German and English Cognates - A Little Analysis

To learn more about Proto-Germanic, Fulk's 'Comparative Grammar of the Early Germanic Languages' is a fantastic and in-depth introduction!
CORRECTION:
Thanks to Bruno Zimmermann who pointed out that the change from /w/ to /v/ happened after the High German consonant shift - I conflate them towards the start of the video!

[@yes_head]

This stuff is like catnip to language nerds.

[@davidlericain]

It really is. I love it. I roll around in it and froth a bit at the mouth. Lol

[@jovanblom7742]

@@davidlericain We all got problems

[@mike-0451]

I suppose it would be if we weren’t cats...

[@jonnybriggs7531]

Agreed, could easily watch this for 2 hours.

[@andrewstrebkov6507]

but catnip doesn't raise a cat's awareness... (of course, not fully knowing what cats are thinking, i can't be 100% certain). These are great building blocks and stepping stones for higher awareness. Thank you, Simon !

[@LisandroLorea]

Other youtubers: * clickbait intro *, * a million cuts per second *, * loud background music * Simon: Here's some candlelight

[@LEJapproach]

Not to mention some meaningful content! 😀

[@raphaeloyebanji6173]

Yeah! makes it more interesting doesn't it.

[@erink476]

And then apologises for the fact there are slides

[@GeorgeSPAMTindle]

Simon is studying archaeology, but he really digs languages.

[@samuell4528]

POV: You tuned out for a minute while your Tinder date was speaking and you aren't sure how he got onto this topic

[@notnullnotvoid]

that's a keeper

[@skellagyook]

@@notnullnotvoid You beat me to it.

[@koob837]

*I propose immediately*

[@BluJean6692]

I feel so seen and so attacked all at once lmao

[@slart1bartfast587]

Your german pronounciation is spot on. Probably the best I have ever heard from a native english speaker.

[@abruemmer77]

I totally agree!

[@couchcamperTM]

fast beängstigend gut :-)

[@jmolofsson]

I've long been impressed by Simon's ability to distinguish between nearby located vowels. I think the German pronunciation can become this good for a native English speaker when one has such a well trained ear (and tongue) as Simon.

[@LangJourney]

Do you find native English speakers generally struggle with German? I want to learn it eventually.

[@couchcamperTM]

@@LangJourney the pronunciation and the grammar will drive you mad at first, but it's not impossible at all. Much success, viel Erfolg!

[@davidcufc]

Sterben means to die in German of course and to starve means 'to die of hunger' or something close to that in English. Interestingly in the north of England in Cumbrian for example to starve can also mean to be dying of the cold. Therefore 'I'm starving' can mean 'I'm freezing cold'. This meaning is also found in the novel Wuthering Heights, which of course was set in Yorkshire.

[@davidhowe6905]

Yes; I knew someone from Cheshire (born 1918) who used 'starve' to mean dying from cold.

[@davidcufc]

@@davidhowe6905 It's still used in that context in Cumbria.

[@davidhowe6905]

@@davidcufc That's good to know. It's a shame when old words, like old languages, die out. Another word still used in some regions but unknown to me when growing up in London is 'nesh' to mean 'weak' or 'soft' as in not liking cold weather; I later saw (what I presume to be) the Old English version 'hnesc' in some anglo-saxon poetry and had a nice moment of recognition!

[@svenschirra6769]

Starving Sounds like "darben" a Little bit

[@greenfrog6449]

my grandmother used to say about "starved to death" if we weren't wearing enough jumpers, went barefoot in winter, etc. She was from Sheffield.

[@kingbeauregard]

My favorite cognate-a-palooza is the English "town", German "Zaun" (meaning "fence"), and Dutch "tuin" (meaning "garden"). All of them have something to do with separating the civilized from the wild, but they've each driven to different specific aspects of that divide.

[@erichamilton3373]

This is also in Slavic languahes. Grad = fortified place or town...then ogród (polish garden) is around the fortified place...much like garden or garten.

[@erichamilton3373]

Also the "town" word was a Celtic borrowing from Celtic dunum

[@christopherbentley7289]

@@erichamilton3373 I've only very recently discovered that the places called 'Týn' in the Czech Republic go back to a word meaning 'enclosure' - clearly related to all of 'town', 'Zaun' and 'tuin'. This expands to 'Týnec' and 'Týniště' as 'Hrad' expands to 'Hradec' and 'Hradiště'. The '-ec' is a diminutive, as far as I'm aware, but I'm not sure what effect the '-iště' ending has. I'd be delighted to hear from a Slavonic languages expert what it means!

[@ulrikschackmeyer848]

The Danish would be 'hegn' ('hain') meaning 'fence'. So it looks like we are all on the same side (of the fence🤪🤔😂)

[@martinvanel3]

@@ulrikschackmeyer848 'Hegn' seems to me a cognate of the word "heg" or "haag" in Dutch, with the same meaning as an English 'hedge' which is a fence consisting of shrubs, preferably with thorns.

[@ShearsOfAtropos]

when I started studying German as a teenager I noticed a lot of these correspondences and thought I might be the first person to have noticed them. I was in for an unpleasant surprise

[@evaluateanalysis7974]

It was a *pleasant* surprise because you had independently discovered a real rule. Not a fantasy.

[@lafcursiax]

Assuming you lit both candles with the same match, they are a beautiful representation of English and German both gathering words from a single source!

[@simonroper9218]

For the record I should say I lit them with two different matches :( The analogy is nice though, I wish I'd managed with one!

[@andyarken7906]

@@simonroper9218 Well, there are also words that look like cognates at first, but don't match with each other. It seems your candles where not cognates, thus needing two matches.

[@whocansay2215]

@@andyarken7906alas the candles were false friends 😂

[@David_Winney]

I just wanted to leave a comment saying I respect you very much.

[@splak_5624]

I do as well also he has dreamy eyes

[@junolee8826]

@@splak_5624 send help i have such a crush on him akshjdajkshdjhksa

[@splak_5624]

@@junolee8826I just wanna hold his hand and listen to him talk about archaeology

[@junolee8826]

@@splak_5624 hjdSHJS PERIOD

[@StellaCarey]

I respect him so hard, too! =)

[@tktktkam947]

I like the atmosphere you created

[@nostur4984]

Same. It's like he's on a date with the watchers.

