High German subdivides into Upper German (green) and Central German (blue), and is distinguished from Low German (yellow). The main isoglosses, the Benrath and Speyer lines, are marked in black.

In historical linguistics, the High German consonant shift or Second Germanic consonant shift was a phonological development (sound change) which took place in the southern parts of the West Germanic dialect continuum in several phases, probably beginning between the 3rd and 5th centuries AD, and was almost complete before the earliest written records in the High German language were made in the 9th century. The resulting language, Old High German, can neatly be contrasted with the other continental West Germanic languages, which mostly did not experience the shift, and with Old English, which was completely unaffected. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (629x651, 28 KB) Summary Rex Germanus Tesi samanunga is edele unde scona 18:12, 14 May 2006 (UTC) Legend By the High German consonant shift, the map of German dialects is divided into Upper German (green) and Central German (blue), and... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (629x651, 28 KB) Summary Rex Germanus Tesi samanunga is edele unde scona 18:12, 14 May 2006 (UTC) Legend By the High German consonant shift, the map of German dialects is divided into Upper German (green) and Central German (blue), and... In German linguistics, the Benrath line (German: Benrather Linie), jokingly also called the Weißwurstäquator, is an isogloss, or bundle of isoglosses, marking the border between the Northern Low German dialects and the High and Central German dialects in the south. ... In German linguistics, the Speyer line is an isogloss separating the dialects to the north, which have a geminated stop in words like Appel apple, from the dialects to the south (including standard German), which have an affricate: Apfel. ... Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time. ... Sound change or phonetic change is a historical process of language change consisting in the replacement of one speech sound or, more generally, one phonetic feature by another in a given phonological environment. ... West Germanic is the largest branch of the Germanic family of languages, including such languages as English, Dutch, and German. ... The term Old High German (OHG, German: Althochdeutsch) refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. ... Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon) is an early form of the English language that was spoken in parts of what is now England and southern Scotland between the mid-fifth century and the mid-twelfth century. ...

General description

The High German consonant shift altered a number of consonants in the Southern German dialects, and thus also in modern Standard German, and so explains why many German words have different consonants from the obviously related words in English. Briefly, there are four thrusts which may be thought of as four successive phases:

1. Germanic voiceless stops became fricatives in certain phonetic environments (English ship maps to German Schiff);
2. The same sounds became affricates in other positions (apple : Apfel);
3. Voiced stops became voiceless (door : Tür); and
4. /θ/ became /d/ (this : dies).

This phenomenon is known as the "High German" consonant shift because it affects the High German dialects (i.e. those of the mountainous south), principally the Upper German dialects, though in part it also affects the Central German dialects. However the fourth phase also included Low German and Dutch. It is also known as the "second Germanic" consonant shift to distinguish it from the "(first) Germanic consonant shift" as defined by Grimm's law and the refinement of this known as Verner's law. Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... A stop or plosive or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... Affricate consonants begin as stops (most often an alveolar, such as or ) but release as a fricative (such as or or, in a couple of languages, into a fricative trill) rather than directly into the following vowel. ... Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... Some basics of Germanic linguistics : in linguistics, German and Germanic do not have the same meaning: see Germanic. ... Central German (in German: Mitteldeutsch) is a group of German dialects spread from the Rhineland to Thuringia, south of Low German and north of Upper German. ... Low German (also called Plattdeutsch, Plattdüütsch or Low Saxon) is a name for the regional language varieties of the West Germanic languages spoken mainly in Northern Germany where it is officially called Niederdeutsch (Low German), and in Eastern Netherlands where it is officially called Nedersaksisch (Low Saxon). Low refers... Grimms law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift) is a set of statements describing the inherited Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stops as they developed in Proto-Germanic (PGmc, the common ancestor of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family) sometime in the 1st millennium BC. It... It has been suggested that Grammatischer Wechsel be merged into this article or section. ...

The High German consonant shift did not occur in a single movement, but rather, as a series of waves over several centuries. The geographical extent of these waves varies. They all appear in the southernmost dialects, and spread northwards to differing degrees, giving the impression of a series of pulses of varying force emanating from what is now Austria and Switzerland. While some are found only in the southern parts of Alemannic (which includes Swiss German) or Bavarian (which includes Austrian), most are found throughout the Upper German area, and some spread on into the Central German dialects. Indeed, Central German is often defined as the area between the Appel/Apfel and the Dorp/Dorf boundaries. The shift þ→d was more successful; it spread all the way to the North Sea and affected Dutch as well as German. Most, but not all of these changes have become part of modern Standard German.

