Proto-Germanic language

Proto-Germanic is an old language that we can only guess about by looking at clues. It is thought to be the common ancestor of many languages spoken today, like German, English, and Dutch. These languages are all called Germanic languages.

We know about Proto-Germanic because smart people studied how sounds changed over time. This change is called Grimm's law. By comparing words from different old languages, they figured out what Proto-Germanic might have sounded like.

We don’t have any books or stories written in Proto-Germanic. But we do have some old pieces of evidence. For example, there are special markings carved on old items, like the Vimose inscriptions found in Denmark. There are also words from very old times that show up in other languages, like Finnish. All these clues help us learn about this ancient language.

Archaeology and early historiography

Proto-Germanic came from an older language during the Pre-Roman Iron Age in Northern Europe. It probably grew in places like Denmark, southern Sweden, southern Norway, and parts of northern Germany.

By about the first century AD, people who spoke Proto-Germanic moved to new places, reaching areas near the Danube and the Upper Rhine. The oldest known writing in a Germanic language is from runic inscriptions, dating to around the 2nd century AD. The first full book in a Germanic language is the Gothic Bible, written in the late fourth century.

Evolution

The Proto-Germanic language started from Proto-Indo-European. It changed as people in nearby areas began to speak in a common way. Over time, they split into different groups with their own ways of speaking. Many sounds changed during this time.

Different ideas exist about how Germanic languages relate to other Indo-European languages. The Germanic languages come from Proto-Germanic, which itself comes from Proto-Indo-European. Borrowing words from other languages makes it hard to see where Germanic fits among other Indo-European languages.

Proto-Germanic is thought to have begun around 500 BC. Scholars have different ideas about when sound changes happened and how stress on words played a role.

Phonology

Transcription

The following rules are used for writing Proto-Germanic sounds:

• Voiced sounds appear as b, d, g; this does not mean they were only one type of sound. In other books, they might be written with a bar like [ƀ], [đ], [ǥ].
• Unvoiced sounds appear as f, þ, h. /x/ might have become /h/ in some places later. The same goes for /xʷ/, which later became /hʷ/ or /ʍ/ in some positions.
• Labiovelars appear as kw, hw, gw; this does not mean they were single sounds or groups of sounds.
• The yod sound appears as j. Normally, this sound is written as y in Proto-Indo-European, but here it is j. This does not mean the pronunciation changed.
• Long vowels are shown with a line over the letter, like ō. When needed, /ɛː/ and /eː/ are written as ē¹ and ē². ē¹ is sometimes written as æ or ǣ, but that is not used here.
• Overlong vowels have a hat symbol, like ô. In other books, they might be written with a double line, like ō̄.
• Nasal vowels are written with a special mark ogonek, like ǫ̂ /õːː/. Often, they are written with an n after them. This can mix up words that end in a nasal vowel and words that end in a vowel followed by /n/. Tildes (ã, ĩ, ũ...) are also used in some books.
• Diphthongs appear as ai, au, eu, iu, ōi, ōu and maybe ēi, ēu. But when followed by the same semivowel, they appear as ajj, aww, eww, iww. u is written as w between a vowel and j. This rule comes from Ringe 2006.
• Long vowels followed by a non-high vowel were separate syllables and are written that way here, except for ī, which is written ij in that case.

Consonants

The table below shows the consonant sounds of Proto-Germanic, ordered by their pronunciation. The slashes around the sounds are left out for simplicity. When two sounds are in the same box, the first is unvoiced and the second is voiced. Sounds in parentheses are variations and not separate sounds. For explanations of the sounds, follow the links on the column and row titles.

Notes:

1. [ŋ] was a variation of /n/ before velar sounds.
2. [ŋʷ] was a variation of /n/ before labiovelar sounds.
3. /gʷ/ only appeared after [ŋʷ].
4. [β], [ð] and [ɡ] were variations of /b/, /d/ and /ɣ/ in some places (see below).
5. The sound written as f was probably still a bilabial fricative (/ɸ/) in Proto-Germanic. This is shown by Gothic, where word-final b (which is a voiced fricative inside words) becomes f, and Old Norse spellings like aptr [ɑɸtr], where p is used instead of f before /t/.