[@fromchomleystreet]

As a point of trivia on dough/taik, one of my favourite bits of Old English to modern English etymology is the way the English words “lord” and “lady” evolved. Both are, fundamentally, about (of all things) bread. They were originally compound words, both beginning with hlaf, which in modern English has become loaf. Lord was hlaf-weard, literally “loaf-ward”, the guy who looks after the bread, which obviously became slurred to hlafw’r’d at some point, then laf’r’d, before eventually arriving at the modern pronunciation “lord”. Lady was hlaf-dige, the latter part of which was a verbal form of the root of dough, meaning “to knead”. You can clearly see how over time, as with “lord”, it got reduced to hlaf-di, la-di and finally “lady”. Something as seemingly humble as “the guardian of the bread” and “the maker of the bread” evolved into about the most prestigious appellations you can apply to a man and a woman respectively, which strikes me as a rather delightful irony.

[@c.norbertneumann4986]

Guarding the bread was essential for survival in Anglo-Saxon villages. If the bread was stored in a humid environment and went moldy, if it was infested by vermin, or if it was stolen or robbed, respectively, this could mean that the inhabitants of a village had to suffer hunger and possibly even starve to death, especially in the wintertime. The function of the bread-ward was so important that, over time, he became the supreme ruler of a village (or a community). Over time, his original function fell into oblivion, and "lord" got the sole meaning of "commander". Kneading dough must originally have had a high social standing for women. It is an irony of history how that changed over time. A Victorian lady would have considered kneading dough as far below her social rank. This was a work for servants and lower class people - not knowing that the term "Lady" meant originally nothing more than dough kneader. By the way, in the Middle English poem "The Owl and the Nightingale", I found the form "laverd" for "lord", in which the Old English root of the term can still clearly be recognized.

[@Perririri]

Compare to #lány

[@ellies_silly_zoo]

I mean... bread is great so it's understandable

[@christianpipes2110]

Teig*

[@YngviFreyr]

Simon in candlelight speaking German... Gods have mercy... 😍🙈

[@JohnM-cd4ou]

Yo bro relaxxxxx

[@jessica_gerbil]

dont judge, i cant relax!

[@Jablicek]

My word, yes. I had to turn away from the screen to focus on the words, which is entirely worth it.

[@jovanblom7742]

I first listened to it with the sound off, then without video.

[@miikavalo8324]

Did I just catch you SIMPING 😜

[@instanttregret]

Oh my wasn’t ready for a romantic evening. I’m underdressed 😳

[@animalunaris]

Oooh same 👀

[@tinkerwithstuff]

Romantic? it is just an anglo saxon in his humbly lit dwellings. He probably has run out of "good wood" for a proper fire.

[@zaker721]

The weird thing is that this WOULD be a romantic evening for me. If I would go on a date and the guy would start talking about the origins of English, history and folklore, I'd want to keep him!

[@sariputraa]

@@zaker721 mais tellement! ^^ i think we're quite a number here wondering if this guy has some single cousins with the same kind of sensitivity , poetry and intelligence :)

[@Metaphix]

Or over dressed

[@butatensei]

As a native Dutch speaker who speaks close-to-fluent German (and English, naturally) I actually think about these a lot, and I've even noticed the starve/sterben connection in the past (it's pretty obvious when you have Dutch sterven sitting snugly between the two). English suddenly looks a lot more West-Germanic when viewed like this, despite its North-Germanic word order and all of the Old Norse and French vocabulary. Also, that German pronunciation was really good.

[@YuliaHadassahK]

I would like to add here that "eitel" used to have a different meaning in German a few hundred years ago, in Baroque times when something was "eitel" it was transient, ephemeral and in some contexts in vain (see the poem "Es ist alles eitel" by Andreas Gryphius for reference) - which corresponds to the word idle in its meaning of "pointless" and "without purpose". So they don't just have the same root, they also used to mean the same. And I agree with the others here, your German pronunciation is spot on 👍🏻

[@andyarken7906]

I knew that several months after this video was posted, I wouldn't have to make this comment if I just scrolled down a bit more. Indeed, vanitas!

[@HotelPapa100]

I wonder how 'eitel' in the sense of 'pure', unadulterated' (eitel Sonnenschein) fits into that scheme.

[@robinrehlinghaus1944]

​@@HotelPapa100 I'd say it has the connotation of blissful ignorance of the bad weather to come, which again goes along with the idea of temporality

[@Jane_of_Us]

As a bilingual German, I really appreciate your videos. It makes me a little sad that these correspondences aren't discussed very often when learning a language through our school system.

[@simonroper9218]

I wonder if it would be useful to students learning one language from the starting point of the other. There are so many confounding factors in the historical processes of sound change that obscure certain correspondences, but I'm sure it would help people get the hang of vocabulary a little bit!

[@lyleea]

@@simonroper9218 I found, that for some words a little Background story makes learning more interesting, and since it often paints pictures, it's easier to remember in a lot of cases.

[@andyarken7906]

@@simonroper9218 I once tried to give this kind of tips to a friend who learned German (no proto-anything, just direct transformation from German to English). She strangely wasn't interested, but I think when learning languages in school, if this were sold as a trick to allow the students to be lazy with learning, there should be some students who would like it. Especially if it was taught as a secret trick.

[@KP3droflxp]

It’s a really interesting approach that allows for generalisations. That’s usually a very good thing.

[@TheDonPatricio]

@@simonroper9218 it was very useful for me learning Romance languages to figure out, as you mentioned, the algorithm of how Spanish alters Latin. Once done, it’s easy to figure out a word I don’t know from a cognate in Latin. On the other hand, your lessons would have helped to learn German when I was studying it.

[@matthewmirabella9226]

Informative and calming at once. I’ve had my nightly dose of historical linguistics and ASMR. I will sleep soundly.

[@JorgeGarcia-lw7vc]

One point is that in learning German or other languages, there is such little emphasis on vocabulary. If a beginner student had awareness of all the regular morphological sound correspondences between his own language and the learned related language it would speed up language learning efforts for a lot of people. For some strange reason, language teachers give such little attention to this. Fortunately, I employed this early on, at least informally and inductively, when I began learning many Romance languages, and began applying the morphology based approach (with other approaches as well) to Germanic, Slavic and Persian, and it payed off pretty well. Of course, the approach is not very helpful if you are learning an unrelated language--didn't really help me with Indonesian, hehe. Thanks again for the great video--I will show it to my nephew who is interested in German.

[@StellaCarey]

Can you share what resources you used to learn German? I want to learn it the way you did.