Note that the geographical boundary between two varieties of a word is called an isogloss. Isoglosses on the Faroe Islands An isogloss is the geographical boundary of a certain linguistic feature, e. ...

Overview table

The effects of the shift are most obvious for the non-specialist when we compare Modern German lexemes containing shifted consonants with their Modern English or Dutch unshifted equivalents. The following overview table is arranged according to the original Proto-Indo-European phonemes. (G=Grimm's law; V=Verner's law) The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages. ... Grimms law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift) is a set of statements describing the inherited Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stops as they developed in Proto-Germanic (PGmc, the common ancestor of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family) sometime in the 1st millennium BC. It... It has been suggested that Grammatischer Wechsel be merged into this article or section. ...

(Notes: ¹ Kopf originally meant "cup", but in Modern German means "head". ² Old High German scarph, Middle High German scharpf. ³ Old High German ezzen, daz, ūz. ⁴ Note that in modern German <z> is pronounced /ts/. ⁵ Old English ic, "I". ⁶ Old English fæder, "father"; English has shifted d→th in OE words ending in -der).

The four phases in detail

Phase 1

The first phase, which affected the whole of the High German area, has been dated as early as the fourth century, though this is highly debated. The first certain examples of the shift are from Edictus Rothari (a. 643, oldest extant manuscript after 650). According to most scholars, the Pre-Old High German Runic inscriptions of about a. 600 show no convincing trace of the consonant shift.^{[citation needed]} It saw the voiceless stops become geminated fricatives intervocalically, or single fricatives postvocalically in final position. Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ...

p→ff or final f

t→zz (later German ss) or final z (s)

k→hh (later German ch)

Note: In these OHG words, <z> stands for a voiceless fricative that is distinct somehow from <s>. The exact nature of the distinction is unknown; possibly <s> was apical while <z> was laminal. An apical consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the apex of the tongue (i. ... A laminal consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, which is the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue. ...

Examples:

Old English slǣpan : Old High German slāfan (English sleep, Dutch slapen, German schlafen)

OE strǣt : OHG strāzza (English street, Dutch straat, German Straße)

OE rīce : OHG rīhhi (English rich, Dutch rijk, German reich)

Note that the first phase did not affect geminate stops in words like *appul "apple" or *katta "cat", nor did it affect stops after other consonants, as in words like *scarp "sharp" or *hert "heart", where another consonant falls between the vowel and the stop. These remained unshifted until the second phase.

Phase 2

The second phase, which was completed by the eighth century and concentrated on the Upper German area, saw the same sounds become affricates in initial position, when geminated, and when following a liquid consonant (l or r). An affricate is a consonant that begins like a stop (most often an alveovelar, such as [t] or [d]) and that doesnt have a release of its own, but opens directly into a fricative (or, in one language, into a trill). ... Liquid consonants, or liquids, are approximant consonants that are not classified as semivowels (glides) because they do not correspond phonetically to specific vowels (in the way that, for example, the initial in English yes corresponds to ). The class of liquids can be divided into lateral liquids and rhotics. ...

p→pf (also spelled <ph> in OHG; after a liquid this later became f)

t→tz (in Modern German often spelled <z> and pronounced /ts/)

k→kch (pronounced /kx/; this step has not been completed by standard German).

The Southern Austro-Bavarian dialects of Tyrol is the only dialect where the affricate /kx/ has developed in all positions. In High Alemannic, only the geminate has developed into an affricate, whereas in the other positions, /k/ has become /x/. However, there is initial /kx/ in modern High Alemannic as well, since it is used for any k in loanwords, for instance [kxariˈb̥ikx], and since /kx/ is a possible consonant cluster, for instance in Gchnorz [kxno(ː)rts] 'laborious work', from the verb chnorze. Southern Austro-Bavarian is a term describing Germanic dialects which are part of the Austro-Bavarian group. ... Coat of arms of Tyrol: *[1] The Tyrol is a historical region in Western Central Europe, which includes the Austrian state of Tyrol (consisting of North Tyrol and East Tyrol) and the Italian regions known as the South Tyrol and Trentino. ... High Alemannic is a branch of Alemannic dialects and belongs to the German language, even though they are only partly intelligible to German speakers. ... In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. ... It has been suggested that Verbal agreement be merged into this article or section. ...

