Progressing Some Words from Proto-Germanic to English

In this video, I show how several words are likely to have progressed from Proto-Germanic to modern English (using my own dialect as an 'end goal'), through the series of sound changes that historical linguists have surmised most straightforwardly explain the relationship between the modern Germanic languages.
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[@dinosaurandnapkin]

Simon Roper creates the content that the internet was created for.

[@bnic9471]

Guaranteed Kardashian-free! ❤

[@demondelaplace5161]

I didn’t know he did porn.

[@authenticwarriorradio2440]

Porn?

[@Matty002]

@@bnic9471i just realized theres never been ads! how far weve come from the ideal

[@wendylorimer5663]

Almost, needs a few kittens doing hilarious things.

[@scummyr]

Me, each time a new Proto-Germanic word appeared: Ohhh, I know where this one is going. Me, thirty seconds later: whaaaaaaaaat

[@pupnoomann7866]

knowing german feels like a cheat code for guessing these

[@axisboss1654]

Yeah I understand pretty much every word

[@frankharr9466]

It wasn't.

[@InertialMass685]

No it doesn't! Simon already did an Old English video with German natives and none of them could get anywhere near the Old English meaning! You are saying Modern German is the same as proto-Germanic and you could get it just from hearing it?! No chance. German has changed just as much.

[@akxdev]

@@InertialMass685Yeah, I'd say knowledge of/interest in linguistics is more helpful than knowing German. I'm a native English speaker and I was able to guess the meaning of a few words in their proto-Germanic form, but I attribute that to my interest in language, not the fact that I speak English.

[@iwannabeyourdog4195]

knowing Icelandic also helps a lot

[@randomguy-tg7ok]

I'd never even considered that the "riff" in "midriff" was cognate with _anything,_ let alone "corpse". I guess PIE will just kinda do that sometimes.

[@king_halcyon]

You mean its descendants 😅

[@DaWorldGuardian001]

It's funny to think about how the "rp" in corpse is the same one as "riff".

[@dord9]

“Corpus” just means “body”. We later borrowed the term “corpse” from French to mean specifically a “dead body”, but the original word (and its germanic cognate) just meant body in general. So “midriff” basically just means “middle of the body”. Nothing too crazy.

[@devenscience8894]

I paused at each word, and tried to take an educated guess what modern word they would be, using my knowledge of English, German, and memory of your past videos on Old English. Of the eighteen words highlighted, I guessed nine of them correctly, which I think is pretty good. I was especially proud of having guessed raven correctly.

[@Cranndaddy]

Doing this per your suggestion, thank you

[@kilsestoffel3690]

My husband and I doing the same right now.

[@siyabongamviko8872]

I am not a native English speaker but can speak the language rather well. I only began understanding that the word is the ancestral form of raven much later in time. I initially guessed it would be 'grave', I thought the initial consonant (was it an 'H' of some sort?), was a kind of 'G' and that it would harden to give us grave. I now want to blame my Dutch lessons as "Gr" (as in Gravenberch) does sound a lot like the sound Simon kept saying while explaining the word changes.

[@HuckleberryHim]

If you paused right from the start each time that is pretty great! I only got a few from the start and many of them weren't obvious until near the end. I wasn't even sure at the end for "go" or "gore", lol... (pretty sure it's the former but they sound identical in his accent)

[@fariesz6786]

may the Overbird bless you with lots of shiny for guessing _raven_ correctly. ( ")< of course my advanced avian intellect guessed all words correctly cept that *hauzijaną threw me off since i forgot about rhoticization being a thing.

[@cacamilis8477]

As a fluent English, Dutch and German speaker, as well as knowing a little bit of the Koelsch dialect, it's amazing to see how, at one point, Dutch and German stopped changing certain sounds, while English underwent several more changes in language, even before the great vowel shift.

[@fariesz6786]

remember that we did have changes in other words though. it's not that Dutch and German are generally more conservative, though in terms of vowels they might in fact be.

[@danielimmortuos666]

English is literally the French of west Germanic languages, even though we may not see it that way when you think about it and notice how different the written and spoken varieties are. English just makes up spelling as it goes lol

[@FrozenMermaid666]

Icelandic has the forms gæs / gæsir which are more similar to the English form geese, but in Dutch it is gans, so Dutch still has the N sound, and, the word for raven in Norse and Icelandic is hrafna, while the word for penguin in Icelandic is mörgæs which literally means sea goose, and mör / mar means sea, and mar is from Norse, but it comes from Latin! I am upper advanced level in Dutch and upper intermediate level in Icelandic / Norse / German and advanced level in Norwegian! Proto Germanic comes from Latin, as a dude created Proto Germanic by modifying Latin words and by creating many new words, but I didn’t even know that they also had the same endings with the Z sound, but I did notice the UM ending which is a typical Latin word ending that is also used in Norse and Icelandic and I think in Proto Germanic too, and, most word endings are actually the same in Latin and in Germanic languages, as the creator of each Germanic language kept to the same endings, and I sort of always felt like Germanic languages aren’t really that different from Latin / Portuguese / French etc, even before I started learning languages on my own as the Latin word endings also exist in Germanic languages and there are also a lot of obvious cognates and usually only their word endings are a bit different!

[@gabor6259]

​@@FrozenMermaid666 What do you mean a dude created Proto-Germanic? It wasn't natural? If a dude created it, how did the language spread?

