Grimm’s Law was highly successful at predicting the forms of Germanic words but there were many exceptions. However, the discovery of Verner’s Law showed that exceptions might just be apparent; sound change is still ‘regular and exceptionless’, you just have to look a bit closer for the regularities.

An example of one such ‘exception’ is father, from above.

Note how Latin pater (which retains the /p/ and /t/ from PIE) shows up as father in English. IE /p/ > Gmc /f/ as predicted by Grimm’s Law, but IE /t/ has not come out as /θ/ instead we find /ð/. More telling are examples of related words which have the predicted sound in some cases but not in others! For example, English birthandburden are both related but show different outcomes of what was historically the same consonant.

Karl Verner noticed, however, that the unpredictable instances correlated with the position of accent in PIE. Sanskrit retains much of the earlier accent system which Germanic has subsequently changed. Sanskrit pater retains the accent following the /t/. Verner noticed that Germanic results from Law A were voiced unless they were immediately preceded by an accented syllable (in which case they would be voiceless) – this is Verner’s Law. Subsequently many of these Germanic voiced fricatives became voiced stops (thus leading to birthandburden). Germanic also underwent an Accent Shift whereby the position of accent changed. This annihilated the conditions for Verner’s Law but left the results of it unchanged, i.e. the results went from being conditioned and predictable (phonetic) to unconditioned and unpredictable (phonemic).

Verner’s Law also helped to explain cases of /s/-/r/ alternations, so called rhotacism. That is /s/ was pronounced as [z] by Verner’s Law unless preceded by accent. This [z] sound then underwent rhotacism to become /r/. Old Latin shows flos-floris‘flower’, English shows was-were etc. Many of the results of Verner’s Law have, however, been lost through analogical levelling. Latin underwent levelling to yield flor-floris‘flower’ and many English dialects have levelled the was-wereparadigm (as has Modern German), i.e. you might hear people saying ‘we was, you was, they was’.

Verner’s Law was and is a fantastic example of how powerful the comparative method is when applied carefully and rigorously. It also gave a great confidence boost to the Neogrammarian Hypothesis which says that sound change is regular and exceptionless. But that is not the end of Verner’s Law…it’s still around in places. When you next come across execute and executor/executive, think carefully about where the stress falls and how you are pronouncing the <x> in those cases – you might just see Verner’s Law in action!

hotmolasses:

mauve-moth:

stomatium:

just-shower-thoughts:

Blind people must save a lot on electricity.

They do actually!

I had a blind professor, last semester, and I swung through his office to make up an exam. It was a while before I knew he was in there because he was sitting with the lights off. I finally went in, apologized, and took the exam by the light of a nearby window (which was fine). Forty-five minutes into dead silence he panicked and yelled in this booming voiced, “WAIT, YOU CAN SEE!!!” before diving across his desk to turn on the lights. I’m sure he was embarrassed but I thought it was endearing and it highlighted a large aspect of disabled life that I hadn’t previously considered.

Sort of relatedly I once had professor who was deaf, but she had learned to read lips and speak so she could communicate easily with hearing people who didn’t know sign language. One day she had gotten off topic and was talking a little about her personal life, so that one of the students said “Oh, I know, I grew up in Brooklyn too.” 

She stared at him for a long time and then said “How do you know I’m from Brooklyn?”

And he said “You have a Brooklyn accent.”

She said “I do?” and the whole class nodded, and then she burst out laughing and said “I had no idea!  The school where I learned to speak was in Brooklyn.  I learned by moving my mouth and tongue the way my teachers did.  So I guess it makes sense that I have their accent, I just never thought about it.”

People imitate accent features they expect to hear, even without hearing them | Penn Today

When we make love… it’s magic for me.
But I want to know you are as enthralled as I am.

Your pleasure is very important to me.
I know you’re shy in saying what you want…

But will you show me, my love?
I want to give you everything.

http://tinyurl.com/ShyGirlShowMe

Who can’t fall for a good English accent

Can you literally see his accent?

Me, after Easter: is it choosday?

royal-random-the-yogurt-queen:

ebonykain:

funny-tik-toks:

This one needs to go right next to the Baltimore accent with the Aaron earns an iron urn.

In case anyone hasn’t seen it

Okayhayhay, so Jake is Wings era Tony Shalloub with a bloodthirst.

Still, where the HELL is Layla? And when she finds out Steven and Marc have a third personality? She is gonna be PISSED that that third personality just killed Harrmmit.

This is a series about Dutch and Flemish pronunciation in collaboration with @join-the-dutch-clan. She posts the Dutch ones, I post the Flemish ones :)

(I had to do it via Soundcloud, because the files wouldn’t upload to Tumblr for some reason. But you can find all of the Flemish recordings in the series on my soundcloud!)

Part 1: Vowels & Vowel Combinations (Dutch)
Part 1: Vowels & Vowel Combinations (Flemish)

Part 2: Cosonants (Dutch)
Part 2: Cosonants (Flemish)

Part 3: English Loanwords (Dutch)
Part 3: English Loanwords (Flemish)

comfortthingie:

For people curious on how we talk. Ock is pretty old and we don’t say it really but I threw it in lol