Summarizing Germanic sound shifts 

Had to play this at 0.75 speed to follow this as a non-native English speaker, and even then I sometimes couldn't distinguish the words you were saying, but thanks for the interesting vid!

Fun fact: The Swedish spoken in Finland does not have the velar fricative like the (standard?) Swedish spoken in Sweden e.g. for /sk/, which is instead pronounced [∫]. So "skön" (beautiful) is pronounced the same as German "schön".There are also other major phonological differences between Sweden-Swedish and Finland-Swedish.

English does actually have non-latinate /d͡ʒ/, also as a result of palatalization. Geminated *jj (< *jj, *gj) in OE (as well as *j when preceded by a nasal, if I remember correctly) fortified to /d͡ʒ/, spelled as ⟨cġ⟩. An example: PG *brugjǭ > OE brycġ > ME bridge

A few remarks: -Belgian Dutch has a bilabial w (transcribed as [ β̞ ]) and a voiced v -Belgian Dutch distinguishes g and ch. -[ʋ] also occurs in Germany, Denmark and Sweden. I think it would be better to say that all Germanic languages have [v~ʋ] except for Dutch, Frisian and English.

Awesome video, but I felt like I had to watch it on 0.75 speed to process things. As someone who has a amateur interest (think non-academic) in linguistics, a decent chunk of this stuff was not new, but I still had trouble following along at your speaking speed, and I could not read the text without pausing constantly. Great, informative video, but I thought I'd drop my two cents about the pacing. I really did enjoy though.

As I am a native speaker of two of these Germanic languages and speak all the others (I speak German though, not Yiddish) I have to say that your pronunciation impresses, Icelandic and Swedish are very close to correct and your Danish is not bad though it is clearly the one you have the biggest problems with pronouncing correctly. Keep up the good work.

"Ande" only barely mean "ghost" in Swedish. "Den helige ande" is the translation for the trinity's "the holy ghost", but "ande" most often mean "spirit" as in mind/soul as in "the spirit is willing..." or as in a supernatural being as in a disembodied soul or "genie" as in the bottled kind. We also have "anda", which is breath ("hålla andan" = "hold your breath") or spirit of the more zealy variety ("kämparanda" = "fighting spirit")

Dude your pronunciation of the Swedish "fyra" at 6:42 was probably the most on-point I've ever heard by a non native speaker, because you kinda nail the the sound from the upper class Stockholm accent. Your pitch variation in two-syllable words sounds a bit off sometimes, but overall your Swedish is really good, keep it up!

