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1. Changes in the
English Language

2. OBJECTIVES
✘ At the end of this topic, as a pre-service
teacher, you are expected to:
A. analyze the changes of English through tracing
Grimm’s Law and the Great Vowel Shift;
B. determine how language changes spread; and
C. Identify the reasons for language change.
2

3. 1.
GRIMM’S LAW
describes the pattern of two stages of
sound known as German consonant shift
and the High German consonant shift

4. GRIMM’S LAW
✘ shows the systematic relationship between consonants in
Germanic languages and consonants in other Indo-European
languages, stating what phonetic changes took place
✘ formulated by German philologist Jacob Grimm in 1822
✘ shows that changes in language and in groups of languages come
about gradually and not a result of random word changes.
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THE TWO SOUND SHIFT
ACCORDING TO GRIMM’S LAW

6. GERMAN CONSONANT SHIFT
The first sound shift, affecting both English and
German, was from the early phonetic positions
documented in the ancient, or classical, Indo-European
languages (Sanskrit, Greek, Latin) to those still evident
in the Low German languages, including English.
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SANSKRIT GREEK LATIN
pad pod ped
tanu tanaos tenuis
catam hekaton centum
- - lubricus
daca deka decem
ajras agros ager
bhrata phrater frater
vidhava eitheos vidua
hansas khen (h)anser

7. HIGH GERMAN CONSONANT SHIFT
✘ affected only the High German languages, e.g.,
standard German
✘ classical voiceless stops ( k,t,p ) became voiceless
aspirates ( h,th,f )
✘ voiced stops ( g,d,b ) became voiceless stops ( k,t,p )
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SHIFT IN
GERMANIC
SANSKRI
T
GREEK LATIN ENGLISH
p ˃ f pad pod ped foot
t ˃ th
(voiceless)
tanu tanaos tenuis thin
k ˃ x ˃ h catam hekaton centum hundred
b ˃ p - - lubricus slippery
d ˃ t daca deka decem ten
g ˃ k ajras agros ager acre
bh ˃ b bhrata phrater frater brother
dh ˃ d vidhava eitheos vidua widow
gh ˃ g hansas khen (h)anser goose

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9. 1.
THE GREAT VOWEL SHIFT
a massive sound change affecting the
long vowels of English during the fifteenth
to eighteenth centuries and was
discovered by Otto Jespersen

10. ✘ the long vowels shifted upwards; that is, a vowel that
used to be pronounced in one place in the mouth
would be pronounced in a different place, higher up
in the mouth
✘ happens in eight steps; but each step did not happen
in immediate way.
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OTHER CHANGES THAT OCCUR
Post-vocal |r| its spread and its status:
- In many parts of England and Wales, Standard English has lost the
pronunciation post-vocal r.
- began in the 17th century in the south-east of England and is still
spreading to other areas.
- Accents with post-vocal |r| are called rhotict, and these accents are
regarded as rural and uneducated.
- On the other hand in cities like New York, pronouncing the letter r is
regarded as prestigious.
The spread of vernacular forms
- Martha's Vineyard Island.: when the island was invaded by summer tourists,
the island community of fishermen changed their pronunciation of some
word vowels to older forms from the past as a reaction to the language of
tourists.

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VERNEL’S LAW
- An exception to the rule of Grimm’s Law
- RULE: If any Indo European consonant was followed by unstressed
vowel, the voiceless fricative that was converted from the Grimm’s
Law become voiced and later become voiced plosives.

14. How do language changes spread?
group to group:
changes spread like
waves in different
directions, and social
factors such as age,
gender, status and
social group affect
the rates and
directions of change
style to style:
from more formal to
more casual, from
one individual to
another, from one
social group to
another, and from
one word to another
lexical diffusion:
the change from
one word's vowel to
another, the sound
change begins in
one word and later
on in another, etc.
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15. SHORT ACTIVITY:
Explain how language changes
through these:
Social status
Gender and change:
Interaction
The influence of the media:
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16. Language Shift and
Death

17. OBJECTIVES
✘ At the end of this topic, as a pre-service
teacher, you are expected to:
A. state reasons how languages shift and die;
B. explain how language is considered to be
endangered; and
C. Determine ways to maintain a language.
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18. LANGUAGE SHIFT
shifts most of the time towards the
language of the dominant group, and the
result could be the eradication of the local
language

19. FACTORS THAT LEAD TO LANGUAGE SHIFT
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• Economic, social and political factor
1-The dominant language is associated with social status and prestige.
2-Obtaining work is the obvious economic reason for learning another language.
3-The pressure of institutional domains such as schools and the media
• Demographic factors
1-Language shift is faster in urban areas than rural.
2-The size of the group is sometimes a critical factor.
3-Intermarriage between groups can accelerate language shift.
• Attitudes and values
1-Language shift is slower among communities where the minority language is
highly valued, therefore when the language is seen as an important symbol of
ethnic identity its generally maintained longer, and vice versa.

20. ENDANGERED LANGUAGE
•parents are no longer teaching it to their children
•it is no longer being actively used in everyday life.
•it is spoken by only a few elderly native speakers

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How do languages die?
• If there is only one person left who speaks the language as their
native tongue and fluently.
• Elders in the community refuse to teach their native tongue to the
younger generation.
• There are struggles of a minority community against the majority
society in which they live.
• Probably the most common cause of language death is when a
community that previously only spoke one language starts to
speak another one. This is called “language shift”. The community
first becomes bilingual, not discarding their native tongue, but soon
they start to use the new language more and more, until their
native language is no longer used.

22. LANGUAGE DEATH AND
LANGUAGE LOSS
A language disappears when its speakers
disappear or when they shift to speaking
another language – most often, a larger
language used by a more powerful group

23. Four Types of Language Death
(Campbell and Muntzel, 1989)
1.Gradual death involves gradual replacement of one language by
another.
2.Sudden death is rapid extinction of a language, without an intervening
period of bilingualism. The last speaker then is monolingual in the dying
language, as with Tasmanian.
3. Radical death is when a community stops speaking their language out
of self-defense.
4.Bottom-to-top death is when a language ceases to be used as a
medium of conversation, but may survive in special use like religion or
folk songs.
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24. HOW CAN WE
MAINTAIN OUR
LANGUAGE?
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25. “When all the people who speak
a language die, the language
dies with them.”
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