Examples:

OE æppel : OHG aphul (English apple, Dutch appel, German Apfel)

OE scearp : OHG scarpf (English sharp, Dutch scherp, German scharf)

OE catt : OHG kazza (English cat, Dutch kat, German Katze)

OE tam : OHG zam (English tame, Dutch tam, German zahm)

OE liccian : OHG lecchōn (English to lick, Dutch likken, German lecken, High Alemannic schlecke/schläcke /ʃlɛkxə, ʃlækxə/)

OE weorc : OHG werk or werch (English work, Dutch werk, German Werk, High Alemannic Werch/Wärch)

In the following combinations, however, the shift did not take place: sp, st, sk, ft, ht, tr.

OE spearwa : OHG sparo (English sparrow, Dutch spreeuw, German Sperling)

OE mæst : OHG mast (English mast, Dutch mast, German Mast[baum])

OE niht : OHG naht (English night, Dutch nacht, German Nacht)

OE trēowe : OHG [ge]triuwi (English true, Dutch (ge) trouw, German treu "faithful")

Phase 3

The third phase, which had the most limited geographical range, saw the voiced stops become voiceless.

b→p

d→t

g→k

Of these, only the dental shift d→t finds its way into standard German. The others are restricted to Swiss German, and to Austrian and Bavarian dialects. This shift must have begun after the first and second phases ceased to be productive, or else the resulting voiceless stops would have shifted further to fricatives and affricatives. We are therefore thinking of the 8th or 9th century.

It is interesting that in those words in which an Indo-European voiceless stop became voiced as a result of Verner's law, phase three of the High German shift returns this to its original value:

PIE *māh₂ter- → Germanic *mōder → German Mutter

Examples:

OE dōn : OHG tuon (English do, Dutch doen, German tun)

OE mōdor : OHG muotar (English mother, Dutch moeder, German Mutter)

OE rēad : OHG rōt (English red, Dutch rood, German rot)

OE biddan : OHG bitten or pitten (English bid, Dutch bieden, German bitten, Bavarian pitten)

It is likely that pizza is an early Italian borrowing of OHG (Bavarian dialect) pizzo, a shifted variant of bizzo (German Bissen, "bite, snack").^[1]

Phase 4

Finally, the fourth phase shifted þ→d. This differs from the other phases in that it affects a single consonant rather than a group of three in parallel. It is also distinctive in that affects Low German and Dutch. For this reason some authorities bracket it separately from the High German consonant shift, though most see it in the same context. This shift must have begun after the third phase ceased to be productive, or else the resulting d would have shifted further to t.

This phase is precisely datable, beginning in the south in the 9th century and reaching Low German in the 10th, as the history of literacy in Old High German began before the fourth phase was completed. Thus early Old High German texts often show þ where classical OHG shows d. A particularly famous example, due to its striking semantic shift, is early OHG thiorna (virgin) → Modern German Dirne (whore). Further examples:

early OHG thaz → classical OHG daz (English that, Dutch dat, German das)

early OHG thenken → classical OHG denken (English think, Dutch denken, German denken)

early OHG thegan → classical OHG degan (English thane, Dutch degen, German Degen, "warrior")

early OHG thurstag → classical OHG durstac (English thirsty, Dutch dorstig, German durstig)

early OHG bruather → classical OHG bruoder (English brother, Dutch broeder, German Bruder)

early OHG munth → classical OHG mund (English mouth, Dutch mond, German Mund)

early OHG thou → classical OHG du (English thou, German du, Old Dutch thu)

In dialects affected by phase 4 but not by the dental variety of phase 3, that is, Low German, Central German and Dutch, two Germanic phonemes merged: þ becomes d, but original Germanic d remains unchanged. One consequence of this is that there is no dental variety of Grammatischer Wechsel in Middle Dutch. In historical linguistics, the German term Grammatischer Wechsel (grammatical alternation) refers to the effects of Verners law when viewed synchronically within the paradigm of a Germanic verb. ... Linguistically speaking, Middle Dutch is no more than a collective name for closely related languages or dialects which were spoken and written between about 1150 and 1500 in the present-day Dutch-speaking region. ...

