Grimm's Law
Germanic sound change
Grimm's Law describes a pattern of consonant shifts that occurred as Proto-Indo-European evolved into the Germanic languages.
The law explains why related words differ predictably across language families—Latin *pater* becoming English *father*, or Latin *tres* becoming English *three*.
Named for Jacob Grimm, one of the Brothers Grimm, who systematized these correspondences in the early nineteenth century.
- consonantIn agreement with
- shiftMovement or work period
- GermanicOf Teutonic language stock
- High GermanStandard German language
- protoPrefix denoting earliest
phonology · linguistics · sound · change · Indo-European · Jacob · fairy · tales · once upon a time · brothers · fairy tale · voiceless · voiced · aspirated · stops · fricatives · pater · father
- historical linguisticslanguage families, cognates, proto-languages, proto-language, Indo-European
- sound changesassimilation, elision, deletion, voicing, nasalization
- Old Englishnu, her, eft, la, thy