[@urinstein1864]

I attended a Swedish course for a while at my uni. Swedish is naturally comparatively very easy to learn when your first language is German and you are forced to become proficient at English. However the teachers decided the best book to learn from would be an all Swedish text book that was very clearly made for mixed groups of recent Immigrants to Sweden. Very heavy on the conversational aspect of learning a language etc. Obviously that makes sense in that scenario, but in a class of young people like us, treating us like we had no previous knowledge of the concept of language struck me as very ineffective and I was very disappointed. And while conversational skills are likely the ultimate goal of learning a language for most people, I found it a massive waste of my time particularly when my vocabulary was very small and I was only taught to use one and half tenses. To give one very obvious example where I feel we were let down is the explanation of word order in Swedish. Turns out the verb always comes second (to oversimplify it here). It said so in the text book and you know, a few of us a struggling to keep that in mind. But as I thought about it for a bit and compared it to German, German applies the exact same pattern. I would have been as easy as telling us that the word order is the same as in German and we would made a lot more progress. There are also some sound correspondences that I figured out myself, but no mention of those in class. It's pretty ridiculous to me that the language teaching world is on a trip of teaching you languages like you are a newborn and just suck up a language like a sponge and not in fact an adult who can comprehend linguistic concepts, has at least one language to draw comparisons from and otherwise a busy schedule.

[@JorgeGarcia-lw7vc]

@@StellaCarey Initially I had to develop my own techniques since I had not been exposed to historical linguistics (I am a language nerd and lover, but not a linguist, perhaps only an amateur linguist). Later on, one book I did find that would have been excellent was "Easy ways to enlarge your German Vocabulary" by Karl A. Schmidt. It really breaks down a lot of the sound changes, with many examples. I just googled it and it seems quite a few copies are available on different site. So check it out!

[@StellaCarey]

@@JorgeGarcia-lw7vc Danke! Will check the book out ASAP!

[@JorgeGarcia-lw7vc]

@@StellaCarey My better half, btw, who had basic knowledge of Italian and Latin, took my method as I tutored her to learn Spanish, and it did really speed things up. It just made her make the connections between languages and made new words easily decipherable and learned words easily rememberable.

[@stephengoldborough5189]

My niece from SE Asia, she's mixed background, knows several languages but left school early.... she shocked me one day, out of context she said "there's a lot of words in English like Sanskrit" ... I guess she was thinking of numbers and family names like sister... so maybe the concept of cognate words is out there, and not just in academia.

[@BluJean6692]

someone give that girl a scholarship for figuring out Indo-European language theory entirely on her own...

[@TehOak]

God bless you for making these videos, Simon. You're a legend.

[@jawrsy]

POV: youre in a date with Simon Roper at a dark restaurant

[@Hin_Håle]

Mmmmm Simon... Talk proto-dirty to me...

[@endelvelt7650]

@@Hin_Håle I-

[@daisybrain9423]

@@Hin_Håle ...

[@ANTSEMUT1]

@@Hin_Håle lol.

[@mr.osamabingaming2633]

@@Hin_Håle ...

[@lizardkingwalking]

You are a linguist at heart and obviously enthusiastic about languages and their evolutions. More important I think is your willingness to share your knowledge with us. In my mind, you are a scholar and a gentlemensch!

[@erichimes3062]

“Nicht alles was glänzt ist Gold” The fact that “sterben” and “starve” are cognates is indicative of how death from malnutrition was endemic in ancient Europe

[@GuitarMan22]

very interesting comment

[@lesfreresdelaquote1176]

Funny enough, we have the same adage in French: Tout ce qui brille n'est pas or...

[@bacicinvatteneaca]

@@lesfreresdelaquote1176 same in Italian, I've noticed plenty of sayings have spread across Europe even where there's no cognates to be found

[@hayati6374]

@@lesfreresdelaquote1176 maybe it stems from charlemagne-times? They would be common ancestors ☺️

[@desanipt]

We use it in Portuguese as well. "Nem tudo o que brilha é ouro".

[@TheDecimater1000]

Yes! I'm learning German right now and I notice lots of cognates between German and English words. Though I don't entirely understand the mechanics of how the words shift apart as you explain them, I still found the video very interesting! Thank you!

[@redpillsatori3020]

English is actually more closely related to Dutch and Low German (Niederdeutsch) but Hoch German became the de facto standard and only pockets in northern Germany now speak Low German languages like Frisian. If you compared English to some of these lowland/North Sea West Germanic languages you’d see more similarities

[@stevshaboba7476]

@@EnigmaticLucas Not really weird when the two languages have been intertwined amongst the nobility for almost a thousand years

[@SofiaBerruxSubs]

Well German and English share 63 percent of the vocabulary but they mean completely different things. German=English Rock=skirt Teller=plate Fast=nearly

[@SofiaBerruxSubs]

@@EnigmaticLucas I know right! Also like why share more than 50 percent and not be able to understand each other?

[@brittakriep2938]

@@SofiaBerruxSubs: Gold, Ring, Finger, Hand ;-)

[@Luey_Luey]

do i get points for having correctly guessed the cognate for "sterben"?

[@BeaverThingify]

I guessed leid correct and freaked out

[@joaopedrolang]

I thought it was stab

[@zwielichtigerzerquetscher6744]

i thought i was disturbed, but i guess thats from latin🤷‍♂️

[@mariusmavridis2941]

@@zwielichtigerzerquetscher6744 i thought the same thing

[@ihrfer]

@@BeaverThingify I think "sterben" and "starve" I knew before, but "Leid" was a great example. I guessed it correctly, but their difference in meaning is still strange.

[@t.c.bramblett617]

I feel like I am discussing a covert smuggling operation in a tavern in a Hanseatic town in the 17th century. Gemütlichkeit.

[@fishystales]

i assume you translated comfortable. in this case you would actually use "gemütlich" as an adjective/expression and not the noun "Gemütlichkeit" Hope i could help :)

[@mightymet7062]

But in a Hanseatic town people wouldn’t speak High German. They would speak a Low German dialect, like Dutch for example. Fun fact: town is cognate to Zaun :-)

[@LiamPorterFilms]

@@fishystales He probably knows that and you are probably irritating him by telling him a word he already knows.

[@RobWhittlestone]

@@mightymet7062 Indeed! Also to Tuin (Garden in Dutch) so presumably fenced in or walled-in.

[@TheDotBot]

@@RobWhittlestone That was my first thought...

[@opsimathics]

that's some on-point pronunciation for German

[@rishthefish7781]

Yes, it is! But German tbh isn't terribly difficult to pronounce for an English speaker.

[@whukriede]

@@rishthefish7781 Au contraire, my dear, it certainly is.