[@timoloef]

Yup, I noticed that with knowledge of Dutch and German you can quickly guess the meaning of the older words. Let's not forget that some of those words actually sound quite different in various dialects. For example, the English "one" is "een" in official Dutch but in the Groningen we sometimes say "oine" but for in Brabant some people say something like "iejn"

[@reactionisst]

This video really seems to make it clear to me how much the Great Vowel Shift is responsible for modern English sounding so different from modern Standard German.

[@anthonyehrenzweig7697]

And from every other European language. There are probably only 3 vowels that are relatively unchanged in English - all short ones - the short "e", "i" & "o". All the others have undergone massive sound changes making each vowel totally unrecognizable from its ancestor.

[@faithlesshound5621]

You have to roll it back to get to Scots. And put back all the "silent" consonants.

[@redoktopus3047]

one word i've always wanted to see brought from old english to modern english is "hlafæta". "lord" comes from "hlaford" i.e. "loaf guard" "lady" comes from "hlæfdige" i.e. "loaf kneader" but "loaf eater" i.e. "hlafæta" never made the jump.

[@amuthi1]

In Germany we have the expression "Brotherr" (roughly master/lord of bread) coming from times when learned workers (Gesellen) were "paid" by free lodging and food and clothing. Later when money was more common it was called "in Lohn und Brot sein" for being employed.

[@ArmArmAdv]

The word wanted to make the jump but it's just late! :) Or leat?!

[@egbront1506]

@@amuthi1 We still use breadwinner to denote the main earner in a household. Additionally, bread is a slang word for money dating back to at least the 1960s.

[@IvoTichelaar]

​@@egbront1506bread as representing income is much older than that. It's in the bible...

[@themkerich]

@redoktopus3047 I actually have the answer!!! The yeomen of the royal guard are colloquially known as "beef eaters" today and in mediaval times were known as "loaf eaters". Probably something to do with their mode of compensation, but your word survived!!!

[@Eazoon]

9:19 hey I recognize that one! It originated as a combination of [sinθ] and [cosθ]

[@that44rdv4rk]

😆

[@AdrianBoyko]

😑

[@Joeman7791]

trigonometry more like triggernometry because it pisses me off

[@juliz2500]

​@@Joeman7791😂

[@tentothepowerof10]

Math entered the chat

[@wesleybecker834]

9:11 When your pronunciation is so precise that there's a trigonometric function in your IPA.

[@dunkleosteusterrelli]

what?

[@casiopea2161]

@@dunkleosteusterrelli in math tangent is shortened to tan and theta is often used as a placeholder for an angle

[@leod-sigefast]

Really to cool that you showed the cognate of Latin corpus to be English riff! It makes sense. I really love those links across time and languages!

[@igorjee]

Hoc est corpus > hocus pocus trhough inversion and deletion. And also lu corpán (small bodied) in Old Irish > leprechaun

[@bnic9471]

Recognizing this cognate was the frosting on top of the cupcake, for me. The Scandinavian languages retain some variation of "krop."

[@deutschermichel5807]

​@@igorjee did some peasants really just hear the priest during the preparation of the Eucharist speak “hoc est corpus” and just thought: Old wizard with funny robe doing magic spells?

[@igorjee]

@@deutschermichel5807 Seems like the Christianization of Europe was only partial and most peasants remained a bunch of irreverent pagans with a great sense of humor, at least until the Reformation and the end of the Latin Mass. That said, priests were often the butt of jokes among country folks, at least here in Hungary. Hókuszpókusz!

[@nostalji93]

@@igorjee You have "Hókuszpókusz" in Hungarian? Thats amazing! I often feel like Slavs and Germans have a similar humour and personalities. Apparently since the middle ages and maybe due to living in similar conditions during this time.

[@MartinAhlman]

It's so wonderful to see that Swedish kept some of the older words. Thank you for this!

[@binker__nor9907]

I thought the same thing. Interesting how Scandinavian forms are a lot more archaic (Norsk her…).

[@ole7146]

Æ mann sayer wat ham tøs ær richt.

[@jonathanlange1339]

Examples please

[@Jout8-re1ij]

@@jonathanlange1339 Regna is still used in Sweden.

[@nostalji93]

@@Jout8-re1ij Regen in German, but Regna sounds more Germanic. Even though its also latin for 'kingdoms'. Modern German is actually quite conserved, but also quite influenced by Latin and French.

[@hdoddema]

I've never really thought about it like this before, but this is literally reconstructing the sounds that came out of people's mouths thousands of years ago. I especially like the words that very much look like they took a "left turn" at some point to become a different word in my language, Dutch. Especially fowl/vogel and wain/wagen.

[@michaelhuttig6596]

Wagen is a good example. As a German I recognized it very early (of course) but got puzzled more and more.

[@miaokuancha2447]

This is fascinating and amazing. The precision & control with which you are able to control the sound producing movements and configurations of mouth and throat, through all the various sound changes is just incredible to me.

[@IvoTichelaar]

Yes, and lots of those early sounds are so Dutch to my ears. I am doing my dishes with this on, so I miss half of it and I keep getting the feeling there's a video in Dutch on and I just can't hear it well enough to understand.

[@TP-om8of]

I remember the Great Vowel Shift. Those were heady days. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!

[@stephanieparker1250]

I love when you do an American word, your accent is great. Much better than my horrid attempts at an British accent 😊

[@chitlitlah]

It seems like people who learn IPA very thoroughly have an easy time saying words in other accents, which does make sense. Saying a whole sentence or more is probably quite a different story, although I think I've heard Simon say complete sentences in American English and it was pretty impressive.