Grimm's and Verner's law

Main articles: Grimm's law and Verner's law

Grimm's law changed the original Indo-European sounds. Verner's Law explains some exceptions to Grimm's Law, where a voiced fricative appears where Grimm's Law expects an unvoiced fricative. This difference depends on where the original Indo-European word stress was.

p, t, and k did not change after a fricative (like s) or after other sounds that changed to fricatives (the Germanic spirant law); for example, where Latin (with original t) has stella 'star' and octō 'eight', Middle Dutch has ster and acht (with unchanged t). This original t mixed with the changed t from voiced consonants; so most /t/ came from either the original /t/ or the changed /t/.

(A similar change in the consonant list of Proto-Germanic later created High German. McMahon says:

Grimm's and Verner's Laws ... together form the First Germanic Consonant Shift. A second, later Second Germanic Consonant Shift ... affected only Proto-Germanic unvoiced stops ... and split Germanic into two groups of dialects, Low German in the north ... and High German further south

Verner's law usually happened after Grimm's law and says that unvoiced fricatives: /s/, /ɸ/, /θ/, /x/ become voiced when before an unstressed syllable. The stress at the time came from Proto-Indo-European, and could be on any syllable. For example, PIE *bʰréh₂tēr > PGmc. *brōþēr 'brother' but PIE *meh₂tḗr > PGmc. *mōdēr 'mother'. The voicing of some /s/ by Verner's Law created /z/, a new sound. After Grimm's and Verner's law, Proto-Germanic lost its original stress, and all words were stressed on the first syllable unless there was a prefix.

Losing the Proto-Indo-European stress removed the reason for the sound changes from Verner's law. Without this reason, the cause of the changes was not clear to speakers. The changes that started as small sound differences became more about grammar, leading to grammatical sound changes known as grammatischer Wechsel. For a single word, the grammar could show different sounds depending on its case or tense. Because of this complexity, many of these sound changes were simplified over time in the Germanic period and later in the daughter languages. Already in Proto-Germanic, most sound changes in nouns were simplified to one sound or the other consistently in all forms of a word, though some changes were kept, only to be simplified later in the daughter languages (but differently in each one). Changes in noun and verb endings were also simplified, usually keeping the voiced changes in nouns, but keeping the unvoiced changes in verbs where there were no extra letters. The change between present and past in strong verbs stayed common and was not simplified in Proto-Germanic, and still exists today in some Germanic languages.

Allophones

Some consonants that came from sound changes might have been pronounced differently (allophones) depending on the sounds around them. For the original /k/ or /kʷ/ Trask says:

The resulting /x/ or /xʷ/ were reduced to /h/ and /hʷ/ at the start of words.

Many consonants listed in the table could be lengthened or prolonged in some cases, which is seen in some daughter languages as doubled letters. This is called gemination. Kraehenmann says:

Proto-Germanic already had long consonants ... but they only contrasted with short ones in the middle of words. Moreover, they were not very common and mostly happened after short vowels between vowels.

The voiced sounds /b/, /d/, /ɡ/ and /ɡʷ/ are thought to have been pronounced as stops in some places and fricatives in others. The pattern is not completely clear, but it is similar to how voiced sounds work in languages like Spanish. The voiced fricatives from Verner's law, which only happened not at the start of words, mixed with the fricative variations of /b/, /d/, /ɡ/ and /ɡʷ/. Older ideas suggested these sounds were first fricatives and later "hardened" into stops in some cases. However, Ringe says this was mostly because of older theory ideas, and in modern ideas it is just as likely that the variations were there from the start.

Each of the three voiced sounds /b/, /d/, and /ɡ/ had a slightly different pattern of variation from the others, but in general stops happened in "strong" positions (at the start of words and in groups) while fricatives happened in "weak" positions (after vowels). More specifically:

