All the Germanic languages of the past and present have common linguistic features; some of these features are shared by other groups in the IE family, others are specifically Germanic.
The Germanic group acquired their specific distinctive features after the separation of the ancient Germanic tribes from other IE tribes and prior to their further expansion and disintegration, which is during the period of the PG parent language. These PG features inherited by the descendant languages represent the common features of the Germanic group. Other common features developed later, in the course of the individual histories of separate Germanic languages, as a result of similar tendencies arising from PG causes. On the other hand, many Germanic features have been disguised, transformed and even lost in later history.
The history of the Germanic group begins with the appearance of what is known as the Proto-Germanic (PG) language (also termed Common or Primitive Germanic, Primitive Teutonic and simply Germanic). PG is the linguistic ancestor or the parent language of the Germanic group. It is supposed to have split from related IE tongues sometime between the 15th and 10th c. B.C. and settled on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea in the region of the Elbe. This place is regarded as the most probable original home of the Teutons. PG is a pre-historical language: it was never recorded in written form. In the 19th c. it was reconstructed by methods of comparative linguistics from written evidence in descendant languages.
It is believed that at the earliest stages of history PG was fundamentally one language, though dialectally coloured. In its later stages dialectal differences grew, so that towards the beginning of our era Germanic appears divided into dialectal groups and tribal dialects.
a) Word Stress.
The peculiar Germanic system of word accentuation is one of the most important distinguishing features of the group; it arose in PG, was fully or partly retained in separate languages and served as one of the major causes for many linguistic changes.
It is known that in ancient IE there existed two ways of word accentuation: musical pitch and force stress. The position of the stress was free and movable, which means that it could fall on any syllable of the word a root-morpheme, an affix or an ending and could be shifted both in form building and word-building. Both these properties of the word accent were changed in PG. Force or expiratory stress (also called dynamic and breath stress) became the only type of stress used. In Early PG word stress was still as movable as in ancient IE but in Late PG its position in the word was stabilised. The stress was now fixed on the first syllable, which was usually the root of the word and sometimes the prefix; the other syllables suffixes and endings were unstressed. The stress could no longer move either in form-building or word-building.
The heavy fixed word stress inherited from PG has played an important role in the development of the Germanic languages, and especially in phonetic and morphological changes. Due to the difference in the force of articulation the stressed and unstressed syllables underwent widely different changes: accented syllables were pronounced with great distinctness and precision, while unaccented became less distinct and were phonetically weakened. The differences between the sounds in stressed position were preserved and emphasised, whereas the contrasts between the unaccented sounds were weakened and lost. Since the stress was fixed on the root, the weakening and loss of sounds mainly affected the suffixes and grammatical endings. Many endings merged with the suffixes, were weakened and dropped.
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B) Vowels.
Throughout history, beginning with PG, vowels displayed a strong tendency to change. They underwent different kinds of alterations: qualitative and quantitative, dependent and independent. Qualitative changes affect the quality of the sound, e.g.: [o>a] or [p>f]; quantitative changes make long sounds short or short sounds long, e.g.: |i>i:]; dependent changes (also positional or combinative) are restricted to certain positions or phonetic conditions, for instance, a sound may change under the influence of the neighbouring sounds or in a certain type of a syllable; independent changes also spontaneous or regular take place irrespective of phonetic conditions, i.e. they affect a certain sounds in all positions.
From an early date the treatment of vowels was determined by the nature of word stress. In accented syllables the oppositions between vowels were carefully maintained and new distinctive features were introduced, so that the number of stressed vowels grew. In unaccented positions the original contrasts between vowels were weakened or lost; the distinction of short and long vowels was neutralised so that by the age of writing the long vowels in unstressed syllables had been shortened. As for originally short vowels, they tended to be reduced to a neutral sound, losing their qualitative distinctions and were often dropped in unstressed final syllables.
Strict differentiation of long and short vowels is commonly regarded as an important characteristic of the Germanic group. The contrast of short and long vowels is supported by the different directions of their changes. While long vowels generally tended to become closer and to diphthongise, short vowels, on the contrary, often changed into more open sounds. These tendencies can be seen in the earliest vowel changes which distinguished the PG vowel system from its IE source.