[@didacusa3293]

A*

[@didacusa3293]

I’m surprised no one saw this.

[@stephanieparker1250]

@@didacusa3293 oh dear, thank you 🤣

[@igorjee]

By American you mean 17th century English in this video?

[@fugithegreat]

The word for rain reminded me so much of the Spanish word "regar" (to water), which it turns out probably shares a PIE root. I love etymology, this is such a fun concept for a video!

[@christianlingurar7085]

don't need PIE, of course it's coming from "raining" the plants/crops. it's visigothic/germanic, it lost (iberics are mouth-lazy ;-> ) the 'n' in the middle, it must have been 'regnar', still used (in variation) in german dialects for "watering"

[@lopakacooper1668]

Portuguese has “regar” as well, funnily enough.

[@lofdan]

​​@@christianlingurar7085absolutely no, Spanish regar comes from Latin rigāre, whence English irrigate.

[@gavinrolls1054]

potentially but that ie root isn't really as certain

[@ivarkrabol]

Really cool idea! Trying to guess my way through this, some hits and some misses (native Norwegian speaker). Potential spoiler below the line for anyone doing the same. . . . Paused when you said you'd follow ['waγn] down two different routes, and was able to guess exactly where both where headed (both "wain" as in "wainwright", and "wagon"). For a non-native speaker with no formal education in anything English-related, I was pretty pleased with that one! :)

[@bnic9471]

Bare bra, min brør!

[@markwalters2927]

Thank-you. I think a list of the modern English words featured added into the description would help a lot.

[@goombacraft]

Home, raven, leap, rain, leaf, tooth, hear, way, folk, fox, riff (as in midriff), wain/wagon, loud, I, gore, one, fowl, goose/geese

[@_-JB-_]

​@@goombacraftThank you!

[@markwalters2927]

@@goombacraft Thank-you, that list is helpful generally and to make clear the actual words, not just what the word sounds like. And also to people who don't hear so well or perhaps English is not their first language.

[@Antanana_Rivo]

​@@markwalters2927definitely helps. German native here. I'd consider my English decently conversational, but extrapolating the writing of Wayne, vain or vein out of an IPA spelling and an audio recording is a tough ask. Today I learned, there's also wain.

[@renerpho]

@@gabor6259 "Reign" is a loan word from Old French.

[@adambennett805]

Wain/wagon is so interesting. A lot of german words with gen/gon endings have English ain endings (regen/rain). Wagon/wain also fits that pattern

[@GraemeMarkNI]

And snail/snegl, fowl/fugl are similar cognates 👌🏼

[@oggsta]

Constable's Haywain springs to mind

[@gavinrolls1054]

its actually Wayne-

[@WIGGER_AESTHETIC_031]

Hey Simon, this form of content is very addictive. I think I can learn Proto German by watching these videos, as my skills in English and Afrikaans makes it fairly easy to guess the meanings of the proto german. Please make like a million more of these videos they're really cool

[@nostalji93]

Do you feel "culturely" connected to other nations with a Germanic language? Might be weird question, but I do think there is a lot of culture conserved in language.

[@WIGGER_AESTHETIC_031]

@@nostalji93 I do in some manner. I think culture is preserved in language, because it is a tool that expresses your thoughts, and ultimately influences them. So i think language and culture are very linked, and I do have appreciation for Germanic culture. I must add this with the caveat that I have much more of a love and a greater link with people who are my fellow Christians over my culture. I think that is much more fundamental than culture or even race.

[@nostalji93]

@@WIGGER_AESTHETIC_031 I guess we both do. On the other hand language is also a tool that adapts to its environment. So I wondern how similar a dude from Africa (I assume) thinks just due to speaking a related language. Even though I was raised a Christian I don't consider myself as such anymore. I am an agnostic since about 13~ yo. Yet Christianity for sure influenced my thinking and moral sense. I went to a Catholic Kindergarten, elementary school and visited Catholic Masses. I am baptized and became a full member of the evangelical church (ironically during the time I lost my faith) And since I am a nerd for religion, myths, language and history I am pretty familiar with Christianity in its many forms. I wonder how much we both differ "knowing" similar ideas yet probably "believing" differently about them. I think "race" is a BS cateogorisation. Nationlism was already a huge step in the wrong direction, but I think racism is even worse. From a Christian perspective: Aren't we all Gods children? From my perspective: We are one species and subcategorizing based on arbitory traits just leads discrimination and other negative outcome. We aren't breed like dogs. Divercity is one of the most valueable traits an species can have. It makes the species adaptiable and "colorful". We should value it more. Cheers and much love from Germany

[@WIGGER_AESTHETIC_031]

@@nostalji93 yeah you're correct in that all of us are gods children. I dont really vibe with race if it's used to divide people. I have more in common with my fellow black Zulu south african than I do with a white American of Dutch descent anyways. Especially if the black guy is a Christian. Its way more important to me that we both honour God than we have the same language or eat the same food, or have A10 eyes or whatever. I will say that I do feel most at home when speaking my own language and amongst my own. Now that isn't solely whites, since a very large coloured proportion of the population are also afrikaans in language. They can be very fun guys to hang out with. I also have some issues with people of my own group, since many tend to be racist and all that. I'm very far right politically, but not when it comes to race. Some afrikaners tend to be neoliberals or whatever, supporting abortion and things I find repulsive and left wing, yet say the most racist stuff ever. Unprincipled folks, some of us are. But I suppose that goes for every group. I think Germans tend to be very progressive, but when they mention the gypsies, it sounds like 1939 all over again😂 All that to say, I don't hate liberals or the left at all, I just find Unprincipled people cringe in general. I vibe with far right and far left, and also centrists in general, but I dislike anyone who has opinions which are unfounded. Like my opinions are based off of scripture, and all my worldviews fit this. So maybe I'm not really far right, but some might say so.