So on my gaming channel I promised to provide more detail on where my native language, Faroese, fits in with these sound changes... only to promptly forget about the video so with many apologies here several months later are my comments: Voiced plosives: Like everywhere else except German, the b becomes v intervocalically and finally so have is at hava at to give is at geva. Note that unlike Icelandic we actually spell this v as a v and not as f. However, we completely lost the other two voiced fricatives. In places where this would result in a hiatus we where applicable insert a glide, the exact glide depends first on the preceding vowel and if that is ambiguous (i.e. not being high) we look at the following vowel. So the word dagur: the nominative form dagur is pronounced ['tɛa:vʊɹ] glide because the preceding vowel is non-high and thus the following vowel determines the value; the accusative form dag has no such glide and is simply [tɛa:]; and finally the dative form degi is pronounced [te:jɪ] because the non-high [ɪ] is interpreted as an [i]. Nasals liquids and trills: all remain, except [w] > [v] (as mention) but also [r] > [ɹ] (also as mentioned). The Faroese version of "skarre-r" was around for a while but died out shortly there after. There used to be 'oss' in Faroese pronounced like the Swedish but it's archaic today; this is because Faroese and Icelandic got rid of the old plural and instead use the old dual for the new modern plural, which is why "us" is okkum and okkur respectively. As for mouth: It's actually a bad example for Faroese as it is influenced by the -nnr > -ðr soundchange in Old Norse, so the more common nominative form is muður but all the other forms have munn- as the root: muður - munn - munni - muns etc., however muður can also have munnur as its nominative form. Examples of other nouns with the same sound change and which may have both nominative forms: brunnur/bruður (well), drunnur/druður (Gaelic loan word(!)), maður (mannur is just wrong), grunnur/gruður, lunnur/luður, and runnur/ruður. Some are rare with the -ður form since as all the other forms have nn, analogy wants the ð forms to become nn forms too. Anyway, munnur and muður are pronounced ['mʊn:ʊɹ] and ['mu:ʊɹ] (generally no glide here). Water is vatn and is pronounced [vaʰtn]. Red is reyður: ['ɹɛi:jʊɹ] although it also kinda sounds like ['ɹɛj:ʊɹ] to me at times. Initial hl-, hr-, and hn- have all be lost in Faroese but hv- merged with kv- but still spelled as hv, white is hvítur and pronounced ['kvʊi:tʊɹ]. We still have voiceless nasals and liquids but I'll get back to these later. Your comment about Icelandic hn being a separate develop is kinda true and kinda not, it's just that Icelandic merged kn- and hn- in most cases (yet still kept it in words like knattspyrna (football)). Faroese: ringur ['ɹɪŋkʊɹ], lurta ['lʊɻ̊ʈa]. You didn't mention hj, in Faroese it either merges with j [j] or kj [tʃʰ], the exact rule for when each is used always escapes me however but it _may_ have to do with the voicedness of the following consonant. Icelandic f doesn't just become [p] before nasals like in höfn [hœpn] but also before [l] so the main airport in Iceland is in Ke[p]lavík, but OK this is (< *b) not /f/ (< *p). Four is fýra ['fʊi:ɹa]. To sing is at syngja ['sɪɲtʃa]. Why ? Because in Old West Norse -ingw- the w rounded the /i/ to /y/. Danish synge is a later development from older Danish sjunge where the ju simply merges into y. The cognate of choose is kjósa ['tʃʰɔu:sa]. The cognate of think is tekkja [tʰɛʰtʃ:a] while we also have teinkja ['tʰɔɲ̊tʃa]. Feather = fjøður [fjø:vʊɹ]. Thou in Faroese is tú [tʰʉu:], so no t > d weakening here. The Faroese word for night is nátt [nɔʰt:]. Tooth: tonn [tʰɔn:]. As mentioned before, Faroese loses voiced fricatives completely, so the adjectivial suffix -ig is simply pronounced [i], although in lemma form we'd of course use the masculine for which is -igur [i(:)jʊɹ]. However, before n it's kept but like in Icelandic becomes a stop, so -ing: [ɪŋk]. Which leads to that Icelandic and Danish chain shift and yes, it also happened in Faroese for stops and affricates, so initial b d g dj gj [p t k tʲ tʃ] contrast with initial p t k tj kj [pʰ tʰ kʰ tʲʰ tʃʰ] but do note that the vast majority of Faroese speakers merge dj and tj with gj and kj respectively. I'm only separating them for completion's sake. So goose: gás [kɔɑ:s] and cold: kaldur [kʰaltʊɹ]. Faroese has also palatalised *k and *g before short high and central front vowels. It happened later than in English and like in English only unrounded vowels trigger palatalisation, so only /e i/. Of course adjacent to a j they also palatalise so kjúklingur is pronounced [tʃʰʉu:klɪŋkʊɹ]. The Faroese word for knee is knæ [knɛa:], no disappearing initial k- here. So like k and g, sk is also palatalised before short high and central front unrounded vowels, so like in English and German, this is pronounced [ʃ] in these positions. Therefore, skína is a bad example for this as it's still just ['skʊi:na], however a good example is the word for ship which is skip: [ʃi:p], yes, Faroese skip is pronounced like English sheep, I know. Mouse in singuar and plural in Faroese is: mús [mʉu:s] and mýs [mʊi:s]. Green is grønur [krø:nʊɹ] (yes, /ɹ/ has many allophones). Like German, Dutch, and English, Faroese also had its Great Vowel Shift. In short, short vowels lengthened and long vowel diphthongised. You've already seen many of these examples in the examples I have mentioned here. The possessive pronoun my/mine is thus mín [mʊi:n] in Faroese. A sound change that developed in Faroese and Icelandic is preaspiration. Preaspiration also exists in some (if not all) Sami languages as well as in Scottish Gaelic. It's uncertain where this feature originated; it could've been borrowed from one family to the next or it could be an areal feature. It's possible that ScG got it from Old Norse, which itself may have gotten it from Sami but don't quote me on that. Anyway, I'll explain Faroese preaspiration. Notice how the "voiceless" stops and fricatives in Faroese have postaspiration word initially? Well, intervocalically they shift from being postaspirated to preaspirated: [ʰp ʰt ʰk ʰtʲ ʰtʃ]. They do however lose their preaspiration if the preceding vowel is a high vowel or the diphthong ends in a high vowel, so this applies to [i: u: ai: ɛi: ɔi: ʊi: ɔu:]. However, if the stop/affricate is geminated: [ʰp: ʰt: ʰk: ʰtʲ: ʰtʃ:] then the preaspiration is never lost but this is also another feature of Faroese where vowels have different pronunciations depending on the number of or the length/gemination of the consonants that follow. Note that especially for the ungeminated preaspirated stops there are dialectical differences in Faroese, the dialect of the capital Tórshavn (or Havn for short) does not have these ungeminated preaspirated stop and just pronounced them as regular stops. A final pretty unique feature of Faroese is the so-called skerping. I sometimes call it Holtzmann's Law 2.0 as it pertains to how after high vowels or high diphthongs (same meaning as above), the cluster -ggj- is added after front vowels/diphthongs and -gv- after back vowels/diphthongs. I compare it to Holtzmann's Law because where Holtzmann's Law describes the difference between Faroese egg and German Ei, skerping describes the difference between Old Norse ey and Faroese oyggj. There are many such words in Faroese so you will come across it almost immediately. It's not fully fleshed out, however, and there are archaicsms that existed but don't any more. For instance, the preposition in, the word for no, and the other word for yes (the positive reply to a negative question) are in modern Faroese í, nei, and jú. In older Faroese, we find íggj, neiggj, and júgv. I hope that was it. Sorry if it's not that well ordered but I was following your video.

