Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law

The sequence -nh- had already undergone a similar

change in late Proto-Germanic several hundred years ear-
lier, and affected all Germanic languages, not only the
Ingvaeonic subgroup. The result of this change was the
same: a long nasal vowel. However, the nasalization in
this earlier case did not cause rounding of nasal /ɑ̃ ː/ in Old
Saxon, which instead became simple /ɑː/, while the later
Ingvaeonic spirant law resulted in /oː/. In Old English and
Old Frisian, rounding occurred here as well, giving /oː/ in
both cases.

2 Examples
Compare the first person plural pronoun “us” in various
old Germanic languages:

The distribution of the primary Germanic dialect groups in

Europe in around AD 1:
North Germanic
Gothic represents East Germanic, and its correspon-
North Sea Germanic, or Ingvaeonic dence to German and Standard Dutch shows it retains
Weser-Rhine Germanic, or Istvaeonic the more conservative form. The /n/ has disappeared in
Elbe Germanic, or Irminonic English, Frisian, Low German, and dialectal Dutch with
East Germanic compensatory lengthening of the /u/. This phenomenon
is therefore observable throughout the “Ingvaeonic” lan-
guages. It does not affect High German, East Germanic
In historical linguistics, the Ingvaeonic nasal spi- or North Germanic.
rant law (also called the Anglo-Frisian or North Likewise:
Sea Germanic nasal spirant law) is a description
of a phonological development that occurred in the
Ingvaeonic dialects of the West Germanic languages. • Germanic *tanþs > English tooth, North Frisian tôs,
This includes Old English, Old Frisian, and Old Saxon, toss (vs. Low German Tähn, Dutch, Danish, and
and to a small degree Old Dutch (Old Low Franconian). Swedish tand, German Zahn, Icelandic tönn).

• Germanic *anþeraz > English other, Ice-

1 Overview
The sound change affected sequences of vowel + nasal
consonant + fricative consonant. (“Spirant” is an older
term for “fricative”.) The sequences in question are -ns-,
-mf-, and -nþ-, preceded by any vowel. The nasal con-
sonant disappeared, sometimes causing nasalization and
compensatory lengthening of the vowel before it. The
nasalization disappeared relatively soon after, but it was
retained long enough to prevent Anglo-Frisian brighten-
ing of /ɑː/ to /æː/. The resulting long nasalized vowel /ɑ̃ ː/
was rounded to /oː/ in most languages under various cir-
cumstances.
landic aðrir, West Frisian oar, West Flemish
(Frans-Vlaams) aajer, Old Saxon ōðar, āthar
(vs. Low German anner, German/Dutch an-
der [þ > d], Icelandic: annað/annar/önnur,
Swedish annat/annan/andre/andra, Danish an-
den/andet/andre).
• Germanic *gans > English goose, West Frisian goes,
guos, Low German Goos, Faroese gás, Danish and
Swedish gås (vs. Dutch gans, German Gans).
• Germanic *fimf > English five, West Frisian fiif,
East Frisian fieuw, Dutch vijf, Low German fiev,
fief (vs. German fünf, Icelandic fimm, Danish and
Swedish fem).