[@rishthefish7781]

@@whukriede it has a lot of phonemes that English doesn't but then there are dialects of English that have different sounds not present in RP or Standard American. I meant German doesn't require you to learn a new phonemic distinction such as mora timing, pitch ascent or tones. But, I agree with you it's not totally similar to English.

[@janhenkel4459]

@@whukriedeIt really isn't if they make a minimal effort. Easier than Spanish or French, I would say.

[@cjlooklin1914]

For me, individual german words have never really been an issue, I remember during my first semester my teacher asked me if had studied german in highschool because my pronunciation, but it's like physically challenging for my mouth to accurately churn out certain sentences because the world often morph slightly when strung together, especially when speaking fast.

[@kerstinklenovsky239]

Simon Roper klingt total Deutsch, wenn er Deutsch spricht. Hut ab! 👍

[@Tflexxx02]

"Simon Roper sounds totally German when he speaks German. Hat off!" (Aside from syntax differences, a few cognates in that sentence.)

[@theNorthernDogStar]

Chaucer mentions a character who "sterves for hunger" died of hunger (presaging the more specialized meaning of starving)

[@LamgiMari]

That expression "sterben vor Hunger" still exists in German, although it's used hyperbolically, i.e. feeling very hungry but not actually dying. There are similar ones after the same pattern like "sterben vor Angst" (being extremely scared).

[@maxx1014]

@@LamgiMari ich sterbe vor Durst lol

[@TheOakleysworld]

Still used in my local English dialect in the Midlands. A common phrase "I'm starving hungry!" (Though pronounced "Om starvin' 'ungry")

[@LostLuigiLassie]

+

[@abruemmer77]

​@@LamgiMari Or "Hungers sterben"

[@outfitmadeofawesome]

THE AESTHETIC of THIS VIDEO is UNREAL

[@trevorsherwood4324]

Person of the future here. Loved the historical context at the end there.

[@michaelhamburg9804]

Absolutely interesting! As a native German stuck in The US, I have wondered to many times about the relations of similar sounding words. Great content!!

[@christianpipes2110]

Gehst du jemals nach Deutschland zurück?

[@michaelhamburg9804]

Es hat ungefähr 15 Jahre gedauert, bis ich mich hier wie „zu Hause“ gefühlt habe. Ich würde aber nicht wieder nach Deutschland ziehen. Da hat sich zu viel in die falsche Richtung verändert.

[@oirandochu]

This is probably the cosiest video I’ve seen from you. I’d listen to your content in such a setting for entire evenings on end. Dankeschön!

[@ShaniAce]

Actually I find comparing German, English and Dutch cognates together even more interesting, because often (but not always) the Dutch ones seems to sit in the middle, almost as if it was some sort of transition language between the other two (but of course we know it isn't).

[@abruemmer77]

It is really amazing how well you pronounce the german words, i absolutely didn't notice the slightest trace of an accent.

[@gerrithansen4214]

This video fulfills my honest need to know English and German cognates because They’re fascinatin. I really loves it thank you!! Learned cool stuff!

[@renemarquardt9725]

Thank you for your video. As native German speaker who learns and speaks English for many many years now, I find your videos very fascinating - especially this one. The relationship and evolution of languages is quite an interesting field of linguistics. And your German pronunciation is spot on. 😊 🇩🇪🇬🇧

[@dahterrasse]

Outside of expressions, "das Leid" means suffering/pain/sorrow. The originally unrelated "leiden" is "to suffer", but it can also mean "to endure".

[@erichamilton3373]

The expression "Ich kann das nicht leiden" goes in the dirrection of loathe...also similar to the adjective insufferable.

[@over2166]

pain and Pein may also be cognates then, I presume?

[@Christoph2600]

@@over2166 yes

[@ehmha3641]

@@over2166 or "ping" as in my dialect😅

[@rippspeck]

@@over2166 Yes, very much. Pein is considered poetic in modern German, tho. It's one of those words that's uncommon in text but incredibly rare in speech.

[@bandygamy5898]

You are without doubt one of the most pedagogical educators on Germanic languages.

[@MarionMakarewicz]

Simon. A wonderfully concise dip into linguistic transformations. I keep thinking of how much knowing some of these rules or tendencies back when I was studying languages in high school would have made it a bit easier I think. We would ask our Latin and French professor (same guy) why? And he'd say, don't ask why, ask how. Meaning, just memorize it. He did do some cross language analysis, but it was just a chart comparing indo-european words like father and mother and such. When I studied German, I know I could have helped make sense of things with a few hours of analysis like this. Where it hit me most was dealing with my frustrations in learning Spanish in the past few years. So much of Spanish didn't make sense according to what I knew from my Latin and French and the English cognates. It wasn't until I really spent some time understanding the vowel and consonant shifting that went on that It started making sense for the vocabulary. I don't know why I was so thick not to realize that "f" became "h". Most likely because the h isn't pronounced and I just didn't get the sound connection and the visual connection of an f to an h that isn't sounded just doesn't computer. Thank you so much again!

[@Horus633]

Jesus, I wish I could watch videos like this every day. This is pure sugar for my inner linguistics-nerd. Thank you so much for your work

[@joeldyar8892]

I get pretty excited every time you drop a new vid, man. Many thanks and keep it up from here in the US

[@ianreynolds8552]

Fascinating! As a dyslexic i study languages , pronunciations and Dialects and the more i liisten to vids like this the more interesting it is

[@sameash3153]

My favorite cognate is between gern and yearn. There's also some interesting examples of vowel shifts that break the pattern of a/o/ei, and result in a/o/eh. From proto-Germanic "taiwho": Old English "tā", Modern English "toe", German "Zeh". From proto-Germanic "sairaz": Old English "sār", Modern English "sore", German "sehr" (talk about unexpected cognates!)

[@immeremma]

Love it when you set up scenarios where we can guess!

[@bumtisch]

Just like you I'm always amazed when I realise similarities between German and English words I haven't noticed before. Just recently I stumbled over the word "horse". It's very different to the modern german word "Pferd" but if you compare it to the bit outdated german word for horse "Ross" and you speak both out loud, you notice that there is just a small change in the pronunciation of the words "Ross" and "horse". It is really interesting to see the similarities especially when it comes to words that describe things that were already around before the languages got separated. They are often almost the same with a slight change in meaning and/or pronunciation. Another example are the words "door" and "Tor". In modern german "Tor" means "gate" and the word for "door" would be "Tür". However, there is a word in german that is very similar to "gate" as well, which is "gatter" and describes a gate and/or a fence for keeping animals. Like you mentioned there are even more similarities when it comes to dialects. The German word for "knife" is "Messer" and I was exited when I learned that the word for a small knife, in the area my wife comes from is "Kneip(chen)". It is so interesting to follow the path our languages evolved with all of their weird turns and connections. Thanks for the video. I love it.

