Protogermanic

[HorusLupercal]

Reconstruction of long dead languages has been going on for a while in the linguistic field. I never complete much study in that (I was an anthropology major for a while in college) i'm not sure how they do it, but even an almost mythical language like indo-european (theoretical origininator of that family of languages) are being "reconstructed"

Edit: celtic must be even harder as very few celtic languages exist today and some groups of that language family are completely extinct (gaulish for example)

[Elmetiacos]

No, proto-Germanic is much tougher work: contrary to popular belief that "the ancient Celts wrote nothing down" there is a corpus of written Gaulish and Celtiberian... nowhere near what there is for Latin, Greek or Akkadian but still enough to be helpful.

[gamegeek2]

Ask blitzkrieg80 for more, he's an expert. I know some stuff about linguistics...blitz did EB "Germanic Indo-European" (as he calls it) based on Proto-Indo-European words fed through the first two phases of the germanic sound shift (according to Grimm's law). "PG" is what I will use to represent Proto-Germanic; *EB will represent EB Germanic Indo-European.

The first phase of the sound shift is voiceless stops becoming voiceless fricatives. After an "s," this doesn't apply. However, "sk" becomes "sh" later in some Germanic languages (example Old English scitte, "dung" becomes English shit)

p > f; English fish, PG *fiskaz, EB *fiskoz; PIE *pisk
t > þ; English three, PG *þriz, EB *þreiz; PIE *treies
k > **x; English heart, PG *xartan, EB *xardom; PIE *kardom
kw > hw; English what, PG *xwat, EB *xwod; PIE *kwod

The second phase is voiced aspirated stops becoming voiced [unaspirated] stops.

gh > g; English goat, PG *gaitaz, EB *gaidoz; PIE *ghaidos
bg > b; English brother, PG *brōþar, EB *brōþer; PIE *bhrehtēr
dh > d; English daughter, PG *duxtēr, EB *duhtēr; PIE *dhuktēr

The third phase is voiced stops (that were unaspirated in proto-indo-european, or PIE) become voiceless stops. This phase has not occured yet in EB.

d > t; English ten, PG *texn, EB *dexm; PIE *dekm
g > k; English cold, PG *kald-, EB *gold-; PIE *geld-
b > p (few examples beginning with "p")

*indicates reconstructed word

** "x" represents the sound represented by the greek letter Chi, the "h" in "heart" or the "ch" in German words. It is based off of the IPA symbol x, which represents the same sound.

[Hax]

gh > g; English goat, PG *gaitaz, EB *gaidoz; PIE *ghaidos
bg > b; English brother, PG *brōþar, EB *brōþer; PIE *bhrehtēr
dh > d; English daughter, PG *duxtēr, EB *duhtēr; PIE *dhuktēr

Also present in the Dutch geit, broeder and dochter.

[JNR]

Or in German itself:
brother: Bruder
daughter: Tochter

If you spoke German, Dutch or any scandinavian language I think you would know what some of the native names mean without looking at the translations. There're still a lot of similarities...

[SwissBarbar]

p > f; English fish, PG *fiskaz, EB *fiskoz; PIE *pisk
t > þ; English three, PG *þriz, EB *þreiz; PIE *treies
k > **x; English heart, PG *xartan, EB *xardom; PIE *kardom
kw > hw; English what, PG *xwat, EB *xwod; PIE *kwod

The second phase is voiced aspirated stops becoming voiced [unaspirated] stops.

gh > g; English goat, PG *gaitaz, EB *gaidoz; PIE *ghaidos
bg > b; English brother, PG *brōþar, EB *brōþer; PIE *bhrehtēr
dh > d; English daughter, PG *duxtēr, EB *duhtēr; PIE *dhuktēr

The third phase is voiced stops (that were unaspirated in proto-indo-european, or PIE) become voiceless stops. This phase has not occured yet in EB.

d > t; English ten, PG *texn, EB *dexm; PIE *dekm
g > k; English cold, PG *kald-, EB *gold-; PIE *geld-
b > p (few examples beginning with "p")

*indicates reconstructed word

** "x" represents the sound represented by the greek letter Chi, the "h" in "heart" or the "ch" in German words. It is based off of the IPA symbol x, which represents the same sound.

Yes, German itself is a good source.


english -> german

goat - Geiss (Ziege)
brother - Bruder
daughter - Tochter

ten - zehn
cold - kalt

heart - herz

or others:

nouns:

table - Tafel (Tisch)
horse - Ross (Pferd)
hound (dog) - Hund
house - Haus
spear - Speer
shield - Schild
sword - Schwert
helmet - Helm
rose - Rose
plant - Pflanze
harbor - Hafen
year - Jahr
day - Tag
second - Sekunde
script - Schrift
man - Mann
wife - Weib (Frau)

verbs:

(to) do - tun
(to) make - machen
(to) shoot - schiessen
(to) go - gehen
(to) run - rennen
(to) hold - halten
(to) bow - beugen

adjectives:

good - gut
absurd - absurd
senseless - sinnlos
unholy - unheilig
awesome - EB

etc.