Im gonna start sharing all of these videos with people, I find your channel so fun and interesting

this channel is so good, as a person who studies biology but somehow ended up having interest in linguistics too (especially germanic and turkic) your videos are so useful learning something, as u could think i dont have much time to learn all of that stuff by reading, so watching you is a fun and nice shortcut to get the basic ideas. keep it up

i love this channel so much, you and a few other similar channels that are also pretty small and new are really forming a new wave of youtube linguistics content and its really cool to see how willing you all are to assume people are smart enough to understand linguistics concepts as long as they're explained well. i am now most the way thru my degree (not linguistics but directly related and i got into it thru linguistics) and ppl like tom scott and xidnaf were my introduction to the whole thing years ago, but honestly these videos are better and more thorough and accurate than those were. its really cool to imagine the generation that will get into it thru these videos (and the similar ones also coming out recently) and hope to see u continue making videos and get more traction on here bc its baffling you only have as few subs as u do

your icelandic pronunciation was pretty good. one thing to note is that even though u and ö are transcribed with œ and ʏ they are central vowels

Your energy and enthusiasm are possibly the best favor you do to the subject matter in my view. If I knew nothing about this I'd be intrigued simply on account of your descriptiveness and tempo.

As someone who studies English, German and Swedish, I've found this video very intriguing. You did a great job at summarising all the information into a short and entertaining video. I'm just hoping that we get a similar video about Slavic languages soon.

I just discovered this channel today because of youtube suggestions and I really love your videos! I like the way you explain and your pronunciation of the words! Not gonna lie, I kinda hope you make a video about Slavic languages or the Indian languages one day

Very nice video! I always enjoy seeing historical linguistics stuff and this is quite comprehensive, if a little fast! :D

dude how don't you have more subs?? your future american video got recommended to me yesterday and i was instantly hooked, these videos are great

Just came across your channel. As someone mildy interested in languages you have my sub.

Hi there, love the video. I grew up speaking Dutch, Frisian and Hylpers which is close to old Frisian. Its really interesting to see what's most similar to my mother tongue (Hylpers).

Great work! A complete seminar hour at the university level in 17 minutes and free of charge. Thank you very much! 🎉

I'm so happy you transscribe Dutch words without the final 'n', so many people still insist on transscribing words like 'denken' as ['deŋkən], when the 'n' at the end of Dutch words has been silent for many many decades.

