The Great Consonant Shift

The Great Consonant Shift

The Great Consonant Shift

The Great Consonant Shift

The Great Consonant Shift: There are many and many different languages in the world. The philologists have divided the languages into two great families as:

(A) Indo-European (Aryan) Family of Languages which comprises of all the eastern and western groups of languages such as – Sanskrit, Pali, Iranian, Armenian, Slavonic, Baltic, Italic, Albanian etc. and 

(B) The Teutonic (Germanic) Family of Languages includes east, north and West Germanic groups of languages such as: Gothic, Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, German, Dutch, Flemish, English, Frisian etc. But it is a matter of wonder that there is a close relationship among them though they seem to be highly different from each other. Modern painstaking research has worked out the relationship and differences between the two families of languages. In 1822, a German philologist, Jacob Grimm tried his best to work out the differences between the two families of languages on the basis of the consonants. According to Jacob Grimm, there are some consonants that have changed or shifted with considerable regularity from the Indo-European to the Teutonic family of languages. As this consonant shift was first discovered and analyzed by Jacob Grimm, so this consonant shift is generally known as Jacob Grimm’s Consonant Shift (Grimm’s Law).

For the comparison of the Consonant Shift, Grimm had taken Sanskrit and Latin words as the example of the Indo-European family of languages and English words as the example of Teutonic family of languages. This law is briefly stated below:

1. Indo-European voiced aspirates become voiced non-aspirants in Teutonic as:

(a) Indo-European ‘gh’ becomes ‘g’ in Teutonic as Sanskrit ‘ghans’ becomes ‘goose’ in English.

(b) Indo-European ‘dh’ becomes ‘d’ in Teutonic, as Sanskrit ‘Vidhava’ English ‘widow’.

(c) Indo-European ‘bh’ becomes ‘b’ in Teutonic, as Sanskrit ‘bhu’ English ‘be’.

2. Indo-European voiced non-aspirates become voiceless non-aspirates in Teutonic as: 

(a) Indo- European ‘g’ becomes ‘k’ in Teutonic, as Sanskrit ‘Janu’, English ‘Knee’.

(b) Indo-European ‘d’ becomes ‘t’ in Teutonic, as: Sanskrit ‘dam’, English ‘tame’.

(c) Indo- European ‘b’ becomes ‘p’ in Teutonic, as: Sanskrit  ‘sabar’ English sap.

3. Indo-European voiceless non-aspirates become aspirates in Teutonic, as:

(a) Indo- European ‘k’ becomes ‘kh’ or ‘h’ in Teutonic as: Latin ‘centum’, English  ‘hundred’.

‘(b) Indo-European ‘t’ becomes ‘th’ in Teutonic as: Latin ‘tri’, English  ‘three’.

(c) Indo-European ‘p’ becomes ‘ph’ in Teutonic as: Latin ‘pater’, English ‘father’.

Though Jacob Grimm had laid down some laws to discover the differences between the families of languages on the basis of consonants yet this law does not hold well in every respect. Hence there have been met some puzzles in recognizing the consonant shift. To drive away the puzzling phenomenon of Grimm’s Law another philologist, Kart Varner tried his best and as a result, he discovered that the operation of the law of sound shifting depends on the position of the ascent. The certain apparent exception to Grimm’s Law which was explained and discovered by Karl Varner is known as Verner’s Law. The main points of Verner’s Law are as below:

First Karl Verner showed that Indo-European voiceless non-aspirates- k, t, p, turned into g, d, b, but not to the aspirates- kh, th, ph, if the Indo- European voiceless non-aspirates in the middle or at the end was not immediately preceded by an ascent vowel.

Verner explained that ‘t’ in the Sanskrit word ‘antara’ becomes ‘th’ in the English word ‘other’ because ‘t’ is preceded by the ascended vowel ‘a’. Here he had operated Grimm’s Law.

Verner did not only explain the puzzling points of Grimm’s Law but also explained the exceptions which Grimm could not do such as:

(a) Indo-European ‘p’ becomes ‘b’ in Teutonic, as Indo-European ‘septm’ English  ‘seven’.

(b) Indo-European ‘s’ becomes ‘z’ in Teutonic and this ‘z’ becomes ‘r’ in old English as: Indo-European ‘ceosam’, Teutonic ‘ceas’ and old English ‘curon’.

There is great importance of the consonant shift discovered and explained by Grimm and Verner because the consonant shift is the clearest and least ambiguous criterion of the Teutonic group of languages. By studying the consonant shift we can recognize that a word with a shifted consonant is Germanic and a word with an unshifted consonant is a borrowed word. Moreover, this shift makes us know that though the languages of the world are apparently different from each other, yet there is an inner and close relationship amongst them. And more, with the help of the consonant shift, if anyone goes to study the origin of the languages, he will see that all the languages of the world have taken birth from only a language, which may claim to be the mother of all languages, but it is a matter of sorrow that the mother language of all the languages is still to be discovered. 0 0 0

The Great Consonant Shift