View source for High German Consonant Shift

The '''High German Consonant Shift''' or the '''Second German Consonant shift''' was a series of sound changes which separates the '''Upper High German''' dialects from other West Germanic languages such as [[Modern English]], [[Dutch]], and [[Low German]].  There are four major steps of this sound shift, and then there are other shifts which separate '''[[High German]]''' from other languages.

=The Phases of the Shift=
The 4 stages of the shift could be defined as follows:
# Non-geminated voicless [[Stop|stops]] became [[Fricative|fricatives]],
# Geminated, [[Nasal|nasal]]-adjacent and [[Liquid|liquid]]-adjacent voiceless [[Stop|stops]] became [[Affricate|affricates]],
# Voiced stops became voiceless stops, and finally
# All interdental fricatives (/[[Voiced dental fricative|ð]]/ and /[[Voiceless dental fricative|θ]]/) became the dental stop and/or Alveolar stop /[[Voiced dental stop|d̻]]/ and /[[Voiced alveolar stop|d]]/. <br>
The last stage was shared by [[Low German]] and [[Dutch]].

The shift occured in the period before [[Old High German]] existed, and in fact was the marker of Old High German.

==Phase 1==
The first stage is where the three voiceless stops, when not in the cases of phase 2, became weakened into the closest fricative equivalents.  This means:
* /p/ → /f/
* /t/ → /s/
* /k/ → /x/

The [[Old High German]] forms of these are not always spelt the same way.  The spelling for /'''f'''/ was <'''ff'''> or <'''f'''>, /'''s'''/ is <'''zz'''> or <'''z'''>, and /'''x'''/ was commonly <'''hh'''>.  The first one was retained into New [[High German]], but <'''zz'''> became <'''ss'''> and <'''hh'''> became <'''ch'''>.

==Phase 2==
The second stage of the shift involved the same voiceless stops as the first stage.  However, this only affected geminated, liquid-adjacent and nasal-adjacent forms.  Those stops became Affricates rather than fricatives in this part of the shift.  This has several reasons.  For Geminated sounds, the first sound would remain unshifted, but the second part would go through the first shift, resulting in an affricate.  Nasals for one, are actually partially stops themselves, resulting in a pattern to the Geminated ones.  The sound shift is as follows:
* /p/ → /pf/
* /t/ → /ʦ/
* /k/ → /kx/

The first two are common in standard [[High German]], however, the third one only occurs in the [[Upper German]] dialects.  In [[Old High German]] the first affricate was spelt <'''ph'''> (Modern '''pf''') and the second was spelt <'''z'''> or <'''tz'''> which is the same as the modern forms.

There are exceptions to this rule, especially when these sounds were combined with others, such as '''st''', '''sp''', '''sk''' (which became '''sch'''), '''ht''' (which becomes '''cht'''), '''ft''', and '''tr'''.

==Phase 3==
The third part of the stage involves the Voiced stops becoming voiceless stops.  This involves the following:
* /b/ → /p/
* /d/ → /t/
* /g/ → /k/

Unfortunately the only part of this shift which made it into standard [[High German]] was the shift of '''/d/ → /t/'''.  The other forms of this shift do exist in the '''Upper German''' dialects, as well as in [[Pennsylvania German]].
==Phase 4==

But in replacing the lost /d/ sounds, the fourth part of the shift involved the inter-dental sounds /ð/ and /θ/ becoming /d/.  This is occurs in all forms of German including [[Low German]] and [[Dutch]].  This shift occurred in the three major [[North Germanic]] languages: [[Norwegian]], [[Swedish]], and [[Danish]].  Because this part occurred in the other forms of German, it is sometimes not included in the '''High German Consonant Shift'''.  It would look as follows:
*þ/ð→d
**/θ/→/d/
**/ð/→/d/

This shift did not happen in [[Anglo-Saxon]], thus resulting in [[Modern English]] having it, and [[Old Norse]], although the decedents of the latter did have this shift. [[Icelandic]] is one of the larger spoken languages, decended from '''Old Norse''' which did not have this shift and today still has the symbols '''þ/ð'''.

==Examples of the Shift==

=Other shifts=

==Labio-shift==
The labio-dental fricative /v/, written '''f''' and/or '''v''' in the original Germanic languages became /b/, '''b''', in High German.  Some of the dialects of [[Low German]] and [[Dutch]] have this shift, but it's mostly in [[High German]] and its '''Upper German''' forms.


==The /s/ shift==
This was the shift of the alveolar fricative of /s/ to /ʃ/ when the /s/ was in front of other consonants in combinations such as '''sp''', '''st''', '''sl''' (which often becomes '''schl'''), '''sr''' (which often becomes '''schr'''), '''sw''', amongst others.

All other /s/ sounds became /z/s before vowels.

==Examples of the Other Shifts==
{| class="bluetable {{{1}}}" border="1" cellpadding="2"
|-
| ||colspan="2" align="center"| /v/→/b/ ||colspan="2" align="center"| /s/→/ʃ/
|-
| High German || haben || halb || Schlafen || Schwein
|-
| Dutch  || hebben || half || slapen || Zwijn
|-
| English  || Have || half || sleep || Swine
|-
| Low German || hebben || haulf || slapen || Swien
|}

=Sources=
=Translations=
[[Category:Sound changes]]