The Main Phonetic Features

Germanic languages form a well-defined group of the Indo-European

family of languages;
their nearest affinities are undoubtedly with the neighboring
languages, i.e. Celtic and Italic languages, and with the Baltic and
Slavic languages;
Interesting phonological features:
a) In Northwest Germanic, the reduplicated forms (past tense of
certain
strong verbs) were eliminated and replaced instead by new Ablaut
alternations
e.g., (ON, OE, OS) het, (OHG) hiez vs. (G) haihait was called.
b) In Gothic, the Proto-Germanic *z was maintained as z (or s in final
position), but, in Northwest Germanic, *z generally became r
e.g. Proto-Germanic *maiz- more, Gothic maiza but
Old Norse meire, Old English mara more,
Old High German mero mehr.
c) in West Germanic languages:
- the change of * to d in all positions;
e.g. (Proto-Germanic *blo- blood, Old Norse blo- but (OE,
OS) blod,
(OHG) bluot.
- the replacement of the inherited second person singular past
tense
forms of strong verbs;

e.g. (PGmc) *namt you took, (ON) namt but (OE) nome,
(OS, OHG) nami.
d) in West Germanic all consonants (except r ) preceded by a short
vowel and followed by j were geminated (doubled), but in
North Germanic only velars (k, g) were affected:
e.g. - (PGmc) *satjanan set, (Go.) satjan, (ON) setja but (OE)
settan,
(OS) settian, (OHG) setzen; or
- (PGmc) *lagjanan lay, (Go.) lagjan but (ON) leggja,
(OE) lecgan,
(OS) leggian, (OHG) lecken.
e) loss of nasals in the cluster nx
- in North Germanic it also occurred in sequences (short vowel + ns)
e.g. - the Old Norse oss us vs. Old High German uns
- in North Sea Germanic when the nasal was followed by any
voiceless
fricative mf, n, ns;
e.g. English loses the nasal but German preserves it: before f
soft/sanft; before other/ander; before sgoose/

Consonant shift
the fundamental phonological characteristic of the Germanic languages
lies in the treatment of the Indo-European plosives and fricatives.
discovered by the German scholar Jakob Grimm; presented in his
Deutsche Grammatik (1819) as the Germanic Sound/Consonant Shift
(Germanische Lautverschiebung), the most famous of the sound laws;

 pointed out prominent correlations between the Germanic and the

other Indo-European languages of Europe and western Asia
demonstrated the principle that sound change is a regular
phenomenon and not a random process affecting only some words .
Jakob Grimm described two consonant shifts involving essentially nine
consonants.
The 1st Consonant Shift, which lasted until apparently the 5th century
BC, separates all Germanic languages from the other Indo-European
languages by shifting three groups of consonants labials (p, b),
dentals (t, d) and velars (k, g) according to the following pattern:
I-E voiced unaspirated plosives (b, d, g), (Latin and Greek included) Gothic
corresponding voiceless unaspirated plosives (p, t, k) Mod. E (p, t, k) and the
Modern German (f, ts, kh ) = helphelfen / tenzehn / cornKhorn, i.e. aspirated in
early High German, now Korn:
e.g. - (I-E) * dk (L.) decem (Go.) tahun (A-S) tyn (OE) ten
(OHG) zehan ten; zehn.
- (Lith.) slbnas weak (ON) slpr (Go.) slpan (OS) slpan
(A-S) slpan (OHG) slafan to sleep; schlafen.
I-E voiceless unaspirated plosives (p, t, k) Gothic voiceless fricative (f, , h)
Mod. E. ( f, th, h) and MHG (f, d, h):
e.g. - (L.) pedem (Go.) fotus (OE) fot (OHG) fuoz foot; Fu.
- (I-E) *nept- (Skt) npt [offspring] (L.) neps
(OLith) nepuotis (ON) nefe (OE) nefa (OS/OHG) nevo
nephew; Neffe.
P-I-E voiced aspirates (bh, dh, gh), which are preserved in Sanskrit but were
changed in the other Indo-European languages by the loss of either voice or
aspiration, Germanic voiced plosives (b, d, g).