[@TheStumptube]

I'm bilingual German and English and I'm really impressed with your spoken German. Very interesting video too!

[@ti8061]

Great video! Just as a sidenote: in German we do use Leid in other contexts as well! It basically just means suffering or sth like that.

[@arthurkrumsee3995]

Long ago, about 45 years ago, I took classes in old school "philology," historical German linguistics. I've forgotten a lot since then but I have a vivid memory of a one question exam that might make an interesting video for you. We were to take Greek "odont", Latin "dent" German "Zahn", and English "tooth" and explain how they were phonetically related based on the sound shifts and other linguistic trends we had learned. So if I remember correctly, d in dent went to t and t to th in the first consonant shift and to Z in the second consonant shift which did not affect northern German and English. A rule called "N-Ausfall mit Ersatzdehnung" (compensatory lengthening explained the loss of the n in tooth. I loved this question.

[@aubemilagrosa6074]

As a German native speaker, I enjoyed this video particularly. Would love it if you could make another video like this one but including other branches of Indo-European languages as well.

[@ODKON93]

I think he specialies on germanic as he's from England

[@Jablicek]

Huh, that was innerestin'! Particularly fun using my terrible Norwegian to make out the Germanic, but fascinating to see the vowel/consonant drift!

[@danehrovitnir7323]

Thank you for this video! I really enjoy your content, and have no idea how you have the time and energy to learn so much while also doing your archeology masters, it's very impressive. Shout out to the COVID vaccine researchers, fingers crossed for it working well and getting rolled out as quickly as possible.

[@fredhasopinions]

Your marvellous pronunciation of German words is only now making me realise how exact all the sounds you make are, like, when you explain previous versions or pronunciations of words. Holy shit, that is spot on!

[@derin111]

This great! It’s a detailed analysis of what my German teacher at school (in the 1970s) used to tell us.: “Make certain common consonant changes ( e.g b to v or f) then “fiddle with the vowel” and see what word you’ve translated!” E.g dieb to thief.

[@brittakriep2938]

In german, i am german, there are also rare used/ outdated words. For example some elderly germans don't say Pferd( horse) , but Ross, or they don' t say Ziege ( goat) , but Gois/Gais.

[@derin111]

@@brittakriep2938 That's really interesting. I'm half German (born 1960s) and spent a lot of time in Hannover back then with my grandparents back then. I've just got back from Hannover yesterday. I've never heard the alternative words for a horse or a goat used before...even by my Grandparents who were born in 1910 and 1920. Do you think there might be regional variation too?

[@brittakriep2938]

@@derin111 : Oh i , Brittas boyfriend, am Swabian from south- west Germany, 56 years now, and when i was a child, my homeregion was much more rural than today. Also the dialect of Hannover is nearly the same than Standard German. In 19th century , many german linguists said , Hannoverisches Bühnendeutsch'( hannoverian stage german) should become german standard, when i one time was in Hannover, the people there could not understand me, while bavarian and frankish tribesmen can to some degree understand me. A for me surprising thing was, when i spoke in english to an US Lady, she didn' t recognize low german words ,Forke' ( fork) and ,lütt' ( little).

[@derin111]

@@brittakriep2938 That's really. Interesting! My Mother is from Hannover but now lives right in the SW near Lörrach. She can't understand the people there at all! Hahaha! As you know, they speak Allemanisch. Her neighbour is the same age as me (58) so he must have been taught in Hochdeutsch at school but he really struggles to speak it now. When he speaks to me in what he thinks is Hochdeutsch I can still hardly understand it. Yes, it's just a lucky coincidence for me that the German I learnt as a child in Hannover just happens also be the chosen form of Standard German! 😀 Gruße aus England! 🙂

[@nickstaley96]

Learning about cognates between languages is always intriguing. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Blowing the candles out at the end was also a nice touch.

[@andrewrobinson2565]

"False cognates" are a study in themselves - loads in French too. +1 Love it!

[@kelsiesara8515]

It’s so relaxing to listen to you talking!

[@iirovaltonen4258]

It so cool to realize how some Finnish words have Germanic roots. Dough is taikina in Finnish and it seems like it quite clearly is derived from Germanic roots.

[@iirovaltonen4258]

@I Love Memes I have heard the same, it seems very likely in my opinion because the the obvious ismilarities with the words. Other example is the Finnish word for king, kuningas, which was kuningaz in Proto-Germanic iirc.

[@LucretiaEv]

@@iirovaltonen4258 that's very interesting indeed! Considering that Finnish is so different, there are some similarities after all. (I don't know anything about Finnish except kiitos and Suomi 😅)

[@bothnianwaves7483]

Compare also the hypothetical *haihaz and *haihilaz to the Finnish word "kaihi" that means cataract.

[@hansmahr8627]

Lots of old Germanic loans in Finnish. Kaunis for example (meaning beautiful) comes from Proto-Germanic *skauniz (see modern German schön), Finnish doesn't allow consonant clusters at the beginning of a word so the s was dropped. The same process is observable in kuva which means picture, it comes from *skuwwo meaning shadow or reflection (Norwegian skugge). It's very interesting because Finnish hasn't changed all that much phonetically so that a lot of these loans preserve their ancient pronunciation. For example Finnish airo, meaning oar, comes from Proto-Germanic *airō, they just shortened the last vowel. Or laukka (onion) from *laukaz (English leek, German Lauch). Some forms have changed a bit more of course like ilkeä (bad, mean) from *ilhilaz, the root of English ill.

[@couchcamperTM]

@@LucretiaEv learn perkele ;-)

[@who5729]

I've been watching your videos for a quite some time and while I always greatly enjoy them, I had to gasp out loud so many times because your pronunciation of the German language was just superb. I just wanted to comment on that. I grew up bilingually in Germany with German as one of my motherlanguages and English as an early third language. Thank you for your videos! They are very informative and the atmosphere is always wonderful. I'm excited for future videos. Have a wonderful and healthy time!

[@vladimirstrelkov9009]

It will be interesting to watch a videos about cognates in English and Low German, English and Frisian.

[@brittakriep2938]

Some examples : Standard german: Gabel, klein, Wasser, Seil. English: fork, little, water, rope. Low german: Forke, lütt, Water, Reep.

