English-German language history
As you may know, both English and German are Germanic languages. Today you can still see lots of similarities between them if you know how they developed from a common language.
1.
At the time of Christ, the Germanic tribes of northern Europe spoke a
common language called Proto-Germanic (Urgermanisch).
2.
In the mid-fifth century AD, Roman Britain was invaded by three
Germanic tribes - the Jutes, the Angles and the Saxons. Old English (or
Anglo-Saxon) came into existence. There were
- » three different genders
- » five different cases
- » verbs inflected for person and number
- » adjectives with endings that reflect gender, number and case
- » past participles often having a ge- prefix
3.
Around AD 600, southern German (the source of the later standard
language) was separated from all other Germanic languages by the High
German Sound Shift.
- » p became f, ff or pf
- » t became s, ss or z
- » k became ch
e.g.:
apple - Apfel, help - helfen, pipe - Pfeife, ten - zehn, make - machen
4.
After 1066 (Battle of Hastings), the dominance of the French-speaking
Norman invaders changed English radically. Most of the Germanic
vocabulary related to learning and culture was lost.
5.
Through a further consonant shift the sounds ,th' and ,d' became ,d'
and ,t', respectively, in German. (The ,th' is not an English
innovation, but once belonged to all Germanic languages.)
e.g.:
thorn - Dorn, think - denken, dew - Tau, deep - tief
6.
Another sound change affected all Germanic languages together. A sound
that lay somewhere between a ,v' and a ,b' became a ,b' in German and a
,v' or ,f' in English.
e.g.:
seven - sieben, deaf - taub, wife - Weib
7.
There is a general correspondence between English ,gh' and German ,ch'.
Here it is English that has changed.
e.g.:
might - Macht, right - Recht, through - durch
8.
Not only spelling and sounds have changed, but also meanings. For
example, a word that originally simply meant ,boy, young man' became
,knight' in English and ,Knecht' in German.