1
2 6
• Germanic *samftō, -ijaz > English soft, West Frisian
sêft, Low German sacht, Dutch zacht [ft > xt] (vs.
German sanft).
3 English
English shows the results of the shift consistently through-
out its repertoire of native lexemes. One consequence of
this is that English has very few words ending in -nth;
those that exist must have entered the vocabulary subse-
quent to the productive period of the nasal spirant law:
• month - derives from Old English monaþ (cf. Ger-
man Monat); the intervening vowel rendered the law
inapplicable here.
• tenth - from Middle English tenthe. The origi-
nal Germanic *tehundô, which was regularised to
*tehunþô in early Ingvaeonic, was affected by the
law, producing Old English teogoþa, tēoþa (Modern
English tithe). But the force of analogy with the car- 5 German
dinal number ten caused Middle English speakers to
recreate the regular ordinal and re-insert the nasal The spirant law was originally active in Central Franco-
consonant.
• plinth - a loanword in Modern English from Greek entirely restricted to Ingvaeonic. Compare for example
(πλίνθος “brick, tile”).
Likewise, the rare occurrences of the combinations -nf-,
-mf- and -ns- have similar explanations.
• answer - originally had an intervening dental: Old
English andswaru.
• unfair - the prefix un- is still productive.
4 Dutch
Although Dutch is based mostly on the Hollandic dialects,
which in turn were influenced by Frisian, it was also heav-
ily influenced by the Brabantian dialect which tends not
to show a shift. As a result, the shift is generally not
applied but is still applied to some words. For example
Dutch vijf vs. German fünf, zacht vs. sanft. Coastal di-
alects of Dutch tend to have more examples, e.g. standard
Dutch mond “mouth” vs. Hollandic mui (earlier muide)
“slit between sandbanks where tidal streams flow into”.
Brabantian dialects tend to have fewer examples, having
unshifted examples in a few cases where standard Dutch
has the shift, as in the toponym Zonderwijk (Veldhoven)
which is cognate to standard Dutch zuid “south”.
(Original) Met uitzondering van brocht >
bracht kan mogelijke invloed van de noordoost-
elijke dialecten hier niet ingeroepen worden,
want die vertoonden ook vrij veel ingweoonse
REFERENCES
trekken. Gedacht dient te worden aan een ge-
bied zonder ingweoonse kenmerken en in het
licht van de immigratiestromen in die tijd ligt
dan veeleer Brabantse invloed voor de hand.
(Translation) “Except for brocht > bracht
“brought”, the possible influence of the north-
eastern dialects [Low Saxon] cannot be cited
as evidence, since they also show quite a lot of
ingvaeonic traits. One must instead think of a
region without ingvaeonic traits, and given the
direction of immigration of that time [into Hol-
land’s larger southern cities following the fall
of Antwerp in 1585], Brabantine influence is a
straightforward explanation.”
— Johan Taeldeman, “De opbouw van het
AN: meer zuidelijke dan oostelijke impulsen”,
in Tijdschrift voor de Nederlandse Taal- en
Letterkunde, deel 123 (2007), afl. 2, p. 104.
nian dialects of High German, a proof that it was not
Luxembourgish eis (“us”), Gaus (“goose”, now archaic).
Modern Standard German is based more on eastern va-
rieties which are not affected by the shift. The standard
language does, however, contain a number of Low Ger-
man borrowings with it. For example Süden (“south”),
sacht (“soft, gentle”) alongside native sanft.
6 References
• Bremmer Jr, Rolf H. An Introduction to Old Frisian.
History, Grammar, Reader, Glossary. (Amsterdam
and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2009.)
• Markey, Thomas L. Germanic dialect grouping and
the position of Ingvæonic.(Inst. f. Sprachwis-
senschaft d. Univ. Innsbruck, 1976.) ISBN 3-
85124-529-6
• Ringe, Donald R. and Taylor, Ann (2014). The De-
velopment of Old English - A Linguistic History of
English, vol. II, 632p. ISBN 978-0199207848. Ox-
ford.
 3

7 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

7.1 Text
• Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingvaeonic_nasal_spirant_law?oldid=714279385 Contributors:
Rmhermen, Edward, DopefishJustin, Branddobbe, Tomchiukc, Benwing, Rich Farmbrough, Dbachmann, Kbh3rd, Kwamikagami, Ish
ishwar, Angr, Swiftblade21, Maartenvdbent, Doric Loon, Rjwilmsi, YurikBot, Ptcamn, Hayden120, Sardanaphalus, SmackBot, Yam-
aguchi , Enkyklios, Mike hayes, Joseph Solis in Australia, RokasT~enwiki, CapitalR, Stifynsemons, Thijs!bot, Flibjib8, Magioladitis,
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7.2 Images
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1.png License: CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 Contributors: Based on Germanic Groups ca. 0CE.jpg by Varoon Arya (source used is König,
Werner (2001). dtv-Atlas Deutsche Sprache. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag 2001. ISBN: 3-423-03025-9; pp. 46, 52.). Addi-
tionally, corrections have been made (e.g. North Germanic spoken on the island of Zealand, rather than East Germanic). Original artist:
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