[@michelleirby7587]

Incredibly fascinating thank you so much for this video. I am trying to learn German with my son as I’m homeschooling him for some high school credit and originally was looking for a video because whenever I learn a new language I go for cognates first I just found this video amazing

[@aeschda]

As a Swiss and a German native speaker I always find it fascinating to encounter words in (alemannic) dialect that are cognates to modern English words but have disappeared from Standard German or High German. There are examples like gumpä/gumpè -> to jump (which would be springen (= to spring) in HG). Another example that i find interesting is the dialect word höischä/hoischè ('heischen' in Standard German) that is cognate with the English verb 'to ask'. While both terms seem to have the same root, its meaning shifted towards 'to demand' or 'to call for' in the dialectal form, whereas in Standard German we use the term 'fragen'. I'd be interested to know if this term is still used outside of the alemannic (i.e. southwestern Germany and Switzerland) context.

[@a.b.w.h.3151]

Does any Swabian remember "der Barn" being part of the "Scheuer" or "Scheune"? In English "barn" is "Scheune". My Swabian grandma used to say "des isch glatt" if something was funny, same with Norwegian "glad" and similar to English "glad". Is High German "schade" related to "sad"?

[@TheBluverde]

There's also _look_ and Alemannic German _luege._

[@Gerhard-Martin]

@@TheBluverde There are even more: "to look/luègè" / "to drool/drièlè" / ... We even say: "Bi schtill !" in my Dialect , like: "Be quiet !".

[@TheBluverde]

@@Gerhard-Martin The term _"drièlè"_ is new to me, in Bavarian it's _"trenzen"._ The imperative form _"bi"_ is interesting, do you use this word only in this context ("Bi still!") or universally (e.g. _"Bi nicht so streng!"_ instead of _"Sei nicht so streng!")?_ I know that there are some dialects where you can use _"Bist d' still!"_ (which sounds pretty similar) but not _"Bist d' nicht so streng"._

[@Gerhard-Martin]

@@TheBluverde A-Ha ? =) Now,...for ME, this "trenz'n" is a new one. 8-/ Never yet have heard or read of that before. But although LIVING in Bavaria, politically, I am not a Bavarian Speaker myself. "Drièlè" is typically Allemannic, you´ll find that Word from the Allgäu to the Kaiserstuhl. Yes, "bi" is exclusively used as an Imperative, 2. Person singular. Also: "Bi idtè a so schtreng !" is an Imperative, but inoportunely with a NEGATION. (Which has insuitable Consequences on the Likeliness to meet your Need.) To say: "Bist d´still ?!" seems to be originally a QUESTION, turned into an Imperative... by adding a certain threatening or impatient Tone of Voice to it ! ;-) Haha.

[@detrickpoole205]

I am learning German right now this is very very useful and in-depth. German and English are very close like sister and their other Dutch when I get better at my current language that will be my third language keep up the videos truly Enjoy them. - Detrick from Georgia, USA

[@little_forest]

Nice video, I really do not mind it being slide heavy, especially with so few words on each slide! :) Being from Germany and having grown up with several bavarian dialects made me realize very much, how actually non-binary these transitions from Proto-Germanic to German and English are. That really did strike me with the word "Teig"/"dough". In some Bavarian dialect the diphthong would be closer to the English one and the "t" is a "d". So inside German, the Bavarian and the standard-german word for dough sound as different as standard-german and English, but for me personally, they are the same word, on a very fundamental level. Endless fun with language ;)

[@brittakriep2938]

Doig is swabian for Teig.

[@claudiussmith8798]

I am a ripuarian native speaker, one of the very conserved dialects from the southern bonn countryside. Most often the english writing with a german accent would be my native language with very few exeptions. A th would be a d, a d would be a t, a k would be a sh (but would be still understood with k, it is kind of interexchangeble) and for the vowels, as we do not have diphtongs but tone accents, a long downgoing ee or turns into an oa and a upgoing into an ea and a long o/u is a ou in english. From my native tongue of view english seems to be closer than standard german. Watching simons videos actually teach me alot about my language. And from some kind of being in the middle of both languages it is fun to transform english words minus 2 sound shifts to my dialect and by adding two others transforming them to german. Also as i am an expat when i do not know an english word i just transform german ones via my dialect into english and i am always surprised english people understand this "new" words, as they really exist in english!

[@couchcamperTM]

das ist ja praktisch^^. Mir fiel Englisch immer leicht, weil bei uns Platt gesprochen wurde (Bremer Ecke)

[@claudiussmith8798]

@@couchcamperTM lets speak english for the others to jump in to too, or the dialects, but not that luther-german😂. Trotzdem liebe grüsse an den fernen norden/greetings to the far north 😉.

[@dragons123ism]

I'm surprised you didn't bring your invented cognate up into modern English and German based on standard sound shifts!

[@seanrafferty6752]

Huh?

[@TheDotBot]

@@seanrafferty6752 Haihilaz... There is an English derivative, only not via PG. It's Cecil! Ok that was a hunch on my part but I googled it, and it turned out correct.

[@ellies_silly_zoo]

Hmm, lemme try (this might be quite inaccurate, I'm obviously not a linguist) PGmc haihilaz > PWGmc haihil > hāhil > hǣhil > hǣil > OE hǣl > hɛːl > heːl > Modern English hiːl = heal I'm not sure about the intermediate hiatus æːi resolving to æː, but OE doesn't really have any better options for the vowel so I think it's probably correct. If it'd be kept to ME, it'd probably go something like OE hæːil > hɛːil > hɛi̯l > heːl > Modern English hei̯l (depends on the dialect ofc) = hail/hale I can't find enough info on PGmc > OHG > MHG > Standard High German sound changes, so I don't know what it would've become. I assume something like heihel~heiel /ˈhaɪ̯əl/, or maybe just heil /haɪ̯l/. Would've been quite confusing to have English "heal" (or "hail"/"hale") meaning something like "one-eyed" or so. Especially in German, where the existing word "heil"/"heile" means "whole, intact, unhurt" and "heilen" means "to heal".

[@HotelPapa100]

My favourite divergence of cognates (that even are still kinda the same words): Plague Plage Pest pest Obviously these were words for roughly the same broad concept of something unpleasant, but specialized the same way, but each for the other variant of the word. So translation today is. plague = Pest pest ~ Plage

[@kerstinklenovsky239]

Fascinatingly 'die Pest' is 'the plague' and 'eine Plage' is 'a pest'. 😍

[@medvjek]

As a language enthusiast who's been learning German this is fantastic

[@whukriede]

Oh my dear, what a lovely contribution, in all respects!

[@auriocus]

Wow, your German pronunciation is awesome! Almost not noticeable accent.