e.g. - (I-E) *bhrter (L.) frter (Go.) brar (ON) brer

(A-S /OE) bror (OS) brar (OHG) bruoder brother;
Bruder (in spite of Grimms Law).
Karl Verner, a Danish linguist, supplemented Grimms Law by
explaining the apparent exceptions to it;
Verners Law threw light on a number of other phonetic changes that
Grimm had not been able to explain accurately;
Grimms Law was valid whenever the accent fell on the root syllable of
the Sanskrit cognate, but that:
the Germanic voiceless fricatives (f, /d, h), i.e. the former Indo-European
voiceless plosives (p, t, k), become voiced (v/b, /d, g)
Verners Law explains then the change of voiceless s into voiced z
that passes further into r :
if in Proto-Indo-European words p is immediately preceded by a
stressed syllable, then it turns into v ; if the syllable is unstressed
then it turns into f :
Assimilation of two different consonants to a double consonant, i.e.
consonant lengthening, e.g. I-E nw Gmc. nn or I-E ln Gmc
ll
Insertion of consonants in order to render pronunciation easier,
e.g. I-E sr Gmc. str or I-E mr Gmc. mbr :
Metathesis, a change in the order of sounds; (PIE) r-H-no-m (L)
grnum (OIr) grn (Go.) kaurn (CrimGo.) *korn / kor (ON) korn
(OE) corn (OHG) korn grain; Korn
The Germanic Vowel Shift
The vowel system of Proto-Indo-European consisted of the following long and short
vocalic sounds: *a, *e, *o, *i, and *u.

 In time, the difference between long and short vowels completely

disappeared in certain Indo-European languages, such as in Late Latin,
in Slavic, or lessened.
Early Germanic languages preserved the contrast between short and
long vowels, emphasized it and turned it into the most outstanding
feature of Proto-Germanic vowel development.
Proto-Germanic also had three nasalized vowels: long *i, *a, and *u ;
the Indo-European vowel (schwa) is not always included by
linguists in the inventory of Germanic vowels; however, we find it
today in English, German and other Germanic languages as the
unaccented vowel in the unstressed syllable.
Germanic diphthongs, in a first phase they tend to become
monphthongs through contraction; in a second phase, the Germanic
languages started developing diphthongs again. Thus, the most
extensive process of diphthongization in English, Dutch and High
German occurred before the end of the Middle Ages:
Vowel Mutation
Coined by Jakob Grimm, it designates the process by which the quality of a vowel was
altered in certain phonetic contexts;
a) under the influence of a following i or j, the back vowels a, o, u
are mutated to the front vowels e spelled [ ] and
b) under the influence of a u or w the vowels e and o are mutated
to i and u.
it is much more a characteristic of West and North Germanic languages.
this process became a grammatical device of utmost importance and assumed
functional value with certain morphological categories, such as: the noun (plural of
nouns), the adjective (comparative and superlative degree of comparison), the verb
(indicative, subjunctive moods);

after Old High German became well established, vowel mutation began to work
extensively in it;
in todays Standard German vowel mutation is about six times greater than in Old
High German.
old plural forms (child-children, brother-brothers/brethren, cowcows/kine, etc.);
in certain adjectives (old, older/elder, the oldest/the eldest);
in adjectives by adding the suffix isc/ish (Angel/Angle +isc English,
Frank + isc French);
in the formation of transitive verbs from nouns or adjectives (full-to fill,
gold-to gild, foul-to defile);
it was also applied to Latin borrowings (Latin coquina Late Latin
cucina OE cycene kitchen; Latin catillus OE cetel kettle; Latin
molina OE mylen Mid.Eng. miln mill).

Vowel Gradation
Coined by Jakob Grimm, it is a systematic alternation in the vowels of related word
forms, especially in Germanic strong verbs, as in Mod. English sing, sang, sung,
drink, drank, drunk, or in Standard German springen, sprang, gesprungen,
trinken, trank, getrunken.
Gradation is a reflex of pitch and stress, i.e. the two accent types of Indo-European;
Pitch, or musical accent, is the degree of highness or lowness of a tone, which depends
on the number of vibrations per second produced by the vocal cords = qualitative
gradation / Abtnung.
The result is loss of accent!
Stress, or dynamic accent, is defined as the intensity given to a syllable of speech by
special effort in utterance, resulting in relative loudness = quantitative gradation,
Abstufubng.

The result is weakening or loss of unstressed vowels!

Gradation was arranged into series or classes;
out of J. Grimms 14 initial conjugations
Ex: V

sitan

sat

7 classes of verbs!

stum

i sitans (monopht. bef.

plosive/fricat.):
to sit; sitzen
VII

ltan

lailt

lailtum; ltans (reduplicating class): to

let /
to leave;
lassen / verlassen
CONCLUSION
1.

in a first phase, Proto-Germanic altered significantly the sound-

system
(consonants, vowels and diphthongs) that it had inherited from the
parent Indo-European language.
2.

a second phase, these changes were continued within the three

sub-families of East, North and West Germanic languages at different
ratios.