Really enjoyed this! As an English speaker who has been studying Swedish and Yiddish and a little bit of German, this was really helpful in understanding certain similarities and differences.

11:42 I'm with the Chinese on this one. I was way past school when I first heard that "d"/"t" or "b"/"p" are NOT just differenciated by the amount of aspiration. I'm sure that's not just an issue of my dialect. I speak native Swiss German and Standard German since first grade, and I can hardly tell the difference between voiced and unvoiced "s" sounds - English teacher had to show us how to make a "z" by making us hum.

Wow, this is amazing, thanks! You do cover so much, so quickly that, to be honest, not only do I pause your videos a lot; I also slow them to 50-75% to avoid BMS (Blown Mind Syndrome). Brilliant stuff, cheers!

Very detailed and informed video. And cool to see Yiddish included in a video like this!

People stereotype German as the harsh language. Meanwhile Dutch Gs, which appear at least twice in every word: CHHRRRRRRRR

Amazing video. Thanks for the extensive information as I have been interested in how English and other west germanic languages have changed over time.

Thanks for this great video! One error I noticed: Low German dialects are North Sea Germanic (not Weser-Rhine Germanic) and also underwent the nasal-spirant law e.g. Goos (goose), fief (five). Also, Low German verbs have a dental suffix in the plural of verbs in present, just like Old English (in most dialects except those with more High German influence).

Many Norwegian dialects also differentiate words coming from w- and hw- And Norwegian has changed sk- in front of for example i into (usually) sh

Excellent content, I love stuff like this. Can I advise to take your time presenting the information, let the viewer absorbe what it is that you're saying. It felt full of passion and full of speed as a result!

I'm sitting here eating this video up at 1x speed, and then I realized how fast you were talking, haha. When nerd minds meet... If you know the IPA and anything about historical linguistics, this is super easy to digest, but I can't send it to a friend for fear of their eyes glazing over. Love the video.

12:09 To nitpick a bit: In the North Germanic languages the word for chicken has a diminutive suffix, so the Proto-Germanic form for them would be *keukilīngaz (or *kukkilīngaz) The the Icelandic /u/ is completely off here. It's hard to tell, but /kl/ sounds like it turned into a [ç]. And finally, the /ʏ/ should be reduced a bit so that it's more central and shorter.

Great resource to show people who don’t know anything about linguistics and ask what I do as a grad student

Well done! Very interesting and clearly presented!

This channel is gonna blow up!! Great, consistent content

Fantastic, super well explained and comprehensive! Would you consider doing something expanding on North Germanic tonogenesis in the future, or perhaps just tonogenesis in general? For instance potential phonological parallels between the development of pitch accent/stød in Scandinavian and the tones of actual tonal languages like Mandarin?

I second the comment about slowing down the pace at which you speak. Very interesting stuff but presentation is important if you want your channel to grow. I’m glad I found you via the algorithm tho!

Clicked on this video hoping I would learn something... but I feel like I'll have to watch it like 5 more times for anything to stick xD

My man just summarized a playlist-worth of Simon Roper videos in 17 minutes. Respect. (No shade at Simon. Love his videos. )

really great video, hope to see more👍

6:41 For dutch this heavily depends on the dialect I'd say. For example, spoken with a typical Amsterdam accent you wouldn't hear the difference between "vier" and "fier" (proud), although in a lot (if not most) dialects you can actually hear a difference, although in the Netherlands often subtle (but in Belgium very clear).

this channel is so good

Please, slow down! it's not a speed race, or is it?

This is the first video I'm seeing of your channel, so idk if you covered it before, but it would be interesting to examine East Germanic languages & West Germanic dialects (or languages) that used to exist in the east before the ethnic cleansings during & after WW2 (and some which maybe survived despite the odds).