Chronology

Since, apart from þ→d, the High German consonant shift took place before the beginning of writing of Old High German in the 9th century, the dating of the various phases is an uncertain business. The estimates quoted here are mostly taken from the dtv-Atlas zur deutschen Sprache (p.63). Different estimates appear elsewhere, for example Waterman, who asserts that the first three phases occurred fairly close together and were complete in Alemannic territory by 600, taking another two or three centuries to spread north. The term Old High German (OHG, German: Althochdeutsch) refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. ... As a means of recording the passage of time the 9th century was that century that lasted from 801 to 900. ... The population of the Earth rises to about 208 million people. ...

Sometimes historical constellations help us; for example, the fact that Attila is called Etzel in German proves that the second phase must have been productive after the Hunnish invasion of the 5th century. The fact that many Latin loan-words are shifted in German (e.g. Latin strata→German Straße), while others are not (e.g. Latin poena→German Pein) allows us to date the sound changes before or after the likely period of borrowing. However the most useful source of chronological data is German words cited in Latin texts of the late classical and early mediaeval period. Attila (AD 406 - 453), also known as Attila the Hun was Khan of the Hun people from 434 until his death and leader of the Hunnic Empire. ... Europe in 450 The 5th century is the period from 401 - 500 in accordance with the Julian calendar in the Christian Era. ...

Precise dating would in any case be difficult since each shift may have begun with one word or a group of words in the speech of one locality, and gradually extended by lexical diffusion to all words with the same phonological pattern, and then over a longer period of time spread to wider geographical areas. Lexical diffusion is the theory that sound change originates in a single word or a small group of words and then spreads by analogy to other words with a similar phonological make-up, but may not spread to all words in which it potentially could apply. ...

However, relative chronology for phases 2, 3 and 4 can easily be established by the observation that t→tz must precede d→t, which in turn must precede þ→d; otherwise words with an original þ could have undergone all three shifts and ended up as tz. The phenomenon that an early phase of a sound shift leaves a gap (in this case voiceless stops) which a later phase then fills by means of a chain shift is familiar enough; Grimm's law proceeds in a similar sequence. In the study of phonetic changes, a chain shift is a type of sound shift in which a group of sounds all change at about the same time, with some sounds taking the place of others. ...

Alternative chronologies have been proposed. According to a not widely accepted theory by the German linguist Theo Vennemann, the consonant shift occurred much earlier and was already completed in the early 1st century BC.^[2] Based on that, he subdivides the Germanic languages into High Germanic and Low Germanic. Theo Vennemann genannt Nierfeld (May 27, 1937 - ) is a German linguist known best for his work on historical linguistics. ...

