|
huit |
otto |
ocho |
oito |
OCTO |
|
lait |
latte |
leche |
leite |
LACTEM |
|
fait |
fatto |
hecho |
feito |
FACTUM |
|
English |
Gothic |
Latin |
Greek |
Old Church Slavic |
Sanskrit |
*Proto-Indo- European |
|
ten |
taihun |
decem |
deka |
deseti |
dasa |
*DEKM |
Grimm's Law
|
father |
three |
hurdle |
|
pita |
trayas |
krnatti |
|
brother |
doom |
guz |
|
bhrata |
dhama |
ghnanti |
|
pool |
ten |
kin |
|
Lit. 'bala' |
dasa |
Lat. genus |
What Grimm noticed was an orderly shift of sounds from I-E to Germanic.
IE p,t,k become Germanic f, › , h
IE bh, dh, gh become Germanic b, d, g
IE b, d g become Germanic p, t, k
In the move from IE to Germanic, voiced stops become unvoiced stops; unvoiced stops become fricatives, and aspirates become voiced stops.
Triangulation: the process of comparing sounds so that agreement of two sounds indicates the divergence of a third.
"field" in the Romance languages: champ, campo, campo CAMPUS
"atom, little, bitter"
American: /F db m/ /lw db l/ /bw db r/
British: /F tb m/ /lw tb l/ /bw tb /
Australian corresponds with British; therefore the initial pronuciation is as British, and American has diverged.
one useful check: atomic
In American English, /t/ becomes /d/ intervocalically when it follows a stresed vowel or precedes an unstressed vowel.
This material is adapted from Winfred P. Lehman, Historical Linguistics, 3rd. edn. Routledge 1992.