• At the start of words, /b/ and /d/ were stops [b] and [d].
• There is good evidence that at the start of words, /ɡ/ was [ɣ], later becoming [ɡ] in some languages. This is clearest in Anglo-Frisian and other Ingvaeonic languages. Southern types of Modern Dutch (e.g. speakers from Limburg, Brabant, Southern Gelderland, as well as most Flemish speech types) still keep the sound [ɣ] in this place. (However, in most other Western and Northern Dutch types like the mainstream Randstad type, the historically different sounds ⟨g⟩ [ɣ] and ⟨ch⟩ [x] have mixed into the hard g (Dutch: harde g), i.e. a voiceless uvular fricative [χ]).
• Stops appeared after homorganic nasal sounds: [mb], [nd], [ŋɡ], [ŋʷɡʷ]. This was the only place where a voiced labiovelar [ɡʷ] could still happen.
• When doubled, they were pronounced as stops [bb], [dd], [ɡɡ]. This rule continued into early West Germanic languages, since the West Germanic gemination made doubled stops from earlier voiced fricatives.
• /d/ was [d] after /l/ or /z/. Evidence for /d/ after /r/ is mixed: it appears as a stop in Gothic waurd 'word' (not *waurþ, with devoicing), but as a fricative in Old Norse orð. /d/ became [d] in all places in the West Germanic languages.
• In other places, fricatives happened singly after vowels and diphthongs, and after non-nasal sounds in the case of /b/ and /ɡ/.

Labiovelars

Labiovelars had some extra changes:

1. The PIE boukólos rule kept working as a surface filter in Proto-Germanic; when a labiovelar came next to /u/, it changed right away to a plain velar. This caused changes in some verb forms, e.g. *singwaną [siŋʷɡʷɑnɑ̃] 'to sing' versus *sungun [suŋɡun] 'they sang'. It seems this also happened with labiovelars after /un/, showing the language had a labial variation [ŋʷ]. In this case the whole groups [uŋʷxʷ], [uŋʷkʷ] and [uŋʷɡʷ] changed to [uŋx], [uŋk] and [uŋɡ].
2. (Early) Proto-Germanic /ɡʷ/ had at least three different results: after /n/, it stayed (e.g. *sangwaz 'song'); next to /u/ and before /r/ at the start it changed to /g/ (e.g. *gudą 'god', *grindaną 'to grind'); in all other places /ɡʷ/ usually became /w/ (e.g. *warmaz 'warm', *snaiwaz 'snow', *neurô 'kidney'). Evidence for a change /ɡʷ/ > /b/ at the start is small.

These changes often led to complex variations, e.g. *sehwaną [ˈsexʷɑnɑ̃] 'to see', *sēgun [ˈsɛːɣun] 'they saw' (indicative), *sēwīn [ˈsɛːwiːn] 'they saw' (subjunctive), which were reanalyzed and regularized differently in the various daughter languages.

Consonant gradation

Kroonen suggests a process of consonant mutation for Proto-Germanic, called consonant gradation. (This is different from the consonant mutation processes in the neighboring Samic and Finnic languages, also called consonant gradation since the 19th century.) The Proto-Germanic consonant gradation is not directly seen in any Germanic dialects, but it can be guessed based on some differences in the roots of n-stems and ōn-verbs.

Over time, the rise of consonant gradation in Germanic can be explained by Kluge's law, where doubled sounds came from stops followed by a nasal in a stressed syllable. Since this sound law only worked in part of the forms of n-stems and ōn-verbs, it created a change of doubled and undoubled sounds in the same forms. These were mostly fixed by various ways of analogy in the Germanic daughter languages.

Since it was suggested, the idea of Kluge's Law has been questioned. The development of doubled sounds has also been explained by the idea of "expressive gemination". Although this idea is still popular, it does not explain why many words with doubled stops do not have "expressive" or "intensive" meanings. The idea has been called "methodically unsound", because it tries to explain the sound change through mind actions and other irregular behavior instead of looking for regular sound laws.

The origin of the Germanic doubled sounds is still a debated part of history with no clear answer yet.

The reconstruction of grading forms in Proto-Germanic explains root changes such as Old English steorra 'star'

Notes:

1. /e/ could not be in unstressed syllables except before /r/, where it might have been lowered to /ɑ/ already in late Proto-Germanic times.^{[citation needed]}
2. All nasal vowels except /ɑ̃ː/, /ĩː/, and /ũː/ only happened at the end of words, and of these, only /ĩː/ also happened at the end of words. Word inside nasal vowels only happened before /x/, and came from their earlier short vowels (/ɑ/, /i/, and /u/) followed by /nx/.

