Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law
In
historical linguistics, the
Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law (also called the
Anglo-Frisian or
North Sea Germanic nasal spirant law) is a description of a
phonological development in some dialects of
West Germanic, which is attested in
Old English,
Old Frisian, and
Old Saxon. By this sound change, in the combination
vowel +
nasal +
fricative, the nasal disappeared, with
compensatory lengthening of the vowel. ("Spirant" is an older term for "fricative".) The sequences in question are original
-ns-,
-mf-, and
-nþ-.
Compare the first person plural pronoun
us in various old Germanic languages:
*
Old English ūs*
Old Frisian ūs*
Old Saxon ūs*
Old High German uns*
Middle Dutch ons*
Gothic unsGothic represents
East Germanic, and its correspondence to German and Dutch shows it has the more original form. The /n/ has disappeared in English, Frisian and Old Saxon, with
compensatory lengthening of the /u/.
Likewise:
*Germanic
*tanþ- becomes English
tooth, Old Frisian
tōth (cf. Low German
Tähn, Dutch
tand, German
Zahn).
*Germanic
*anþara- becomes English
other, West Frisian
oar, East Frisian
uur, Old Saxon
āthar (cf. German & Dutch
ander- [þ'd]).
*Germanic
*fimf becomes English
five, West Frisian
fiif, East Frisian
fieuw, Dutch
vijf, Low German
fiev, fief (cf. German
fünf).
*Germanic
*samft- becomes English
soft, West Frisian
sêft, Low German
sacht, Dutch
zacht [ft'xt] (cf. German
sanft).
*Germanic
*gans- becomes English
goose, West Frisian
goes, Low German
Goos (cf. Dutch
gans, German
Gans).
Note that Dutch is inconsistent, following the law in some words but not others; this must be understood in terms of the standard language drawing from a variety of dialects, only some of which were affected by the sound change. Similarly, certain North German dialects retain Old Saxon forms, with the result that a very few words in Modern Standard German have this shift: alongside
sanft German also has
sacht, both meaning "soft", "gentle".
One consequence of this is that English has very few words ending in
-nth; those which do exist must be more recent than the productive period of the Anglo-Frisian nasal spirant law:
month - in Old English this was
monaþ (cf. German
Monat); the intervening vowel made the law inoperable.
tenth - a neologism in
Middle English. Germanic
*tehunþ- did originally follow the law, producing Old English
t"oþa (Modern English
tithe), but the force of analogy to the cardinal number
ten caused Middle English to recreate the regular ordinal.
plinth - a
Greek loan-word in
Modern English ().
