1.3 Sound shifts II — k↔ch, v↔b, gh↔ch — Epoché
What you will be able to do Turn a German ch in the middle or at the end of a word back into the English k it answers to, so that machen is make and Buch is book . Recognise English v between vowels as German b , so that geben , lieben and sieben stop needing to be memorised. Read the English spelling -ght as the German spelling -cht , which accounts for Nacht , Licht , acht and a dozen more. Say where each of the three correspondences stops — after n , at the front of a word, and in anything borrowed — and therefore when not to apply it. Prerequisites : 1.2 — you need the three correspondences of the first half of the shift, because two of the rules in this lesson have the same shape and one of them can only be stated against the sub-rule about protected clusters that you met there. This lesson completes the set. With the six correspondences from 1.2 and 1.3 together you can take almost any short, ordinary German word and either arrive at the English word underneath it or establish that there is not one. That is a different skill from having memorised a list, and it is worth more, because it keeps working on words nobody has taught you. The three rules here are, if anything, easier than the first three, because one of them concerns a spelling English has kept in fossil form. English still writes the letters gh in night and light and no longer pronounces them. German still pronounces the sound and writes it ch . So when you look at an English word with a silent gh in it, you are looking at a German word with a missing tooth. The rule Three more correspondences. As before, read each one in both directions. Correspondence The example to hang it on English k inside or at the end of a word — German ch make — machen ; book — Buch English v between vowels — German b give — geben ; love — lieben English gh , especially -ght — German ch , -cht night — Nacht ; light — Licht The first and the third arrive at the same German spelling from two different English ones, and that is not a coincidence. Both English k and the sound that English now writes as a silent gh ended up in German as the consonant of lesson 0.4 — the one with two values, the one in ach and the one in ich . So a German ch in the middle of a word has two possible English answers, and you try both: a k , or a gh . Rule four — a German ch is often your k This is the most productive rule in the volume, because it hits the commonest verbs. It applies inside a word and at the end of one. It does not apply at the beginning: an English word that starts with a k sound has a German relative that starts with k as well, unchanged. English German make · break · speak machen · brechen · sprechen seek · reek · wake suchen · riechen · wachen book · week · milk Buch · Woche · Milch oak · token · reckon Eiche · Zeichen · rechnen I (Old English ic ) · like · such (Old English swylc ) ich · gleich · solch come · king · corn kommen · König · Korn cold · calf · can kalt · Kalb · können The last two rows are there to show the limit rather than the rule: those six words begin with the sound and are therefore untouched, which means you can read them straight off, and also that you must not try to insert a ch into them. There is a second limit, and it connects directly to lesson 1.2. After n , the consonant was protected exactly as it was after s . So the English words think , thank , drink and sink keep their k in German: denken , danken , trinken , sinken . Three of them change at the front instead — think and thank by rule two of lesson 1.2, drink by rule one — and sink does not change at all; rule four declines to act on the back of any of them. Two rules, applied precisely, give you the right answer; either rule applied carelessly gives you a word that does not exist. Three sentences from the corpus, all turning on this rule. German English Alle machen das. [1] Everyone's doing that. Bis nächste Woche! [2] See you next week! Alle lachen. [3] Everyone's laughing. The third of those belongs to rule six rather than rule four, and it is placed here on purpose: the German word for laugh has the same ch as the word for make , but the English word underneath it has a gh , not a k . That ambiguity is real and you resolve it by trying both. Rule five — your v between vowels is their b This one is not part of the High German shift proper. The old sound between two vowels was a soft one, closer to v than to b ; English kept it as v , while German, in an earlier change of its own, hardened it to b . The direction does not matter for your purposes; the correspondence is just as regular. English German give · have · live geben · haben · leben love · believe · weave lieben · glauben · weben seven · raven · silver sieben · Rabe · Silber over · liver · evil über · Leber · Übel grave · thief · dove Grab · Dieb · Taube Two of those rows are worth singling out. The German word for seven looks nothing like the English one on the page, and it is the same word with one consonant changed; this is the kind of case the automatic dictionary comparison of lesson 1.1 counted as a miss. And the English word over answers to a German word which you will meet three times a day, because it also does the work of English about . Its spelling carries a vowel from lesson 0.3 as well as the consonant from this rule, so it is a good test of whether the sounds volume did its job. Two more corpus sentences on rule five, both of them three words long. German English Affen lieben Bananen. [4] Monkeys love bananas. Bananen geben Energie. [5] Bananas are energizing. Rule six — the silent letters you still write English spelling is famously conservative, and here the conservatism pays you back. The letters gh in night , light , right , thought , daughter once stood for a real consonant, the same one German still has and still writes ch . English stopped pronouncing it somewhere around the fifteenth century but never stopped writing it. So the spelling is a map of where the sound used to be, and the