PIE ə, a, o mixed into PGmc a; PIE ā, ō mixed into PGmc ō. At the time of the mixing, the vowels were probably [ɑ] and [ɑː], or perhaps [ɒ] and [ɒː]. Their sounds then changed by raising (and maybe rounding) the long vowel to [ɔː]. It is known that the raising of ā to ō could not have happened before the earliest contact between Proto-Germanic speakers and the Romans. This can be seen by the fact that Latin Rōmānī later appears in Gothic as Rumoneis (that is, Rūmōnīs). It is explained by Ringe that at the time of borrowing, the sound closest to Latin ā was a Proto-Germanic ā-like sound (which later became ō). And since Proto-Germanic lacked a mid(-high) back vowel, the closest match for Latin ō was Proto-Germanic ū: Rōmānī > *Rūmānīz > *Rūmōnīz > Gothic Rumoneis.

A new ā was formed after the change from ā to ō when intervocalic /j/ was lost in -aja- groups. It was a rare sound, and happened only in a few words, the most important being the verbs of the third weak class. The agent noun ending *-ārijaz (Modern English -er in words such as baker or teacher) was likely borrowed from Latin around or shortly after this time.

Diphthongs

The following diphthongs are known to have been in Proto-Germanic:

• Short: /ɑu/, /ɑi/, /eu/, /iu/ (from i-umlaut of /eu/) before /i/ or /j/
• Long: /ɔːu/, /ɔːi/, (possibly /ɛːu/, /ɛːi/)

Note the change /e/ > /i/ before /i/ or /j/ in the same or next syllable. This removed /ei/ (which became /iː/) but created /iu/ from earlier /eu/.

Diphthongs in Proto-Germanic can also be seen as a vowel plus an approximant, as in Proto-Indo-European. This explains why /j/ was not lost in *niwjaz ('new'); the second part of the diphthong iu was still a consonant under the surface, so the condition for loss was not met. This is also shown by the fact that later in West Germanic gemination, -wj- became -wwj- in the same way as other consonants (except /r/).

Overlong vowels

Proto-Germanic had two overlong or trimoraic long vowels ô [ɔːː] and ê [ɛːː], the latter mainly in adverbs (cf. *hwadrê 'whereto, whither'). None of the known languages still have these vowels. Their reconstruction comes from the comparative method, especially as a way to explain an otherwise unexpected two-way split of reconstructed long ō in final syllables, which stayed long in some forms but showed normal shortening in others.

Trimoraic vowels usually happened at morpheme edges where a bimoraic long vowel and a short vowel in hiatus joined, especially after the loss of an intervening laryngeal (-VHV-). One example, without a laryngeal, is the class II weak verbs (ō-stems) where a -j- was lost between vowels, so -ōja → ōa → ô (cf. *salbōjaną → *salbôną → Gothic salbōn 'to anoint'). However, most happened in word-ending syllables (inflectional endings) probably because in this place the vowel could not be moved to another syllable. Also, Germanic, like Balto-Slavic, lengthened bimoraic long vowels in absolute final position, maybe to better fit a word's rhythm shape; e.g., PGmc *arô 'eagle' ← PIE **h₃ér-ō just as Lith akmuõ 'stone', OSl kamy ← *aḱmō̃ ← PIE **h₂éḱ-mō. Contrast:

• contraction after loss of laryngeal: gen.pl. *wulfǫ̂ 'wolves' ← *wulfôn ← pre-Gmc *wúlpōom ← PIE **wĺ̥kʷoHom; ō-stem gen.pl. **-ôz ← pre-Gmc **-āas ← PIE **-eh₂es.
• contraction of short vowels: a-stem nom.pl. *wulfôz 'wolves' ← PIE **wĺ̥kʷoes.