[@WIGGER_AESTHETIC_031]

@@nostalji93 I also love diversity. I had very few white friends in school due to me growing up in Durban, which is an English city. I had mostly black and Indian friends. Now in university, I have white friends and coloured friends. The Indians don't want to study here, and the local black tribe is not as cosmopolitan as the one I grew up with. I agree that race isn't a useful category except maybe for medical stuff or the likes. I also like diversity, but that too comes with a caveat. I think for diversity to be preserved, we should all take more pride in our culture, and not engage in too much cultural exchange, because then it becomes watered down. A good example is what the French did and basically killed off all their regional languages and all that. Its sad when that happens. I think localism is better than nationalism, since it leads to more preservation. Here in south africa, its fairly ironic ik, but the people seem to be very friendly to each other, but are resegreagting on tribal lines, for better or for worse. At least we are all south africans, and still live each other.

[@fbkintanar]

Now that we know the Proto-Germanic forms of these words, it would be nice to go backward from Proto-Germanic to PIE, perhaps in a collab with a specialist. An occasional comparison with cognates in other Indo-European languages would also be interesting. The tracing of 15:45 Latin "corpus" back to PIE and forward to midriff is a model, and you are already doing it!

[@patriciabristow-johnson5951]

This is amazing. It's fascinating to think about how these are words (and pronunciations) my ancestors would have been using in their day-to-day lives. The people who would eventually produce *me* were speaking like this. Thanks so much for researching all of this and sharing it with us

[@DeeDee22256]

I am Czech and I've always seen the similarity in the words raven and our czech Havran (means raven), now I know why.

[@leikind]

have you noticed that "to buy" in all Slavic languages is so similar to the German root? Koupit in Czech, kupić in Polish, kupiti in Croatian, купити in Ukrainian, and so on, versus kaufen in German, kopen in Dutch, kjøpe in Norwegian, kaupa in Icelandic. They say that Proto-Slavic borrowed this root from Gothic

[@ruawhitepaw]

@@leikind And Germanic itself got it from Latin!

[@bnic9471]

​@@ruawhitepawAnd so it passed down to, say, Spanish: "comprar."

[@ruawhitepaw]

@@bnic9471 No that's from a different Latin word. Latin caupō does not have any descendents in Romance that I know of.

[@AdrianBoyko]

Did anybody notice gęś / gęsi in this video?

[@amuthi1]

For german "Heim" [Hochdeutsch] there are changes in dialects like "hoam" [bavarian] or "häm" [palatin] or "hoim" [suebian] mostly used in verbs like "heimgehen" (go home) or "daheim" [at home].

[@WayneKitching]

I never realised it before, but the Afrikaans word "heimwee" which is something like homesickness, uses "heim," even though house is "huis" and home is "tuiste."

[@liquidcancer4573]

In my regional Dutch dialect, Gronings, a home is a "heem"

[@daveemberton5271]

It jumped out at me that the starting point for Home was pretty close to the German word Heimat.

[@deutschermichel5807]

​@@WayneKitchingin German this word means Heimweh. The final h is silent and indicates the preceding long vowel. We also have Fernweh, which is the opposite of homesickness

[@michaelhuttig6596]

​@@WayneKitchingobviously Afrikaans comes from Dutch and(!) German. German spelling is Heimweh.

[@StMidium]

It's fascinating how easy it is to see when Norwegian and English separated, plus how old some of the words we still use today are.

[@stevefranklin9176]

Thanks for this Simon. I was surprised at how many I recognised correctly at the Proto or West Germanic period. I’m not German however I live on the German/Swiss border. A number of the pronunciations have not shifted much at all down here in the Schwäbin village-type town I’m in.

[@Your_Eden]

I like to play a game where I try to see how early on i know what word he is talking about each time. I'm not winning.

[@GormHornbori]

I was thinking that ... me as a Norwegian speaker usually gets the proto-germanic word (assuming it's still present in Norwegian), but it would be a lot harder for English speakers.

[@erikplotz183]

​@@GormHornboriAs a german, i allways think, that i got it right, about halfway trough, and then it turns into a completely different direction

[@Notmyname85]

American english speaker here. I was doing the same and also not winning.

[@leod-sigefast]

I was certain leaf was going to be loaf...or possible love! It is quite fun seeing where some words progress. I am interested in Anglish so do dip into studying etymology from time to time. So that helps with a lot of these word progressions but many are still tricky going all the way from Proto-Germanic. From Proto-Indo-European would be an even greater challenge: 'expert level'!

[@that44rdv4rk]

same. I got about half before the vowel shift, but a couple seemed obvious right away.

[@ReidarWasenius]

Greetings from Finland. Thanks for a nicely brain stretching video!! My mind just expanded a lot!

[@that44rdv4rk]

did anyone else treat this as a game to guess the words before they got to the great vowel shift?