Great presentation! Around 12:35 you start digging into the palatalization effect before (high) front vowels. However, among the North Germanic languages, Swedish is not alone in doing that, and in most modern Norwegian dialects it happened too. It must have happened, as you mentioned, later than in West Germanic, but it did happen! One interesting observation related to this is that English did borrow a few words from Norse or Norwegian which start with sk+front vowel, for example "sky" and "ski". Both of those are spelled the same but now pronounced with an /sh/ sound in Norwegian, like in their cognate inherited words in English. Norwegian "ski" = the English word "shide"; a stick of wood, besides the now more commonly used meaning of something useful on top of snow. (The bonus in English is that it gets two words to keep the two meanings apart.) From their pronunciation in English we can assume that they must have been borrowed at a time _after_ the /sk/ > /sh/ rule had done its work, because the rule didn't affect these words. Presumably they reflect the source language's pronunciation at the time of borrowing as well, which means that a similar transition rule had not (yet) had its effect in that language. It therefore must have happened later than at least in English. One can also compare the word "shin" (as in shinbone) which has the same meaning and same pronunciation as the modern Norwegian word "skinn". In Norwegian, however, the word also means "skin" or "hide", which thus reveals the origin of the word "skin" in English.

Tonality/pitch contour are so funny, every time u said a swedish word i thought you were speaking some southeast asian languages

I am an German nativ speaker and I had to google the word kiesen which you mentioned at the time 7:08, because I never heard of this word. Nowadays we would never use this word to express the word choose. The modern word would be wählen. Kiesen was used in middle high german. I've learned something new. Thanks a lot ;)

[β] did not become labiodental [v] until after the dialects of West Germanic had already formed. In German it is bilabial to this day, but now a plosive [b]. Old Saxon sometimes used the letter . There are also very early examples of Old English writing with the letter that would later be found with . This shows that PG /b/ was still bilabial in those positions.

it would be raelly cool if you could make a similar video about germanic languages but this time regarding grammar. How much of the grammar remained in the modern germanic languages. You could mention languages like Icelandic, Faroese, Elfdalian which retain a lot of old germanic grammatical forms like the consonant cluster hl-. Or the cases, or subjunctive mood etc. You're really great at explaining! :D

Great and comprehensive work! Almost makes me want to finish my last semester I need to graduate at uni, *almost*.

As for 4:26, a common alternative in Dutch (also used in standard language) is the bilabial consonant [β]. This sound can fully replace the [ʋ] in standard pronunciation and will generally be used after certain vowels (at least "u"). In certain dialects, I could hear the [w] being used (e.g. along the Hollandic coast). It's clearly noticeable in speech and I think it has mostly died out through standardization (so unlike [β], it did not enter the standard).

Insanely good! Will be nagging my friends to watch your videos.

fascinating, great work :))

I love how accurate these IPA transcriptions are for the modern languages!

As an English and Spanish speaker, I love comparing how the Romance languages and Germanic languages have changed over time!! I had no idea how similar the German languages are!

I have but one piece of criticism I humbly tell you WyL. Could you slow down the pacing on your videos a little. Personally I like to read and assimilate everything you have on the screen, but it changes too quickly. I keep having to rewind to finish reading. Muchas gracias por tus videos de muy buena calidad bro

I am blown away by the fact how many different R sounds you can make :D

8:12 The German word is Haupt (which also fits the rule). 8:28 The German word is lachen, like in Dutch 12:14 The same happens in Southwest German dialects, especially in Alemannic dialects, as they are spoken in Switzerland.

i dont know why i didnt know about your channel sooner, i love your videos also question, have you ever thought about making a video on the baltic languages? (latvian and lithuanian?)

How many languages do you speak? I count at least 11 (six mentioned here, plus Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Spanish, and French). That's wild. How many hours a day do you spend studying?

