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Grimm’s Law

Indo-European voiceless stops (p, t, k) correspond to Germanic voiceless fricatives (f, þ, h).

Indo-European voiced stops (b, d, g) correspond to Germanic voiceless stops ( p, t, k).

Mind that we are talking not about spelling changes, but about sound changes. So for example g-k shift means that Indo-European g can be spelled in PDE either with “k” or “c” as these both letters represent the sound [k].

Indo-European voiced aspirated stops (bh, dh, gh) correspond to Germanic voiced stops without aspiration (b, d, g).

By the year 500 BC the sound changes must have come to a close. They had ended before the Germanic tribes came in touch with the Romans because not any word borrowed from Latin was subject to those changes in Germanic languages. It explains many apparent root differences in English words of Germanic and Latinate origin (e.g. father and paternal, ten and decimal, horn and cornucopia, three and triple, etc).

Jacob Grimm wasn't the only one to prove the consonant shift. Rasmus Rask is known to have noticed it even prior to Grimm.

- Verner’s law,

Both Rasmus Rask and Jakob Grimm, at the time of their deaths, were aware that there were exceptions to Grimm's Law, but no one at that time could account for these exceptions. That remained for the Danish linguist Karl Verner (1846 - 1896) to do.

Verner noticed that a great number of exceptions to Grimm's Law also had a regularity and system of their own, and could be explained logically as well. Comparing Sanskrit and Germanic cognates, Verner was able to see that stress patterns in words had influenced the pronunciation of nearby consonants.

To see the effect of stress on nearby consonants, say the words "exist" and "exit." Most people pronounce the first /Ig'zIst/ and the second /EksIt/. (I use the symbol /E/ to stand for the mid front lax vowel.) Notice how the voiceless velar stop /k/ in "exit" becomes the voiced velar stop /g/ when it follows an unstressed vowel and is surrounded by voiced sounds. Verner concluded the changes described by Grimm occurred in early Germanic times, and then another set of consonant shifts occurred later caused by stress patterns. And then (this is crucial) the stress shifted to the first syllable, effectively hiding the causes of the succeeding shift and making it almost impossible to recognize. Verner published his results in 1875, and the patterns he described came to be known as Verner's Law.

Verner was thus able to explain a whole category of seeming exceptions to Grimm's Law: Indo-European voiceless stops /p/, /t/, and /k/ shifted to early Germanic voiceless fricatives /f/, /Þ/ and /x/, according to Grimm's Law. Then, later, those voiceless fricatives that followed an unstressed syllable and were surrounded by voiced sounds shifted further to become the voiced fricatives, /ð/, and /g/. Oddly, Verner's Law also appeared to apply to the voiceless alveolar fricative /s/, which shifted to /z/. In all West Germanic languages, of which English is one, the /ð/ shifted again to /d/ and the /z/ shifted (by a process known as rhoticism) to /r/.

The following table diagrams these changes:

Some examples:

Early Gmc. wæs (plural wæsun', with stress on second syllable) became wæs (plural wæron, in WGmc): was, were

PIE pater' becomes faqer ' in Early Gmc; faðer after Verner's Law and stress shift; fæder in WGmc incl. OE). (Note ModE "father" has shifted back!)

Note that some modern English words have retained traces of Verner’s Law, e.g. seethe – sodden; death – dead; raise – rear; was – were.

- Rhotacism

Besides the voiceless fricative consonants resulting from the consonant shift, one more voiceless fricative is affected by Verner’s Law, i.e. the consonant s. If the preceding vowel is unstressed, s in Germanic languagesbecomes voiced,i.e. changes into z in the intervocal position. Eventually this z becomes r in Western Germanic and Northern Germanic languages (but not in Gothic). This latter change z > r is termed rhotacism (the term is derived from the name of the Greek letter ρ (rho). This is clearly shown by comparing Goth hausjan ‘hear’ and OE hīeran, G hōren;

- The vowels: ablaut, umlaut, independent vowel changes