[@Fenditokesdialect]

In West Riding dialect (Sheffield variety) these would be: Home - Hoam /ʊwəm/ Raven - Raven /ɾeːvən/ Leap - Leeap /lijəp/ (note that "lowp" /lɒwp/ from Norse is more common) Rain - Rain /ɾeːn/ Leaf - Leeaf /lijəf/ Tooth - Tooith /tʊwɪθ/ sometimes Toith /tɒjθ/ Hear - Hear /ijə/ Way - Way /weː/ Folk - Fowk /fɒwk/, sometimes "foak" /fʊwək/ Fox - Fox /fɒks/ Riff - Riff /ɾɪf/ Wain - Wain /weːn/ (and it's still in use!) Loud - Laad /laːd/ I - Aw /ɑːj/ (stressed), /ɑ/ (unstressed) Gore - Goor /ɡʊwə/ One - One /wɒn/ (in some old dialect material I've found this as "oan" in fixed expressions like "the one".) The approximant here is the result of intrusive "w" being added before long back vowels as in "wot" /wɒt/ as an alternative form of "ooat" /ʊwət/ for "oat" Fowl - Faal /faːɫ/ Goose - Gooise /ɡʊwɪs/ or sometimes "goise" /ɡɒjs/ Geese - Geese /ɡijs/ or sometimes "gease" /ɡijəs/

[@stephanieparker1250]

One of the channels I will click on new video notifications instantly, thank you for the great work, Simon!

[@niku..]

Great video overall but I think there's very convincing evidence from English actually for a fairly late loss of word-final *-a(z). Short words almost definitely kept the *-z until at least Proto-West Germanic since Modern German still has it in pronouns and the difference between Old English leapan and leapen can only be explained if they still kept their word-final vowels that aren't preserved in any written Germanic language (maybe some early runic inscriptions but nothing comes to mind). Then we have *hlaupaną > hlæapæną (Anglo-Frisian brightening) > *hlæapaną (backing of *æ to *a before a back vowel, since *ą didn't undergo the earlier fronting) > hleapan. And for the participle: *hlaupanaz > *hlaupana (not sure when the *-z was lost, but I'll just put it here) > *hlæapænæ (Anglo-Frisian brightening) > *hlæapæn (*æ doesn't get backed to *a since it's followed by another *æ) > hleapen (collaps of unstressed front vowels to /e/. I use *æ for the front vowel and *a for the back vowel but it's not meant to represent their actual pronunciation in the IPA.

[@Just_Sara]

You have a very nice voice to just listen to. This made for a very pleasant morning. :)

[@michagorka3789]

As a Pole i love your videos. It's funny how I pronounce words like in XVI century but love to play along with pronouncing. Wonder if you worked with your voice since it sounds so soothing.

[@michaeldeloatch7461]

Fascinating walk-through of our language's evolution. You fooled me several times where I guessed wrong modern form at the start.

[@iberius9937]

5:22 FASCINATING how I never thought about a HL being pronounced eventually like the Welsh LL, basically an voiceless L and the equivalent of the voiceless alveolar trill!

[@philandrews2860]

I love these videos, being fascinated with the history of the Indo European languages, especially the Germanic branch, with proto-Germanic diverging into the various sub branches. Thank you, Simon, for doing these :) On a kind of a funny note, when I got to the evolution of the English word 'fox', I had to chuckle, because we have a dog named 'Foxy' (a Shetland Sheepdog and he has the coloring and some fox-like characteristics), and one of the nicknames I have for him, is 'foxes', but I prounounce it much the same way as the proto-Germanic original word for 'fox' (after the evolution to a pure 'f' at the beginning, but before the final 'z' is lost). It made me wonder if it is some kind of a subconscious throwback my to proto-Germanic speaking ancestors, or just pure coincidence :)

[@oj9370]

That's a really interesting idea - Tolkien preferred the dialect of the west midlands known as Old Mercian and once said he thought he would speak nothing but Old Mercian,being his own ancestoral tongue (he was from there).

[@ArmArmAdv]

Fascinating! Genetic memory? Need a movie completely in Proto-Germanic!

[@philandrews2860]

@@ArmArmAdv - Yes, that would be really cool :) Have you seen that short clip from Netflix's Barbarians where Proto-Germanic was dubbed into the dialogue? It's on Michael Lindsey's youtube channel. It's really cool hearing the Latin spoken along with the Proto-Germanic.. they sounded much more similar to each other than their descendent languages do now, since that time was much closer to their common Proto-Indo-European origin. Now they really don't sound similar at all. It would also be cool to have a movie done in Gothic. I've seen comparisons between Gothic and Proto-Germanic and there are quite a few similarities, and a fair amount with Old English as well.

[@ArmArmAdv]

Wow, thanks for recommending this gem! 👌 I just watched it, very cool. I've seen "Barbarians" on Netflix, but for some reason, the Germanic tribes' dialogues were dubbed in German, as far as I remember. I have to rewatch it. The Latin is also pretty cool! They should make more stuff like this in the original reconstructed proto-languages. I guess a movie all in Indo-European would be too difficult, but now with the advent of AI, one can hope. It's going to bring a golden age for linguistics and deciphering and reconstructing old languages by crunching and analyzing a massive amount of data. Can't wait! For sure, a movie in Gothic would be epic or other dead languages with no modern survivors. A movie in Tocharian B, haha. Love KZbin for these great convos and videos. Far wela👍 (farewell, goodbye in Proto-Germanic)

[@JeantheSecond-ip7qm]

So interesting. I’ve loved learning about the history of the English language ever since I took an amazing class on it in college.