So three notes on Swedish pronunciation. Consonants following a short vowel in a stressed syllable will be geminated even if they are in a consonant cluster, so it is /lanːd/, not /land/ The sje-sound /ɧ/ is not really a "voiceless postalveolovelar fricative". I've straight up got no idea why the IPA would ever call it that, or even include the symbol for that matter. The sje-sound is a sound with two main allophones tho, a postalveolar (or retroflex) one and a velar one. So it's not postalveolar and velar simultaneously, but complimentary. I'd transcribe the velar allophone as [xʷ] and the retroflex as [ʂ]. There is three main ways these are distributed tho. In some dialects, it's velar everywhere, while in other it's retroflex everywhere. The standard seems to be to use the velar one at the start of stressed syllables and the retroflex elsewhere. So yeah, don't even try to do a "voiceless postaveolovelar fricative" because it's wrong and absurd. As for pitch accent, I don't quite agree with your explanation. There's two pitch accents and these pitch accents fall on sequences of one stressed syllable and at least one unstressed syllable. In Standard Swedish, tone 1 has one peak and it falls on the first syllable, while tone 2 has two peaks; they fall on the stressed syllable and the following syllable. I don't think it's very useful to think of the pitch accent as consisting of low and high syllables because that's just not what's happening. The pitch of the pitch accent is more complicated than that, and syllables themselves don't have a flat pitch contour. I find the explanation of tone 1 as singlepeaked and tone 2 as doublepeaked to be a whole lot clearer and more accurate, but here we must be aware that this isn't true in all dialects. Oh, and you also seemed to for some reason transcribeda short (unstressed) e three different ways: /ə/, /e/, and /ɛ/ standard would be /ɛ/. And your transcription of the pitch accent is... novel to say the least, and I think I've already explained why I don't think that's realiy an accurate way to think about pitch accent (and also shouldn't it be /ˈánːdɛn/ and /ˈánːdɛ́n/ then?). I typically transcribe these simply as /¹anːdɛn/ and /²anːdɛn/ but /ǎnːdɛn/ and /ânːdɛn/ seems more traditional. In my dialect it'd transcribe this explicitly as /anː˧˥dɛn˥˩/ and /anː˥˨dɛn˦˩/. In general tho, great video!

'Kyse' in Danish today is mostly used to mean a certain type of hood, historically worn by women and today mostly worn by babies. I know Danish is super difficult for non-natives to pronounce, even for natives to be fair, but 'kyse' would be pronounced with a long first vowel sound as there is only one s. How you pronounced it sounded more similar to 'kysse' which means 'kissing'. I must say it's impressive that you do speak 6 germanic languages, and I applaud you for having learnt Danish as a non-native! Great video

I am a native swedish speaker. This is so interesting. There are a lot of similar words and even words that are spelled the same but often pronounced different between Swedish and English.

As a German and English speaker, you did pretty good on German pronunciation for someone who doesn't speak the language, although a couple things (like äu) could definitely be improved

Love it. You seem to know a lot about Germanic languages. Have you ever heard of Germanic substrate hypothesis? I would love to hear your thoughts on that... I would also like to hear your opinions on how much were the Germanic languages descended from PIE when opposed to how much were they affected by European Sprachbund. I literally cannot sleep at nicht because it bothers me so much. Love your channel.

The German verb "kiesen" for "to choose" is old fashioned / out dated and not understood by many Germans nowadays. However, speaking Dutch and German I could recognize the word "kiezen". Great video. Subscribed your channel and look forward to watching more of your videos.

best language channel

Great video! Really interesting and well explained. Could you do a video about the Turkic languages?

I should point out that while in north germanic *Vnþ became *Vnn and *Vmf/Vnf became *Vmm (though it might've become V:f in some words), *Vns ALWAYS became *V:s, just as in north sea (ingvaeonic). The reason *uns doesn't show that, with old norse "oss", is because the PG word that gives us "oss" was actually "unsiz" (compare "okkr" from *unkiz, and "yðr" from *izwiz, with irregular z>ð). This resulted in *ósR and then *óss, and then shortened to "oss". Other examples, like how *gans (goose) became "gás" and *ansuz became "áss" (ss from sR) shows us however that the loss of *n lengthened the vowel, not the *s The cluster *Vht also didn't just lengthen the consonant, but ALSO the vowel, so *V:t: (hence icelandic "dóttir" and "nátt/nótt") Also, Icelandic hn DOES come from proto germanic hn, such as in "hneta/hnot" (nut), proto germanic *hnuts, or "hníga" from pg *hnīganą. It just also turned a lot of old norse kn into hn, but that was probably possible because old norse already HAD hn The voiceless fricatives *f and *þ didn't just stay unchanged either in north germanic, rather they stayed voiceless at the start of words and when by another voiceless sound or doubled, but otherwised voiced inside words (same happened in old english, but there it also happened with *s, and the new voiced *þ was distinct from old *ð cuz it had already changed into *d, hence death vs dead). Later the now voiced /v/, written "f" both in old norse and old english (whether from *f or from *b) changed into /b/ before /n/ and /l/ in Icelandic (so danish "havn", but icealndic "höfn" being pronounced "höbn"). Of course, with icelandic /b/ actually being voiceless, it lookes like "f" being pronounced as "p", but there were more steps between those sounds than the orthography might make you think