But vowels lengthened by laryngeals did not become overlong. Compare:

• ō-stem nom.sg. *-ō ← *-ā ← PIE **-eh₂;
• ō-stem acc.sg. *-ǭ ← *-ān ← *-ām (by Stang's law) ← PIE **-eh₂m;
• ō-stem acc.pl. *-ōz ← *-āz ← *-ās (by Stang's law) ← PIE **-eh₂ns;

Trimoraic vowels are different from bimoraic vowels by their results in known Germanic languages: word-ending trimoraic vowels stayed long vowels while bimoraic vowels became short vowels. Older ideas about this said that long and overlong vowels were both long but had different tones, i.e., ô and ê had a "circumflex" (rise-fall-rise) tone while ō and ē had an "acute" (rising) tone, like the tones of modern Scandinavian languages, Baltic, and Ancient Greek, and claimed this difference came from PIE. However, this view was given up because languages in general do not mix different tones on unstressed syllables with different stress and vowel length. Modern ideas have reinterpreted overlong vowels as having superheavy syllable weight (three moras) and therefore more length than normal long vowels.

By the end of the Proto-Germanic period, word-ending long vowels were shortened to short vowels. After that, overlong vowels were shortened to normal long vowels in all places, mixing with originally long vowels except at the end of words (because of the earlier shortening), so they stayed different in that place. This was a late dialect change, because the result was not the same in all Germanic languages: word-ending ē shortened to a in East and West Germanic but to i in Old Norse, and word-ending ō shortened to a in Gothic but to o (probably [o]) in early North and West Germanic, with a later rise to u (the sixth century Salic law still has maltho in late Frankish).

The shortened overlong vowels at the end of words developed as normal long vowels from that point on, including the lowering of ē to ā in North and West Germanic. The change of unstressed au in Northwest Germanic made a new sound that mixed with this new word-ending long ō, while the change of unstressed ai made a new ē which did not mix with original ē, but rather with ē₂, as it was not lowered to ā. This split, combined with the uneven development in West Germanic, with ē lowering but ō rising, shows an early difference in the height of the two vowels that was not in North Germanic. It could be proof that the lowering of ē to ā started in West Germanic when final vowels were still long, and spread to North Germanic through the late Germanic dialect group, but only reaching it after the vowels had already been shortened.

ē₁ and ē₂

ē₂ is not certain as a sound and is only guessed from a small number of words; it is suggested by the comparative method because while all clear cases of inherited (PIE) *ē (PGmc. *ē₁) are in Gothic as ē and the other Germanic languages as *ā, all Germanic languages agree on some cases of ē (e.g., Goth/OE/ON hēr 'here' ← late PGmc. *hē₂r). Gothic does not write ē₁ and ē₂ differently, but the existence of two Proto-Germanic long e-like sounds is shown by two e-like Elder Futhark runes, Ehwaz and Eihwaz.

Krahe sees ē₂ (secondary ē) as the same as ī. It probably came from PIE ēi, and it might have been changing from a diphthong to a long simple vowel in Proto-Germanic. Lehmann lists the following starting points for ē₂:

• ēi: Old High German fiara, fera 'ham', Goth fera 'side, flank' ← PGmc *fē₂rō ← *pēi-s-eh₂ ← PIE **(s)peh₁i-.
• ea: The past tense of class 7 strong verbs with ai, al or an plus a consonant, or ē₁; e.g. OHG erien 'to plow' ← *arjanan vs. past iar, ier ← *e-ar-
• iz, after loss of -z: OEng mēd, OHG miata 'reward' (vs. OEng meord, Goth mizdō) ← PGmc *mē₂dō ← *mizdō ← PIE **misdʰ-eh₂.
• Certain pronoun forms, e.g. OEng hēr, OHG hiar 'here' ← PGmc *hiar, from *hi- 'this' ← PIE **ḱi- 'this'
• Words taken from Latin ē or e in the root syllable after a certain time (older loans also show ī).

Nasal vowels

Proto-Germanic made nasal vowels from two places. The first and much more common place was word-ending -n (from PIE -n or -m) in unstressed syllables, which at first made short -ą, -į, -ų, long -į̄, -ę̄, -ą̄, and overlong -ę̂, -ą̂. -ę̄ and -ę̂ then mixed into -ą̄ and -ą̂, which later became -ǭ and -ǫ̂. Another place, only in late Proto-Germanic times, was in the groups -inh-, -anh-, -unh-, where the nasal sound lost its blockage and was turned into lengthening and nasal sound of the before vowel, becoming -ą̄h-, -į̄h-, -ų̄h- (still written as -anh-, -inh-, -unh- in this article).