IE short [o] changed in Germanic into the more open vowel [a] and thus ceased to be distinguished from the original IE [a], in other words in PG they merged into [o]. The merging of long vowels proceeded in the opposite direction: IE long [a:] was narrowed to [o:] and merged with [o:]. The examples in Table 1 illustrate the resulting correspondences of vowels in parallels from Germanic and non-Germanic languages (more apparent in Old Germanic languages than in modern words, for the sounds have been modified in later history):
Independent Vowel Changes in Proto-Germanic: Table 1
PIE PG
o > a
L nox Gt naht,
R OE nátt, Mod SW natt
a: > o:
L mater OE mōdor
R NE mother
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In later PG and in separate Germanic languages the vowels displayed a tendency to positional assimilative changes: the pronunciation of a vowel was modified under the influence of the following or preceding consonant; sometimes a vowel was approximated more closely to the following vowel. The resulting sounds were phonetically conditioned allophones, which could eventually coincide with another phoneme or develop into a new phoneme.
The earliest instances of progressive assimilation were common Germanic mutations; they occurred in Late PG before its disintegration or a short time after. In certain phonetic conditions, namely before the nasal [n] and before [i] or [j] in the next syllable the short [e], [i] and [u] remained or became close (i.e. appeared as [i] and [u]), while in the absence of these conditions the more open allophones were used: [e] and [o], respectively.
After the changes, in Late PG, the vowel system contained the following short and long sounds:
SHORT VOWELS i e a o u
LONG VOWELS i: e: a: o: u:
Some linguists believe that in addition to these monophthongs, PG had a set of diphthongs: [ei], [ai], [eu], [au] and also [iu]. Nowadays, however, many scholars interpret them as sequences of two independent monophthongs.
C) Consonants.
The specific peculiarities of consonants constitute the most remarkable distinctive feature of the Germanic linguistic group. In comparison with other languages within the IE family reveals regular correspondences between Germanic and non-Germanic consonants. We regularly find [f] in Germanic where other IE languages have [p]; e.g., E full, Fr plein; wherever Germanic has [p], cognate words in non-Germanic languages have [b] (E pool, R mo)..
The consonants in Germanic look 'shifted' as compared with the consonants of non-Germanic languages. The alterations of the consonants took place in PG, and the resulting sounds were inherited by the languages of the Germanic group.
The changes of consonants in PG were first formulated as a phonetic law by Jacob Grimm in the early 19th c. and are often called Grimm's Law. It is also known as the First or Proto-Germanic Shift of Consonants.
Grimm's Law
Jacob Grimm classified all the correspondences of the consonants in PG with those of other languages of PIE languages into three groups, which he called Acts. Many scientists believe that the consonant shift took place as a series of successive steps; it took, most probably, on some part of Germanic territory and gradually spread over the whole area.
ACT I
Voiceless plosives of PIE languages developed in PG into voiceless fricatives:
PIE > PG
p > f (L pes > Gt fōtus; NE foot)
t > θ (L tres, R > NE tree )
k > (L cor, R > OE heort)
ACT II
IE voiced plosives shifted to voiceless plosives in PG:
PIE > PG
b > p (R > OE pōl, NE pool)
d > t (L decem, Fr dix, R > NE ten )
g > k (L ager > Gt akrs, NE acre )
ACT III
IE voiced aspirated plosives were reflected in PG either as voiced fricatives or as pure voiced plosives:
PIE > PG
bh> b/v (O Ind bhratā, R > OE brōðor, NE brother)
dh > d/ đ (O Ind rudhira, R , U > OE rēad, NE red)
gh > g/ Υ (L hostis, R > Gt gasts, OE giest, NE guest)
c) Verner's Law.
Some correspondences of consonants seemed to contradict Grimm's Law and were for a long time regarded as exceptions from the Law. But in the late 19th c. a Danish scholar, Carl Verner, explained those consonant changes in PG, which J. Grimm didnt manage to do. It was another important discovery, which is known in linguistics as Verner's Law.