[@overlordnat]

Always fascinating Simon! In my book the best way to say ‘one’ is to rhyme it with ‘gone’ and the best way to say ‘tooth’ is to use the FOOT vowel not the LOOSE vowel though!

[@gustavovillegas5909]

This is type of video is a real delight, thanks for sharing with us!

[@hartzy7425]

This is excellent content and a privilege to watch and learn from.

[@worldnotworld]

Awesome. You might maybe make a variant/extension of this saying more about the Latin/Greek cognates that found their way into English. "Hear" and "acoustic" is a phenomenal pair -- "sharp ear," it would seem! Actually, that would make a very cool video in itself: PIE roots with both Latin/Greek and Germanic (or even other) reflexes in English. The corpus/midrif example is spectacular! Ety of "go" is controversial, though.

[@gabor6259]

He said gore, not go.

[@harrynewiss4630]

Fun to see where you guess the final form. I got a few early on from my knowledge of Germanic languages, but most 2-3 iterations in.

[@patrickbriscall7934]

Oh my word! With your second example ‘xraβnaz I saw how it could have ended up as either “crow” or “raven”. Amazing!

[@Релёкс84]

/x/ does not turn back to /k/ in English, but a Proto Germanic word starting in /xr/ very likely corresponds to a word starting in /kr/ in other languages (in this case Latin corvus for example).

[@Enceladus2106]

I love these videos so much

[@OnkelPeters]

Of all examples, only ‘fox’ and ‘riff’ hasn’t their equivalent in Norwegian. Brilliant content!

[@HotelPapa100]

Heh. So German 'laufen' is cognate with leap. Never realised this, though it's kinda obvious.

[@leetatum66]

In retrospect! I know what you mean. Simon is amazing--if only he and youtube had been around when I was in grad school studying German literature with one linguistics course thrown in :)

[@bluesmasterelf]

Fantastic video, thank you. I especially loved the mid-riff/corpus and the wain/wagon traces.

[@ruawhitepaw]

The bilabial fricative of "raven" and "leaf" definitely still existed in West Germanic. Not only is a bilabial consonant still present in High German, but spellings of such words using the letter "b" are also found in very early Old English, and in Old Saxon.

[@deutschermichel5807]

Can you please give some examples?

[@ruawhitepaw]

@@deutschermichel5807 The Glossary of Épinal, which is one of the earliest attestations of anything Old English, has some Old English forms written with b. Some listed in Campbell's Old English grammar, including: halb (healf), hualb (hwealf), staeb (stæf), theb (þēof), gibaen (ġefen), hebuc (hafoc), hraebn (hræfn), scribun (sċrifon). This applies only to words that had *b in Proto-Germanic; words with original *f were still written with the letter f. These words were written around the 7th-8th century, and according to Ringe, non-initial *b and *f fully merged only by around the year 800.

[@Cr7andmessiaremygoats]

So you’re my most favourite early language speaker

[@iberius9937]

Fascinating and part of what I live for. One of your best videos!

[@EmeraldMinotaur]

I love videos like this! Super fascinating

[@Zederok]

It blows my mind how Corpus and Midriff are cognate.

[@malcolmplumridge2367]

Simon. You are a briliiant man. You are great asset to your country.

[@ronaldderooij1774]

I never knew that in my language (Dutch) "Ik" and "gans" have not changed at all for over 2500 years! Then again, Dutch seems to be a bit conservative in language changing most of the time.

[@igorjee]

Gans is related to Visigothic > Spanish ganso (goose) and Sanskrit > Hindi hans (swan)

[@gavinrolls1054]

well.. kinda. Dutch g s and i are not pronounced the same as the g s and i in proto germanic.

[@siyabongamviko8872]

would you say 'gans' is still pronounced as was, at the PGmc stage? The G seems different if I remember well.

[@ArmArmAdv]

That's what I always say. If we ever invent a time machine, we should send Dutch people to communicate with Proto-Germanic speaking people😂

[@gavinrolls1054]

@@siyabongamviko8872 yeah the g and s in gans are different

[@gitmoholliday5764]

always wondered if the Dutch / Germanic word "wagen" found its origin in "wegen" ( to weigh ) originally a "wagen" would balance on 2 wheels like a scale / balance used to weigh material.

[@BobWitlox]

Your pronunciation of wagen in Dutch was very good

[@evanbarrie4630]

very interesting!! i loved trying to guess from the proto-germanic route and slowly getting better

[@bogdog3056]

Are there any videos where you do hypothetical progressions of proto-Germanic words into modern English like you mentioned at 16:27? That sounds really interesting!

[@laan_the_man7577]

Thank you Simon, fascinating.

[@garmr214]

Shouldn't be pronounced a bit darker, similar to Greek?

[@albionmyl7735]

They came from here.... Westfalia northwest Germany home of the old Saxons..... and lower Saxony we share the Saxon horse /Ross on our flags with Kent..... 🇩🇪🇯🇪❤️👋

[@JohnE0102]

great vid Simon

[@leehaseley2164]

In Bavarian dialect, the Grrman "ich" is pronounced as "ie" (German)or "ee"(English).

