and them becomes dem; there is a system of th à d.

So also as the Germanic group separated from the original Indo-European dialect community the language, for whatever reason, probably due to influence by other languages, underwent some systematic sound changes and they seem to follow this pattern as first isolated and described by Jacob Grimm, one of the Grimm brothers famous for their folk and children’s tales.

IE bh, dh, gh à beta, eth, gamma

p, t, k à f, theta, chi (h sound)

b, d, g à p, t, k

beta, eth, gamma à b, d, g

So for example Indo-European "peter" becomes "pater" in Latin, but "father" in Germanic languages.

Grimm’s law, a regular pattern of changes in consonants from IE to Gmc (Germanic).

Verner’s law explains what looks like violations of Grimm’s law. Take our example of father again.

From IE peter we notice that most all of the Germanic versions of father are fader or faðer, not as in Modern English father. Grimm’s law says that p changes to f and t changes to theta, or voiceless fricatives, but in OE that is not the case.

What Verner noticed was that all voiceless fricatives in Germanic changed to voiced ones (so theta changes to eth) if any of the following three conditions did not prevent it:

1) first sound in word

2) next to a voiceless sound

3) IE stress on preceding syllable.

Another example is the word for hundred. The IE root is kmtom. Thus, in Latin we have centum (pronounced kentum), but in Gmc we have hund. So the k has changed to an h sound in accordance with Grimm’s law, but the t has not changed to theta; instead it changed to eth and later to d.