I must say, I think being swiss and thus speaking one of our various swiss german dialects, I truly believe us out of most germanic peoples to have the easiest time learning another germanic language. Although I must say, the fact we don't use any more than 3 different tenses (more or less) might not be helpful, but we also learn standard german along with our native tongue, and thus do get a good grip on constructing and understanding more than just the 3 tenses we make use of. (These tenses would be the present, perfect and future I tense. While other tenses can technically be formed - with the exception of the plusquamperfekt tense, as we have no way of saying "hatte" (had) as opposed to "habe" (have), even though we still use "hätte" (would have) - they're not usually used unless you're a little "too educated" in standard german and thus feel the need to add those tenses, as I did in the past) Not having yet learned any germanic language other than english, and some languages belonging to the romance family (french, italian, some latin), I have no issues understanding a large part of written dutch and *some* spoken dutch, nor do i struggle with any of the german and austrian dialects, which can at times be tricky to some germans. As for the more northern germanic languages, I most certainly have grave issues understanding large parts of conversations in swedish, norwegian or danish (but then again who truly ever understands danish), and most certainly do not understand icelandic. However I think that since swiss people sort of grow up already learning two germanic "languages", and also have a wider range of vowels they use (plus the diphtongs and monophtongs that remained unchanged as opposed to german, such as HAUS/HUUS (house) or WEIB/WIIB (rather derogatory term for 'woman', might be where the english 'wife' came from), we might at least be understood more easily by natives, which isn't much but it's already helpful. And the same should go for passive knowledge and learning, such as hearing and reading texts. Now I'll also say I wrote all this because I felt like I had to say it somewhere, for no good reason, quite frankly. I am not really making a point and if I do, not a good one. And I do not mean to shit on any other language learner's progress and native tongue if it may come off as that. I just felt the need to write that down, apologies for that. But speaking of germanic languages: Lately i have come across a very rare bavarian dialect in Veneto (italy, the region where Venice is, among other cities) called "Cimbrian". It's very interesting as they use the B-sound instead of our more common german W/V, and it certainly is one of the more difficult to understand "languages" among its bavarian brethren.

My favorite example of a very visible sound shift in English is "knight". In German, it's "Knecht", and both the K and the CH are regular, fully pronounced sounds. Presumably English used to pronounced them to, but is still using a 1000 year old spelling that has no resemblance to the modern sounds.

I am 37 and my mother is 67. We have never used or heard of kiesen or anyone using it. I had to google several dictionaries to find it. It is not in the usual leo or langenscheidt that one would use. We would say wählen or auswählen. It is so interesting to learn etymology.

Excellent video.

Old Saxon was also part of the Ingvaeonic group. For example, the example you gave in the video applies to modern Low German as well, giving us [u:s] [us] [ʊs], depending on which low german youre talking about. The palatalisation of /k/ did indeed only happen in Anglo-Frisian, though. Low German also preserved [w], at least regionally. edit: ive just noticed that another commenter has already pointed this out

1:40 Small correction, as a Low-German Native Speaker, this language is Ingvaeonic (North Sea Germanic). It derived from Old-Saxon, and western dialects are still called Low-Saxon to this day.

I'm Norwegian, but quite fluent in Danish and Swedish as well, in addition to knowing a wee bit of German and Iceland and this was interesting. You forgot Faeroese, though ;)

9:39 The fact that in proto-germanic Ą sound existed This letter and sound is present in polish language up until this day.

Very interesting subject (my major in university). You do seem to be in hurry to catch a train though. I wouldn’t mind watching a 30 min video instead of a 20 min video and feel less stressed after watching it ;-)

6:40 The way you pronounced fyra (Swedish for "four") sounds exactly like when swedes make fun of the accent of people who come from Stockholm lmao. It comes off as very pretentious.