[@-cirad-]

I wasn’t even sure if he is a native speaker. :)

[@johnlonie7899]

Idel in old English meant vain so I take it that under the Normans, vain comes into English and idel / idle shifts its meaning. This happens with a lot of Norman French/English cognates; paternal/fatherly, slightly different shades of meanings. I like these vids very much.

[@Automatik234]

I'm currently learning a few slavic languages, but german and to some extent english are sometimes my basis, since I know them rather well and my teachers do too. To better remember or understand certain things, I often try to find cognates between those languages. A very interesting one would be "plavo", which is a cognate with fahl / pale. It's means "blonde" in most slavic languages and in southern slavic languages it also means blue. This also helps me to better understand sound changes. Another one, I rewlly enjoy would be "hleb", which is a cognate with Laib / loaf, but just means "bread" in general.

[@Figgy5119]

I like this slide heavyness! It's fun to follow along the story with stuff to look at!

[@LEJapproach]

I'm German and I'm interested in languages, though not actively working on the topic and for me this is an extremely interesting video! 👍👍👍 The cognate pair that surprised me most was _Zeichen_ and _token_ (although it makes perfect sense) aaand I guessed _starve_ as the English cognate of the German verb _sterben_ correctly ... yay! 😉 Keep up the good work!

[@MlleLorelei]

I really appreciate the different ways you have been playing with your backgrounds and foregrounds in these videos.

[@HotelPapa100]

Mad props for your Standard German pronunciation. You are way closer on than I, and German is my mother tongue (Swiss German, that is...)

[@sehabel]

Yes his pronunciation is really good. My mother tongue is Schwäbisch and I also sometimes struggle with it. For example, it is hard for me to stop saying "isch" instead of "ist"

[@hansmahr8627]

Definitely. I was especially impressed with his vowels, native English speakers rarely get them right.

[@couchcamperTM]

there is a video on youtube with a girl speaking a Liverpool dialect, and it is the closest to Schwiezerdüütsch i have ever heard in English. "Funny Liverpool accent of this amazing girl"

[@brittakriep2938]

@@sehabel : Geht mir auch so, da ich, Brittas Freund, üblicherweise Dialekt spreche. Ein schwäbischer Akademiker, der einige Jahre regelmäßige Artikel über den schwäbischen Dialekt schrieb, meinte, unser Dialekt habe noch einige mittelhochdeutsche Relikte, was zu einem kleinen Teil einer der Gründe sei, weshalb Schwäbisch für viele Leute schwierig sei.

[@eddaem]

Watching your videos very nearly convinces me that I need to get into historical linguistics every time. Thank you! On another note, in case you're interested, some things about "Leid": in the most common fixed expressions (es tut mir leid, ich bin es leid, etc), leid actually appears not as a noun but as an adjective which I don't think you'll really encounter anywhere else in standard German (so perhaps this was what you were referring to?). The noun Leid appears in fixed expressions also (jemandem sein Leid klagen, jemandem Leid zufügen, etc), but is very much used outside of them as well - although it does have a certain poetical ring to it, so you might not hear it too frequently in everyday conversation. It's beautiful, though (despite its sombre meaning hehe), a mild, melancholy sort of word

[@katrinfrank6114]

This was interresting. I mean I knew that English and German are closely related , but this deriving from common roots is quite intriguing. By the way: your German pronunciation is excellent 👍😀

[@rachel_Cochran]

This is my favorite video you've done yet, and I liked the slides 👍

[@laurisgatiszarinovs2891]

That mood gives me chills

[@1258-Eckhart]

This is a hugely profitable study because most German words indeed have an English cognate equivalent (not so much the other way round because of all the English loan words from latinate languages). To get to the meanings of the protogermanic originals, it is helpful (Simon did this glancingly) to apply set theory to all the known descendents, majorly Swedish, Gothic, English, German, Frisian (other descendents are too close to one of these to become significant) and then study the intersections.

[@bee9775]

hey Simon! If you could turn on closed captioning for the hard of hearing folks that would help loads--even auto-captions help because it's somewhat easy to get the gist of what someone is saying. Thank you! :D

[@joaofarias6473]

I think youtube disallowed auto-captions, as well as community sourced captioning unfortunately... A professional transcription service would probably be required in this case

[@wolfgang2453]

@@joaofarias6473 Not required so much as the only practical choice. You *can* write captions for your own videos, but it's not a very fun or efficient process so it's not very likely that youtubers will make a habit of it

[@sariputraa]

@@joaofarias6473 i work ontranslating foil arms and hog's sketches on amara . no need for any professional transcription :). i think that could be a good idea to do that here, for the people who have hearing problems or are not fluent in english

[@cathjj840]

@@sariputraa Forget translating or cc for "foil arms and hog's sketches on amara": what the hell does this mean?

[@snowyyyyyyyyyyyyy]

actually youtube removed community written captions several months ago. it's very unfortunate and means that the person uploading has to make the captions now

[@mwissel]

I speak a dialect in the bordering region of of southern Hesse and northern Bavaria and our word for slug is "Schnäl" - in standard German it's "Nacktschnecke" (literally: naked snail). My dialect also hasn't undergone all German consonant shifts which places it somewhere in the middle between standard German and standard English, e.g.: Pfanne - Pånne - pan Apfel - Abbel - apple heiss - håss - hot über - öwer - over (å is supposed to sound somewhat like the nasalized "an" in French, e.g. in blanc) Still think that has made it somewhat easier for me to learn English in school...

[@todlr]

I wish “learn German” texts/courses would lean more heavily on indicating cognates to aid learning/memory. I consider myself quite fluent in German now, but never noticed the Eitel, Zeichen, Zeit, Leid cognates mentioned here. Would have helped to know those when I was learning. Another I recently realized: oder/other. When I discovered that one, 🤯.

[@todlr]

@@Drabkikker my bad.

[@todlr]

@@Drabkikker anders is less mind blowing as a cognate. But only slightly. Still interesting. :)

[@mightymet7062]

Or town and Zaun. Or two and zwo (zwei) 😃

[@brittakriep2938]

The rather similar words are mostly about things, known longer than 1000years. For example some animals , nature things or tools. Also don' t forget dialect words. An example: In standard german , to stirr' is ,umrühren' , but in my swabian dialect , stieren' in some context also means ,to stirr'.

[@ODKON93]

usually this requires the knowledge beyond the scope of simply learning of a language, which is only attainable at university level, if you want it to happen in a formal class.

[@lifelessons7401]

Your german sounds absolutely fantastic! Very natural, it's kinda creepy (not only bc of the atmosphere lol)! Such a great video! PLEASE do more one of these English-German cognate videos!