According to Verner's Law all the early PG voiceless fricatives [f, θ, x], which arose under Grimm's Law, and also [s] inherited from PIE, became voiced between vowels if the preceding vowel was unstressed. In the absence of these conditions they remained voiceless. The voicing occurred in early PG at the time when the stress was not yet fixed on the root-morpheme. The process of voicing can be shown as a step in a succession of consonant changes in prehistoric reconstructed forms:
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PIE Early PG Late PG
p > f > v
L septem > Gt sibun, OE seofon [v] > G sieben, NE seven
t > θ > ð, d
L pa'ter > Gt fadar (fa'θar>fa'ðar)> OE fæder, G Vater, Sw fader, NE father
k > > γ, g
L socrus,
R ,
U > OE sweer > G Schwager
s > z > r
OFr wesa > Gt wesun, NE was > OE wæron, NE were
Verner's Law explains the appearance of voiced fricative or its later modifications [d] in place of the voiceless [θ], and [r] in place of [z].
In late PG, the phonetic conditions that caused the voicing had disappeared: the stress had shifted to the first syllable.
That is how the initial step stimulated further changes and the entire system was shifted. It is essential that throughout the shift the original pattern of the consonant system was preserved.
Examples to the laws:
L g ena OE c in [kin] (NE chin)
L pe c us Gt fai h u, OE feo h (NE fee)
R NE na k ed, G na ck t
Ukr NE f riend
Ukr Gt t riu, NE t ree
L edere, R Gt itan, OE etan
Sans napat, L nepos NE nephew, G Neffe
L caput OE heafod, NE head
R OE fam, NE foam
L statio OE stede
Pre-Germanic Britain.
A) Celts.
CELTS is the name given, under various forms, by Greek and Roman writers to a people whose first-known territory was an area in the basin of the upper Danube and South Germany. Here they were pioneers of the working of iron. They overran France, Spain, Portugal, North Italy, the British Isles, Greece and sacked Rome in 390 BC. They appear never to have had a united empire, and their conquests were made by emigrant groups, which effected permanent settlements in the lands named as well as in the part of Asia Minor later known as Galatia. From their name the name "Celts" was given by classical authors to a fair tall people of North Europe and it was only gradually that they learned to distinguish them from the German tribes The origin of the word Celt originates from Greek Keltoi, Keltai, which means inhabitants of the forest or people that lived beyond the mountains.
The first inhabitants of Britain were the Iberians. They came from the continent about 3000 years B.C.
During the period from the 6th to the 3rd century B.C. the Celts spread across Europe from the East to the West. Celtic tribes invaded the territory, which is known now as the British Isles. But at that time it was a continental part of the land easy to reach. We know more about the Celts than about the earlier inhabitants of the island, because of the written accounts that exist. The earliest writer from whom we have learned much about the country and its inhabitants was Julius Caesar, the famous Roman general, statesman and writer. In his Commentaries on the Gallic War, a book written in Latin, Julius Caesar describes the island and the Celts against whom he fought. He tells us that the Celts were tall and blue-eyed. They wore long flowing moustaches but no beards. In their mode of life the British Celts differed little from the Celtic tribes of the Galls who lived on the Continent.
Chiefs, whom all the tribesmen obeyed, ruled the Celts. The Celts had no towns, they lived in villages. They kept cattle and sheep. They also cultivated crops, especially corn. Their clothing was made of wale skins. In wartime the Celts painted their faces with a blue dye to make themselves look fierce. The Celts worshipped Nature as they were pagans. Their priests were called druids. The druids lived near the forests of oak-trees, which were considered to be sacred places.
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The Celts were acquainted with the use of copper, tin and iron and they kept large herds of cattle and sheep, which formed their chief wealth. They also cultivated crops, especially corn; they used light ploughs as well as hoes, and grew their crops in small, square fields. The Celtic tribes of the Britons who inhabited the southeastern parts of the island were more civilized than the other tribes. Their clothing was made of wool, woven in many colours while the other Celts wore skins.
The Celts lived many centuries ago, but some Celtic words can still be found in Modern English. Most of them are geographical names.
