BEFORE OLD

ENGLISH
Presented by:

Ma. Abbygale B. Ojales

Tamarra Jamme Ong

Donna Jean Simora

 Indo-
Origins of
01 language
European to

Earliest
03 Germanic:
02 writings
Sound
changes
 The Indo-European to
Germanic: Sound Changes
Sir William Jones
• Made the larger
scholarly community
aware of correspondences
bet. Latin, Greek, and
Sanskrit.
• Proceeded by comparing
words from different
languages and then
coming up with ‘laws’.
• Words from different languages, such
as tres and treis may have a common
ancestor and are then called cognates.
• Comparative method- take words
(such as pronouns, numerals, and
kinship terms) as comparison material
since they are supposed to changes the
least.
You can probably see that languages C to
H have a great deal in common; A and B
also have much in common; I, however, is
different. This turns out to be correct: A
and B are Arabic and Hebrew, members
of the Semitic family; C is Sanskrit, D
Avestan, E Greek, F Latin, G Gothic, H
Celtic, all members of the Indo-European
family; I is Turkish, a member of the
Altaic family.
Figure 3.5
This representation is simplified since no
relationship between the main branches is
indicated. The usual assumption is that Germanic,
Slavic, and Baltic are more closely connected and
that Celtic and Italic are similarly closer to each
other. The Tocharian and Anatolian branches
split off the earliest (Ringe 2006) but are now
extinct.
The way the languages in each branch develop has, to
a large extent, to do with what non-Indo-European
language(s) they come in contact with.

Europe was repopulated during the Neolithic period

(9000 BP -4000 BP) by people from areas where the
ice had not reached.
The mitochondrial DNA of the current European
population confirms a pre Indo-European origin.
Vasonic, related to
modern Basque
Several Germanic and Romance words are tied, which
were not found in other Indo-European languages, to
Vasonic and also certain placenames.

e.g. bide is ‘road’ in Basque and this turns up in

placements such as Bitburg in Germany and Bedford
and Bedhampton in England, just like Stratford and
Strassburg are compounds of roads, fords, and
boroughs.
Figure 3.6: Grimm’s Law, or the First Consonant Shift:
correspondences between languages
• Latin ped, which didn’t shift, and
English foot, which did undergo the
shift.
• Latin tenuis, which parallels English thin
• Latin centum, which corresponds to
English hundred.
• Latin turba ‘crowd’ corresponding
to Old English thorp ‘town’
• Latin decem [dekεm] and English
ten
• Latin ager and English acre
Figure 3.7: Some of Grimm’s correspondences in more
detail
• Sanskrit bhrata corresponds to
English brother
• dhwer to door
• ghosti to guest
-Like the great vowel shift, Grimm’s law can
be considered as a chain reaction.

-The entire process happens in Germanic;

Latin and Greek are interesting in that they
participate in one stage but what is an
aspirated stop in Sanskrit corresponds to a
fricative in Latin.
-As mentioned, the various stages in
Grimm’s Law take place only one
time: once a [b] has changed to [p]
that [p] stays a [p]. Thus, the initial
[b] in brother stays [b] and doesn’t
change further to [p]!
Figure 3.8: The branches of Germanic
-After the Germanic languages split,
there are many other changes. If a [p]
were to change to an [f] in Modern
English, we wouldn’t call that process
Grimm’s Law.
 THANK
YOU!
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