[@SirReginaldBumquistIII]

So not the way Kennedy said it? 😂

[@realemolga6306]

​@@SirReginaldBumquistIII No, but Kennedy's [ɪk] is basically how Berliners say it

[@SirReginaldBumquistIII]

@@realemolga6306 ok thanks for the info! 😄

[@the_neutral_container]

Though I think Kennedy's [ɪk] is more a result of him struggling with the German sound [ç] rather than a nod to the Berlin dialect. @@SirReginaldBumquistIII

[@OnkelPeters]

In two small regions in Norway (Molde and Lierne) has the same: “Ee” as I/ich. Ee eh en moldenser!

[@hglundahl]

Best Wishes for Epiphany Octave and for the New Year!

[@Svensk7119]

Interesting! I have always thought that "wain/wagon" came from the transition from Old English spelling to Middle and Modern, as the sounds and rules shifted, but the spelling did not! That is, the pronunciation, which undoubtedly was never fully standardized in either the First or early Second Millennia, split down two paths. That is, "wagon" and "wain" both descended from "wegn", as the "eg" in Old English produced a dipthong effect similar to Modern "ay/ey". I did not suspect a loaning to be involved at all! Basically, I thought different fractions of the population read the same word in two different ways. I still think that for my perception an argument can be made, though I can not say there was no influence of a borrowing at all, and I do not say that. To support my perception, I advance as evidence the names Payne and Thayne. I believe they are both differentiated spellings of fossilized forms of the word "thain", as Professor Tolkien spelled it in his fiction. After all, like "wegn", it would have had the "eg" dipthong, and would have used the Modern "th". Just like most now mispronounce "ye olde shoppe", not reading "ye" as "the", I believe "þegn" became both "pegn", if you will, and "thegn", also if you please, until eventually we reached Payne and Thayne. How new readers over generations read Archaics has an impact, particularly when literacy increases. I suspect that worked in both cases. If I may ask, what do you think, Simon? Has this some merit?

[@Reziac]

Fascinating, but I wish you'd also give us the concurrent normal spelling for each form. I could not decide if the end result was _rain_ or _reign_ ... and several other homonym confusions.

[@markmorgan5568]

Really enjoyable video. If there are future ones like it, could you show modern English spelling and definition? There are times you say “in my dialect…” and I’m left to wonder what the comparable pronunciation in mine would be.

[@amandachapman4708]

Simon is referring to modern south-east England's version of "received pronunciation" when he speaks about his dialect. Even R.P. has slight variations depending where you are and your age 😉

[@ruedigernassauer]

German here: The development of the word "raven" astonished me. I always thought the German word "Rabe" ("ráhba") would imitate their crying sound, at least on the first syllable. In unfamilial Vietnamese they are called "quạ" which are along with "bò" for cow and "mèo" for cat most likely imitations of the sounds these animals produce.

[@hubert-z2d]

Bravo. Very interesting. If English continues to evolve at the same rate as during the last millennium would it be possible to simulate what it will look like in a thousand years? I'm afraid it will have become totally unrecognizable, except to linguists. All languages evolve or disappear. My putative ancestors spoke a Celtic language that has disappeared, Gaulish. They switched, willingly or unwillingly, to the vernacular Latin of the Roman colonists, and this same imported language, modified by the Gallic substrate and the Frankish (germanic) superstrate, underwent a spectacular transformation to end up in modern French which would be totally incomprehensible to a Gaul of the 7th century. century. La vie continue...😀

[@iberius9937]

3:13 This is a voiceless alveolar trill, also the pronunciation of the letter ῥο in Classical Greek before it became voiced, sometime later during the Roman period. Even the Romans transliterated it as a RH in names or words borrowed from the Greek.

[@Bubbaburp]

Super, thank you.

[@kelly55423]

This is in the genre of stuff that's very interesting and also makes you sleepy.

[@christianlingurar7085]

for a German familiar with multiple dialects, this is extremely interesting. once more I realize I could perfectly deal with "West Germanic" and speaking multiple romance languages (but painfully missing Greek) and a little slavonic, too, enables me to perfectly deal with PIE. all those millenia of division just to find out that it's all the same... :-)

[@Korva_Avia]

OMG this is awesome information! And, your second word choice is my namesake! My first name is Korva.

[@SandalwoodBros]

I'd love to get a slide deck of these for use in some of the classes I teach... if Simon makes this available on Patreon I'd gladly sign up

[@Ethan54136]

When hrabnaz started I took a guess as to what it evolved to and to me it sounded like it could be to Crow. Interesting to see that it was actually Raven which is a somewhat similar looking bird.

[@arminkohler5516]

When I read the Proto-Germanic word [ haɪ̯m ], I knew where the series would go, because this beautiful word is still preserved in the German language with the same meaning. I love it very much, it has a deep, ancient sound.

[@ami443]

Iol .....

[@Matty002]

leap was A LEAP, and rif is literally the last bit of leftovers of an ancient body

[@sibulu2878]

Since i'm swiss and the swiss german dialect which has still kinda lots of rural/oldschool words and usage ich the uvular fricative "ch" is very high.. 1:04 here for example here i understood already the highgerman word "heim" (home in english) or 2:51 here i already understood "rabe" with the ch and that sound like a mixture of our word "chräihe" (swissgerman for raven) 5:29 here i understood it, swissgerman it's "schlaafe" 6:25 here it really amost sounds like swissgerman for rain! Probably some dutch speakers might as well get the words quite early i could imagine? I'm fascinated

[@garyfrancis6193]

I saw a few days agoin one of your videos from last December that you were having some economic difficulty. I am too by the way. However if I had seen it sooner, I might have suggested some alternatives. It’s too late now for some. But have you considered applying as an Assessment Specialist for Cambridge University? I can tell you were to apply and who to talk to. I communicate with Cambridge on an almost daily basis about just this thing and have nice Jan 2023. Your background may put you in good read for that high is a part-time job. It involves editing and evaluating test scores for their international exams given in 144 countries around the world. You might even contribute some parts such as reading passages for the reading comprehension papers. It’s not something they are likely to tell you about.