[@tollmetscher]

When it comes to words like "Pfeffer" and "Pferd", another sound shift that is currently happening in many (mainly northern) German dialects, and arguably in "standard" German is that the initial P is often dropped, so the words become "Feffer" and "Ferd" in pronunciation.

[@brittakriep2938]

In southern Germany no Pferde exist, only Gäule and Rösser. Ross and horse, no similarity?

[@martinvanel3]

@@brittakriep2938 Someone told me that the German word Pferd is of celtic origin. While ross and horse are both of Germanic origin.

[@brittakriep2938]

@@martinvanel3 : As far as i know, Pferd comes from a latin word which means ,Pferdegespann' in german. ( Both the horses and the coach) . I read, that germanics once used horses only for riding and war, while they used oxen and cows for wagons / coaches and had been surprised about the Romans use of horses for this purpose. But i don' t know, if this is true.

[@morvil73]

@@brittakriep2938 Yes, "Ross" and "horse" are cognates.

[@bernhardschmalhofer855]

​@@brittakriep2938And young horses are Heasserl which might be relaxed to hissing.

[@Alxoholiker]

Me as a german speaker realized these similarities of some words kinda early, and i always wondered why they mean (mostly) something slightly different than the german word. like for example "starving" and "sterben". So thanks for clarifying all that stuff. it was really really fascintating.

[@Sebastian-wm5es]

Schnegel is the kind of snail who eats the other snails. They have dots of a darker color on them.

[@FrancisCWolfe]

Apparently it means "keelback slug", although until I learnt there was a German word Schnegel cognate with "snail" I had never heard of a keelback slug, so it does seem like quite an obscure word in both languages. I find it interesting how both languages agree that a snail/Schnegel is a specific subtype of Schnecke. They just disagree which subtype.

[@jcz_m]

The play with reconstruction at the end got me disproportionately excited. Thanks for sharing once again, and love the aesthetic this time around!

[@andrewmorrison4238]

Another one I am aware of which is quite surprising is that Ger Klein- small is actually the cognate to Eng clean but the meanings are now very different

[@brittakriep2938]

Standard german : klein/ low german: lütt/ english: little or standard german: Gabel/ low german: Forke/ english: fork or standard german: umrühren is in english to stirr, but in swabian dialect ,stiera' can mean to stirr , for example when someone is stirring the food in the plate, because he doesn' t like the meal.

[@WCiossek]

In Low German it is lütt. It corresponds to the English word little.

[@brittakriep2938]

@Martin Cregan : The word Forke is only used in lowgerman region, where those Anglosaxons live, who's ancestors did not move to England. In Southern Germany , which had been Roman provinces Germania Superior and Rhätia, there had been Kelten. So your thought is not impossible. Side note: When you are interessted in celtic relicts in my federation state Baden- Württemberg, do research about ,Heidengraben'/,Heuneburg'/, lpf'/ , Keltenfürst von Hochdorf'.

[@Theodisc]

Yes, Simon of the past, *it* has indeed calmed down, thank the Gods. When you raised the Teig/dough cognate I had to ask myself what "lady" would have become in modern High German if they had originally had the lord/lady (which are (very) peculiar to English) nomenclatures in German. As for sterben/starve, learning this was like seeing manna fall from the heavens. I didn't realise they were cognate. Thankee, Sir for another engrossing upload.

[@abirkert4556]

Pflug and Plough: in my dialect (Frankfurt/Wiesbaden area) "Pluuch".

[@communist_man_of_pesto401]

Very cool that you mentioned northern German dialects. Not a lot of people still speak low German but most people here will know a few expressions, words or have at least a dialect and one can actually see perfectly how close English and German actually are. Low German sounds like this weird hybrid between English, German, some swedish maybe and some dutch. I really love it and love that people try to keep it alive.

[@sarah8383]

Low German isn't a German dialect.

[@communist_man_of_pesto401]

@@sarah8383 Yes. Bad wording on my side, sry.

[@SwordFreakPower]

About "Leid" You can say "ich kann dich nicht leiden" which translates to "I can't stand you"

[@redpillsatori3020]

More literally translation: “I can thee not suffer”

[@maxx1014]

@@redpillsatori3020 or unliteral "I loathe you"

[@Hin_Håle]

In danish, "Jeg kan ikke lide deg" (I can not suffer you) is just everyday speech for "I don't like you". They're a severe bunch, the danes.

[@dergamer9]

@@Hin_Håle same for German :)

[@1258-Eckhart]

which transliterated would be "I cannot loathe thee", which means the opposite.

[@mandersson6754]

It was also possible to recognize Swedish cognates similar to most of the words in this video. I struggled a bit with loathe but eventually came up with Le (mean/evil) and Lida (suffer). Possibly, could also the noun Lie (scythe) be a cognate somehow. Thanks for the video! I am fairly fluent in all three languages and I constantly find new synonyms or dialect words that indicate a common background.

[@Amethystchain]

The little sad face next to we van gets me. I'm lonely too, we van. Me too

[@GuitarMan22]

I think it is very important when discussing the comparison of German to English, and its common root from Proto-Germanic -- to specify the german gender of the word. Even though English has left off the gender, its the gender that may influence how the English word is spoken. It's common to change the pronunciation of "the" when referring to plural words, but furthermore, I can't help thinking that the german gender of the word would have spun the pronunciation of the English word in a specific direction. Heide in particular is feminine in German. As a personal observation, it may be possible the 'heath' pronunciation as may have been influenced by the root word's gender, rather than pronouncing etc.

[@simonroper9218]

It's generally handy to know the Proto-Germanic gender of a word, which (as far as I know) leads to a close correspondence between which words take which gender in Old English and German. However, sound change happens irrespective of grammar - 'heath' is a natural development from Old English hǣþ, and the gender has nothing to do with the process of sound change. Old English /æː/ regularly gives modern English /iː/, unless it occurred in certain environments (and these environments were phonological, not grammatical) :)

[@GuitarMan22]

@@simonroper9218 enjoy your videos! Cheers 👍

[@satcha203]

As a scot i worked in West Germany for 4 years and picked up the language 2 years in, Scottish and northern English dialects retain Germanic words still.

[@faithlesshound5621]

Scots words are often closer to Dutch or Low German. The classic saying, "It's a braw, bricht, moonlicht nicht" or "fine (brave) bright moonlit night" has all the "gh" graphemes realised as hard "ch" sounds.

[@HiddenXTube]

German viewer here - your German pronunciation is very good - thank you for the interesting video.