Germanic sound shift speed run!

9:05 some other examples of verners law alterations include lost/forlorn (german verloren), kiesen/auserkoren (archaic German verb meaning choose), as well in some place names - for example, the Weser River in germany which is called the Werre upstream.

One peculiarity of Faroese is that initial *þ- becomes h- instead of t- in some circumstances, usually in short unstressed words. That's how you end up with hósdagur (see ON þórsdagr, "Thursday"), hóast (< *þo at, "although"), hetta (ON þetta, "this"), har (ON þar, "there"), hesin (ON þessi, "this"), Hósvík (ON Þórsvík, placename).

9:41 English give is actually a North Germanic loan, *g stayed a fricative word-initially in Old English and turned into /j/ before front vowels

The Swedish "sj" sound is pronounced quite different in different part of the country, where in the southern parts is more of your example, but in the north is more frontal, like English "sh".

Great video I wish Scots had been mentioned, as it bridges some of the distance between English and the continental languages. Also, in Primary School in Scotland in the 90s I was taught to make a distinction between wh and w, I'm not sure if that's still the case Thanks for the enjoyable video

I could hear creaky voice before but didn’t know it was phonemic and thought it emotive.

14:09 "Mäuse" in German is pronouced like "moize" and not "möüze". The way you pronounced it could be mistaken by a German for a very sexual word.

There are Danish dialects that have pitch accent, and there are dialects in Norway and Sweden that lack it. The dialects of Nordhordland and Överkalix lack pitch accent.

Haubada still has a german counterpart. The word "Haupt" is a largely extinct word for head in a way like "capital" because in german we can declare a Haupt- either something being a main- something or just your head. Examples being: Hauptmenü - The Main Menu - The Menu from which everything goes. Hauptstrafe - Capital Punishment

Your content is good, but I would slow down your videos and put more emphasis in mastering the pronunciation of the living languages you cite or cutting in native speakers' pronunciations. Practice slowing down, clarifying your diction, and giving faithful representations of the phonologies of the examples from living languages that you cite. Suffering from phonological interference from your native language happens to all of us, but if you make a science-based video, it's best to use a separate source from a native speaker if that interference is strong.

3:53 made me giggle - we still have the word "mampfen" in german which seems to not be too far off and (while a bit old) we say "has it mouth-ed"-"hat es gemundet" to ask if the food was good.

Oh, boy... I will need to rewatch this entire video to comment on what happened in Faroese, my native language. I might do that with my IRL profile though instead of my gaming profile. We'll see. Great job on this video.

Your Dutch seems to be heavily biased towards the Northern Netherlands. 'w' is probably one of these phonemes that is pronounced differently in every national regiolect of Dutch: labiodental [ʋ] in the Netherlands, bilabial [β̞] in Belgium and [w], as in English, in Suriname. 'v' remains voiced in most Dutch dialects, only the North of the Netherlands and Suriname devoice them The official standard pronunciation of 'g' is [γ] in Dutch, while 'ch' (as well as 'g' at the end of a word) is [x]. The pronunciation [χ] is a Northern Dutch phenomenon, which, although spreading in the Netherlands, is resented in Belgian and Southern Dutch. Suriname also devoices [γ] to [x] 'r' has a great variety of realisation depending on where you are [r] and [R] are the most common ones Also [u] had shifted to [y] in most Dutch dialects (and even some low german dialects) before the great vowel shift took place, with [y] then shifting to [oey], admittedly this might just have been a simplifaction on your part

Rhoticization is epic. One day you say sat the next you say rat and no one could've traced the etymology if it wasn't for you meddling linguists figuring morphology out.

You should make a video explaining modern sound shifts in different English Accents

Something I feel is worth mentioning is that Yiddish split off more during middle high german than old high german.

Wow you know your stuff well man

4:10 the symbol represents a Velar lateral approximant and thats not dark l, dark l is represented with so is not dark l. But despite that great video! I also find historical linguistics really interesting and its kinda sad that this community is so small so these types of videos are really great!

Fantastic video! The Germanic languages certain do have complex and interesting history.