Home > Grimm's law

• Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops change into voiceless fricatives:

PIE *p, *t, *k > PGmc *f, *þ, *x

Note 1: *þ stands for "th" as in thick, *x for Scots "ch" as in loch)

Note 2: Here, and in the other parts of Grimm's Law, the place of articulation remains roughly the same, so that a labial stop (*p) becomes a labial fricative (*f), etc.

• Proto-Indo-European voiced stops become voiceless:

PIE *b, *d, *g > PGmc *p, *t, *k

• Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated stops lose their aspiration and change into plain voiced stops:

PIE *b^h, *d^h, *g^h > PGmc *b, *d, *g

For example:

PIE *petro- > PGmc *feþra- (English feather)

PIE *tnwi- 'thin' > PGmc. *þunni-

PIE *ed- 'eat' > PGmc. *et-

PIE *sed- 'sit' > PGmc. *set-

PIE *wodr- 'water' > PGmc *watr-

PIE *med^hu- 'mead' > PGmc *medu-

PIE *b^her- 'carry, bear' > PGmc *ber-

PIE *g^{^}eus- 'taste' > PGmc *kius- 'choose'

PIE *g^hord^ho- 'enclosed place' > PGmc *gard-

PIE *leg^h- 'lie (recline)' > PGmc *leg-

There are some subtle complications, ignored here (e.g. voiceless stops are exempted from the change if preceded by *s). They were either accounted for by Grimm himself or patiently sorted out by later scholars. The most recalcitrant set of apparent exceptions to Grimm's Law, which defied linguists for a few decades, eventually received a brilliant explanation from the Danish linguist Karl Verner (see the article on Verner's law for details).

The Germanic "sound laws", combined with regular changes reconstructed for other Indo-European languages, allow one to define the expected sound correspondences between different branches of the family.

For example, Germanic (word-initial) *b- corresponds regularly to Latin *f-, Greek p^h-, Sanskrit b^h-, Slavic , Baltic or CelticCeltic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages. They were spoken across western Europe in ancient times, but are now limited to a few enclaves in the British Isles and on the peninsula of Brittany in France. There are four main groups of Cel b-, etc., while Germanic *f- corresponds to Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Slavic and Baltic p- and to zero (no initial consonant) in Celtic. The former set goes back to PIE *b^h- (faithfully reflected in Sanskrit and modified in various ways elsewhere), and the latter set to PIE *p- (shifted in Germanic, lost in Celtic, preserved in the other groups mentioned here).

Grimm also discovered another ("Second") consonant shift, which accounts for the consonant system of High GermanHigh German (in German, Hochdeutsch please note that Hochdeutsch is also used to refered to today's standard German) is any of several West Germanic languages spoken in Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and Luxembourg (as well as in neighbouri. It did not operate in the remaining Germanic languages, which meant that e.g. the EnglishThe English language is a West Germanic language, originating from England. It is the third most common "first" language (native speakers), with around 402 million people in 2002. English has lingua franca status in many parts of the world, due to the mil system of stops and fricatives is more archaic (closer to Proto-Germanic) than that of Modern GermanGerman (called Deutsch in German in which germanisch refers to prechristian times), is a member of the western group of Germanic languages and one of the world's major languages. It is the language with the most native speakers in the European Union..

e.g.

English two vs German zwei /ts-/

English pipe vs German Pfeife /pf-f-/

English make vs German machen /-x-/