Grimm's law

JULIA ZHUZHOMA, student

ALLA N. KROKHMAL, Associate Professor, PhD in Pedagogy,
Language Adviser

Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm (4 January 1785 – 20 September 1863), also known
as Ludwig Karl, was a German philologist, jurist, and folklorist. He is known as
the discoverer of Grimm's law of linguistics, the co-author of the
monumental Deutsches Wörterbuch, the author of Deutsche Mythologie, and the
editor of Grimm's Fairy Tales. He was the older brother of Wilhelm Grimm, of the
literary duo the Brothers Grimm.

Grimm's Law defines the relationship between certain stop consonants in

Germanic languages and their originals in Indo-European [IE]; these consonants
underwent shifts that changed the way they are pronounced. This law is also
known as the Germanic Consonant Shift, First Consonant Shift, First Germanic
Sound Shift, and Rask's Rule.
The basic principle of Grimm's law was discovered in the early 19th century by
Danish scholar Rasmus Rask. Soon after, it was outlined in detail by
German philologist Jacob Grimm. What was once a probing theory is now a well-
established law in the field of linguistics.

What Is Grimm's Law?

Grimm's law is a set of rules dictating how a handful of Germanic letters differ
from their Indo-European cognates. Roshan and Tom Mcarthur summarize the
rules within this law as follows: "Grimm's Law holds that unvoiced IE stops
became Germanic unvoiced continuants, that voiced IE stops became Germanic
unvoiced stops, and that unvoiced IE continuants became Germanic voiced stops,"
(Mcarthur and Mcarthur 2005).
Grimm's Law can be considered a chain reaction: aspirated voice stops become
regular voiced stops, voiced stops, in turn, become voiceless stops, and voiceless
stops become fricatives.

According to the law, the ancient unvoiced p, t, k became the English unvoiced f,
th, h and the Old High German f, d, h, producing such correlations as that between
the initial consonants of Greek pod-, English fod, and Old High German fuo. The
law further stated that the ancient voiced b, d, g became the English unvoiced p, t,
k and the Old High German spirant stops f, ts, kh; hence, the correlation between
Latin duo, English “two,” and modern German zwei (pronounced “tsvai”). Also,
the originally voiced bh, dh, gh became the English voiced b, d, g and the Old
High German p, t, k; compare Sanskrit bhárati, English “bear,” and the Upper
German dialects of Old High German ki-peran (later standard German ge-bären).

So, in present-day English we may find the words and morphemes of common
Indo-European origin that differ in sound form from their counterparts in other
languages, but Grimm's law will show their similarity to the words of Indo-
European languages.

Sources:

 Hock, Hans Henrich, and Brian D. Joseph. Language History, Language

Change, and Language Relationship. Walter de Gruyter, 1996.
 Horobin, Simon. How English Became English. Oxford University Press,
2016.
 McArthur, Tom, and Roshan Mcarthur. Concise Oxford Companion to the
English Language. Oxford University Press, 2005.
 Millward, Celia M. A Biography of the English Language. 3rd ed. Cengage
Learning, 2011.