[@gertrudlehmann4869]

Thank you!

[@Kamarovsky_KCM]

Watching this video I played a little game of whether I can guess what word will it end up being just by seeing that Proto-Germanic version, and suprisingly I managed to guess about a half precisely, and some more 20% closely (like lip instead of leap, or fool instead of foul etc), which is very fun!

[@novaace2474]

6:26 correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Porto-Germanic /g/ pronounced as [ɣ], up until it was palatalized to [ʝ]? I wouldn’t point this out, but you gave the correct pronunciation for /b/ earlier, so I’m not sure why this is inconsistent.

[@robert48719]

Wow , Home and rain and Fox ones are crazy. To this day in German we say Heim or Heimat to home and Regen to rain, Fuchs (Fux) or Füchse (Fuexe) to fox and foxes which sounds very similar to the protogermanic word. So obviously the German expression didn’t undergo a very great change Also I can see how every single of these words splittend into German and English. Amazing

[@amuthi1]

For german "Heim" [Hochdeutsch] there are changes in dialects like "hoam" [bavarian] or "häm" [palatin] or "hoim" [suebian] mostly used in verbs like "heimgehen" (go home) or "daheim" [at home].

[@Tspetri]

​@@amuthi1Haam in Hessian

[@christophermorgen8505]

Brilliant and fun concept!

[@IkkezzUsedEmber]

Having made a conlang based on west-germanic (and by extension indo-european) etymology, it's fun to see how intuitive guessing these ancestor words is. I knew leap's, and how it's also the precursor to dutch "lopen" but seeing how loud's ancestor is completely different to loud, but still recognizable if you know a bit of etymology is honestly baffling

[@leikind]

also "laufen" in High German

[@martin-rr2ng]

Tooth - in some parts of England and S. Wales the vowel sound is as in RP "good" - it was only when I went to university the other side of the country that I realised I was the odd one out!

[@nsf001-3]

I noticed common words tend to get shorter over time

[@erikplotz183]

ive allways wondered, why words in english have so few syllables

[@KirbyComicsVids]

@@erikplotz183it has more to do with germanic initial stress, and then unstressed syllables being reduced and lots of unstressed final vowels being lost

[@oneofspades]

It can go the other way.

[@Rockypf2]

I've read about a phenomenon (forgot what it's called) acknowledged by linguists covering the topic of reconstructing proto languages. They say words in a language are much more likely to drop features (therefore getting shorter) than to add new features. The logic is that it makes more sense for native speakers to drop a prefix for example than to make something entirely new up out of the blue and add it to a word. Knowing about this phenomenon is useful when comparing words between languages that evolved from the same proto language. If your looking at two similar words from related languages that mean the same thing or have a similar meaning but one is a longer word and the other is shorter, its unlikely that the language with a longer word added a new part to the word. The linguist will generally make the assumption that the language with the shorter word at some point dropped the "missing" feature. Sorry for not giving a specific source, I've come across this information too many times over the years that I tend to lose track of where the info came from. I'm sure Lyle Campbell might have mentioned it in his work. I've read a fair amount of his dictionaries and essays.

[@igorjee]

@@Rockypf2 But how did they get long in the first place?

[@MrTomwazere]

I’ve never seen anything like this before, it’s amazing. Very impressive just to be able to pronounce all the different versions! Not sure how common that skill is but it seems very difficult to me.

[@sandyanarayanswami5708]

Interesting progression of the word "leaf" since I have always understood that the mother of the Norse god Loki, representing fire as well as a trickster character, was called "Laufey", which I saw translated many years ago in the Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology as "The Wooded Isle" but perhaps better as "The Leafy Isle". "Ey" is of course Norse/Icelandic for island. Loki's father Farbauti represents the spark of fire.

[@peter_oso]

Very interesting, good presentation, I hear propoerly

[@wulfgreyhame6857]

I've read that "folk" and its forbears isn't an IE word, the Proto Germanic speakers borrowed it from whoever was living in Northern Europe when they arrived. The IE equivalent would be cognate with "kin" and Latin gens/genus. Don't know if that's true though.

[@fgconnolly4170]

I loved guessing the word at the start and seeing if I was right

[@batteries_sold_seperately]

20:40 I heard that old english had a varient "ih" that is ancestral to modern english "I". I think this makes more sense since the "ch" sound doesn't sound like a sound that is lost as easily as the "h" sound.

[@furyiv]

Hi Simon, thanks for this, could you add those time stamp thingies so we can easily switch back to the start after hearing what the word progressed to? Thanks!

[@frankharr9466]

There are some good surprises in there.

[@Nicodemus1971]

Interesting the earlier pronunciation of ‘Raven’ actually sounds quite similar to Crow. Two words that look so different are basically the same word historically

[@BurnBird1]

What similarities are you seeing?

[@BrightHelix]

except that really weren't the same word historically, at all. Proto-Germanic *hrabnaz (/ˈxrɑβ.nɑz/) vs Proto-Germanic *krēǭ (/ˈkrɛː.ɔ̃ː/)

[@djrbaker1]

Thanks for making knowledge opensource