Grimm's Law is considered a product of the wildly veering mind of
Jacob Grimm (
philologist,
anthologist, and
nationalist), though it appears as if a lot of the heavy lifting may have been done by the
Dane Rasmus Rask. Then there's
Verner's Law; I'm hoping somebody writes about that one soon.
1
Grimm's Law is an observation of sound shift patterns over time (and in the course of loan-word
assimilation) in
Germanic Languages: '
t' mutates into "
th", which in turn becomes '
d', which ultimately returns to '
t'. This will be familiar to those who have heard
Americans from
Pennsylvania and
New Jersey speak of "a hundrit" this, or "I wantit that". Me "brudder" wanted that too, hm? I appeal also to those
Anglophones who have gingerly and fearfully speculated about the meaning of "
blutwurst".
Other common changes include:
- 'v' to 'f', as in the German "vater" becoming the English "father". We also get a 't' to "th" shift there at no extra charge save for shipping and handling. The Latin "pater" seems relevant.
We should also note the long-obsolete habit of replacing a terminal 'f' with a 'v' when adding additional syllables to a word, as in "thief" to "thieves", "calf" to "calves", "dwarf" to "dwarves", and the glorious "beef" to "beeves" (I kid you not!). Perhaps in some way related, an unvoiced "th" becomes voiced in the same way: "Wreath" to "wreathes"; "scythe" to "scythes".
- 'p' to 'f' to 'b' and back to 'p': "Labial", "lip"; "pedal", "foot"
- 'k' to 'h' to 'g': "Genual", "knee"; etc.
My book here
sez dat alla dese sequences move from
unvoiced stop to
unvoiced continuant to
voiced stop. I'm willing to take that on faith until I figure out what the hell it means.
CentrX observes that Grimm's name is often spelled "Jakob"; my source had a 'c', but I've found an equal number of references to each on the net, so it seems like a toss-up.
1 When first I wrote this writeup, I hadn't spotted any linguists running around loose here. Since that time, we've gotten one or two, and I'm not going to write any more about stuff I'm so ill-qualified to discuss if competent authority is in the house.