In many cases, the nasality was not different and was just an extra surface sound. No Germanic language that keeps the word-ending vowels has their nasality kept. Word-ending short nasal vowels do not show different results compared to non-nasal vowels. However, the comparative method needs a three-way sound difference between word-ending *-ō, *-ǭ and *-ōn, which each has a different pattern of results in the later Germanic languages:

The different results of nasal -ǭ versus non-nasal -ō are caused by the Northwest Germanic raising of final -ō /ɔː/ to /oː/, which did not affect -ǭ. When the vowels were shortened and made not nasal, these two vowels no longer had the same place of sound, and did not mix: -ō became /o/ (later /u/) while -ǭ became /ɔ/ (later /ɑ/). This let their results stay different.

The nasality of word-inside vowels (from -nh- groups) was more stable, and stayed into the early types intact.

Phonemic nasal vowels really happened in Proto-Norse and Old Norse. They were kept in Old Icelandic until at least a.d. 1125, the earliest possible time for the making of the First Grammatical Treatise, which shows nasal vowels. The PG nasal vowels from -nh- groups were kept in Old Icelandic as shown by examples given in the First Grammatical Treatise. For example:

• há̇r 'shark' *-an, but *-anaz > *-ænæ > *-en. So, the Anglo-Frisian brightening must have happened very early in the history of the Anglo-Frisian languages, before the loss of final -ą.

The result of final vowels and groups in the various daughter languages is shown in the table below:

Some Proto-Germanic endings have mixed in all the written languages but are still different in runic Proto-Norse, e.g. *-īz vs. -ijaz (þrijōz dohtrīz 'three daughters' in the Tune stone vs. the name Holtijaz in the Gallehus horns).

Morphology

Main article: Proto-Germanic grammar

The Proto-Germanic language is reconstructed because it was never written down. Scholars figure it out by comparing older Germanic languages and looking at old inscriptions and words borrowed from other languages.

Proto-Germanic had special ways to change words to show things like who or what they are, how many there are, and their role in a sentence. It shared some features with other ancient languages but also had its own unique patterns. Over time, many of these patterns changed or disappeared in the languages that came after it.

Schleicher's PIE fable rendered into Proto-Germanic

August Schleicher wrote a fable in an ancient language. The story is still known today by his name. Below is a version of this fable changed to look like an old Germanic language.

The first version changes the sounds from the original language. It does not change how people would naturally speak. The second version changes the grammar and words to be closer to what people would have actually said.

Reconstructed Proto-Germanic, phonetic evolution derived from reconstructed PIE only

*Awiz ehwōz-uh: awiz, hwisi wullō ne est, spihi ehwanz, ainą kurų wagą wegandų, ainą-uh mekǭ burą, ainą-uh gumanų ahu berandų. Awiz nu ehwamaz wiuhi: hert agnutai mek, witandī ehwanz akandų gumanų. Ehwōz weuhą: hludi, awi! hert agnutai uns witundumaz: gumô, fadiz, wullǭ awją hwurniudi sibi warmą westrą. Awją-uh wullō ne isti. Þat hehluwaz awiz akrą buki.

Reconstructed Proto-Germanic, with more probable grammar and vocabulary derived from later Germanic languages

*Awiz ehwōz-uh: awiz, sō wullǭ ne habdē, sahw ehwanz, ainanǭ kurjanǭ wagną teuhandų, ainanǭ-uh mikilǭ kuriþǭ, ainanǭ-uh gumanų sneumundô berandų. Awiz nu ehwamaz sagdē: hertô sairīþi mek, sehwandē ehwanz akandų gumanų. Ehwōz sagdēdun: gahauzī, awi! hertô sairīþi uns sehwandumiz: gumô, fadiz, uz awīz wullō wurkīþi siz warmą wastijǭ. Awiz-uh wullǭ ne habaiþi. Þat hauzidaz awiz akrą flauh.

English

The Sheep and the Horses: A sheep that had no wool saw horses. One horse pulled a heavy wagon. Another carried a big load. And another carried a man quickly. The sheep said to the horses: "My heart hurts, seeing a man driving horses." The horses said: "Listen, sheep, our hearts hurt when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool." The sheep heard this and fled into the plain.