Geographical distribution

Roughly, one may say that the changes resulting from phase 1 affected Upper and Central German, those from phase 2 and 3 only Upper German, and those from phase 4 the entire German and Dutch-speaking region. The generally-accepted boundary between Central and Low German, the maken-machen line, is sometimes called the Benrath line, as it passes through the Düsseldorf suburb of Benrath, while the main boundary between Central and Upper German, the Appel-Apfel line can be called the Speyer line, as it passes near the town of Speyer, some 200 kilometers further south. The Uerdingen Line is the isogloss within West Germanic languages, that separates the linguistic forms that use the word ich or similar words rather than ik as the word for I. The Uerdingen line is presently in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. ... The following article is largely translated from portions of the German-language article on Uerdingen, a borough (and formerly independent municipality) of the German city of Krefeld. ... In German linguistics, the Benrath line (German: Benrather Linie), jokingly also called the Weißwurstäquator, is an isogloss, or bundle of isoglosses, marking the border between the Northern Low German dialects and the High and Central German dialects in the south. ... Kölsch is a very closely related small set of dialects, or variants, of the Ripuarian Middle German group of languages. ... This article describes the language. ... Bad Honnef seen from the Drachenfels Bad Honnef is a spa town in Germany near Bonn in the Rhein-Sieg district, North Rhine-Westphalia. ... With eighteen million inhabitants inhabiting 34,080 km² in western-northwestern Germany, North Rhine-Westphalia (German Nordrhein-Westfalen) is largest in population though only fourth in area among Germanys sixteen federal states. ... Rhineland-Palatinate (German Rheinland-Pfalz) is one of 16 Bundesländer of Germany. ... This article is about Linz am Rhein in Germany. ... Bad Hönningen is a town and a municipality in the district of Neuwied, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. ... In German linguistics, the Boppard Line is an isogloss separating the dialects to the north, which have an /f/ is the words Korf basket, from the dialects to the south (including standard German), which have an /b/: Korb. ... Boppard (Latin: Baudobriga) is a town in the Rhein-Hunsrück district, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. ... In German linguistics, the Sankt Goar Line is an isogloss separating the dialects to the north, which have a /t/ is the words dat that and wat what, from the dialects to the south (including standard German), which have an /s/: das, was. ... Sankt Goar am Rhein is a town in the German federal state of Rheinland-Pfalz (Rhenish Palatinate). ... A typical view of the Hunsrück countryside. ... In German linguistics, the Speyer line is an isogloss separating the dialects to the north, which have a geminated stop in words like Appel apple, from the dialects to the south (including standard German), which have an affricate: Apfel. ... Map showing the position of the Main in Germany The Main (pronounced in German like the English word mine) is a river in Germany, 524 km long (including White Main 574 km), and one of the more significant tributaries of the Rhine river. ... In German linguistics, the Benrath line (German: Benrather Linie), jokingly also called the Weißwurstäquator, is an isogloss, or bundle of isoglosses, marking the border between the Northern Low German dialects and the High and Central German dialects in the south. ... Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and (together with Cologne and the Ruhr Area) the economic center of Western Germany. ... Schloss Benrath is a Rococo maison de plaisance near Düsseldorf that was erected for the Elector Palatine Palatine Carl Theodor von der Pfalz by his garden and building director and garden survisor, Nicolas de Pigage (1723 - 1796). ... In German linguistics, the Speyer line is an isogloss separating the dialects to the north, which have a geminated stop in words like Appel apple, from the dialects to the south (including standard German), which have an affricate: Apfel. ... Speyer (English formerly Spires) is a city in Germany (Rhineland-Palatinate) with approx. ...

However, a precise description of the geographical extent of the changes is far more complex. Not only do the individual sound shifts within a phase vary in their distribution (phase 3, for example, partly affects the whole of Upper German and partly only the southernmost dialects within Upper German), but there are even slight variations from word to word in the distribution of the same consonant shift. For example, the ik-ich line lies further north than the maken-machen line, although both demonstrate the same shift /k/→/x/. Furthermore, the exact line can move over a period of time. Since German reunification, a northward movement of the eastern end of the Benrath line has been observed. The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (-_-)East Germany(-_-) German reunification (German: ) took place on October 3, 1990, when the areas of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR, in English commonly called East Germany) were incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG...

The subdivision of West Central German into a series of dialects according to the differing extent of the phase 1 shifts is particularly pronounced. This is known in German as the Rheinischer Fächer ("Rhenish fan"), because on the map of dialect boundaries the lines form a fan shape. Here, no fewer than eight isoglosses run roughly West to East, partially merging into a simpler system of boundaries in East Central German. The table on the right lists these isoglosses (bold) and the main resulting dialects (italics), arranged from north to south.

For a map of the boundaries of a number of key sounds, see these external links:
General map
Rheinischer Fächer

Lombardic

Some of the consonant shifts resulting from the second and third phases appear also to be observable in Lombardic, the early mediaeval Germanic language of northern Italy, which is preserved in runic fragments of the late 6th and early 7th centuries. Unfortunately, the Lombardic records are not sufficient to allow a complete taxonomy of the language. It is therefore uncertain whether the language experienced the full shift or merely sporadic reflexes, but b→p is clearly attested. This may mean that the shift began in Italy, or that it spread southwards as well as northwards. Ernst Schwarz and others have suggested that the shift occurred in German as a result of contacts with Lombardic. If in fact there is a relationship here, the evidence of Lombardic would force us to conclude that the third phase must have begun by the late 6th century, rather earlier than most estimates, but this would not necessarily require that it had spread to German so early. Lombardic or Langobardic is the extinct language of the Lombards (Langobardi), the Germanic speaking settlers in Italy in the 6th century. ...

If, as some scholars believe, Lombardic was an East Germanic language and not part of the German language dialect continuum, it is possible that parallel shifts took place independently in German and Lombardic. However the extant words in Lombardic show clear relations to Bavarian. Therefore Werner Betz and others prefer to treat Lombardic as an Old High German dialect. There were close connections between Lombards and Proto-Bavarians: the Lombards settled until 568 in 'Tullner Feld' (about 50 km west of Vienna); some Lombard graves (excavated a few years ago when a new railway line was built) date after 568; evidently not all Lombards went to Italy in 568. The rest seem to have become part of the then newly formed Bavarian groups. The East Germanic languages are a group of extinct Indo-European languages in the Germanic family. ...

When Columban came to the Alamanni at Lake Constance shortly after 600, he made barrels burst, called cupa (English cup, German Kufe), according to Jonas of Bobbio (before 650) in Lombardy. This shows that in the time of Columban the shift from p to f had occurred neither in Alemannic nor in Lombardic. But Edictus Rothari (643; extant manuscript after 650; see above) attests the forms grapworf (throwing a corpse out of the grave, German Wurf and Grab), marhworf (a horse, OHG marh, throws the rider off), and many similar shifted examples. So it is best to see the consonant shift as a common Lombardic - Bavarian - Alemannic shift between 620 and 640, when these tribes had plenty of contact.

Hypothesis of Gothic origins (phase 4)

In 1955, Otto Höfler,^[3] suggested that a change analogous to the fourth phase of the High German consonant shift may have taken place in Gothic (East Germanic) as early as the third century AD, and he hypothesised that it may have spread from Gothic to High German as a result of the Visigothic migrations westward (c. 375-500 AD). This has not found wide resonance; the modern consensus is that Höfler misinterpreted some sound substitutions of Romanic languages as Germanic, and that East Germanic shows no sign of the second consonant shift. Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. ... Migrations The Visigoths were one of two main branches of the Goths, an East Germanic tribe (the Ostrogoths being the other). ...

Sample texts

As an example of the effects of the shift one may compare the following texts from the later Middle Ages, on the left a Middle Low German citation from the Sachsenspiegel (1220), which does not show the shift, and on the right the same text from the Middle High German Deutschenspiegel (1274), which shows the shifted consonants; both are standard legal texts of the period. The Middle Low German language is an ancestor of the modern Low German language, and was spoken from about 1100 to 1500. ... // Introduction The Sachsenspiegel (alt: Sassenspegel) is the most important law book and legal code of the German medieval age. ... Middle High German (MHG, German Mittelhochdeutsch) is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. ...

(Translations:

Sachsenspiegel: "The man is also guardian of his wife / as soon as she is married to him. / The wife is also the man's companion / as soon as she goes to his bed / After the man's death she is free of the man's rights."

Deutschenspiegel: "The man is also guardian of his wife / as soon as she is married to him. / The wife is also the man's companion / as soon as she goes to his bed. / according to a man's rights.")

References

1. ^ Manlio & Michele Cortelazzo, L'etimologico minore 2003, p. 929f.
2. ^ Vennemann, Theo (1994): "Dating the division between High and Low Germanic. A summary of arguments". In: Mørck, E./Swan, T./Jansen, O.J. (eds.): Language change and language structure. Older Germanic languages in a comparative perspective. Berlin/New York: 271-303.
3. ^ Otto Höfler, 'Die zweite Lautverschiebung bei Ostgermanen und Westgermanen' Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 77 (Tübingen 1955)

Sources

• The table of isoglosses is adapted from Rheinischer Fächer on the German Wikipedia.
• The sample texts have been copied over from Lautverschiebung on the German Wikipedia.
• Dates of sound shifts are taken from the dtv-Atlas zur deutschen Sprache (p.63).
• Waterman, John C. [1966] (1991). A History of the German Language, Revised edition 1976 (in English), Long Grove IL: Waveland Press Inc. (by arrangement with University of Washington Press), 284. ISBN 0-88133-590-8. 
• Friedrich Kluge (revised Elmar Seebold), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache 24th edition 2002.
• Paul/Wiehl/Grosse, Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik, 23rd ed, Tübingen 1989, 114-22.
• Philippe Marcq & Thérèse Robin, Linguistique historique de l'allemand, Paris, 1997.
• Robert S. P. Beekes, Vergelijkende taalwetenschap, Utrecht, 1990.