The reduced nasal sounds generally written rti, arising from en, ne, em, me, etc., in unaccented syllables, became un, um (rarely nu, mu). Similarly the reduced liquid sounds!, b became ur, u/ (rarely ru, lu).
Accent.—In the I.-E. languages the position of the accent was originally free—i.e., any syllable in the word could bear the chief accent—variation occurring very frequently, e.g., between dif ferent cases of the same noun. This freedom of position must have been retained in Teutonic at the time when voiceless spirants (f ,j)x, s) became voiced (see above). Eventually, the first syl lable of every word came to bear the chief accent, except in cer tain compound words, especially verbs compounded with preposi tions, which were probably long regarded as more or less inde pendent words. This system of accentuation was intimately con nected with the principle of alliteration, the essential character istic of early Teutonic poetry and the dominant factor in family nomenclature.
The description of the phonetic characteristics given above applies in general to the Teutonic group of languages as a whole, and would probably be true for the time about the beginning of the Christian era. Dialectical differences no doubt already existed, but cannot be traced with certainty. The language of the earliest Runic inscriptions does not differ very markedly from the type. The principal changes are : e became i, (i.) in the unaccented syllable of dissyllabic and in the least accented syllables of polysyllabic words; (ii.) in accented syllables when the following syllable contained i, j, or u. i became e when the following syllable contained a, e,,o. U became o when the following syllable contained a, a, 5. a became a always.
final a, e, were lost.
Final long vowels were (in general) shortened Final nasals and explosives were lost.
The chief sound-changes in the northern and western languages seem to have taken place in the 6th and 7th centuries. Some were common to all the languages in question, some to English and Scandinavian, some to English and German, others occurred in only one of these languages or a portion of it.
I. Among the chief changes common to English, Scandinavian and German we may reckon (I) the loss of final a (in Scand. also
before final consonants) ; (2) the loss of unaccented i, u after long syllables; (3) the change before vowels or g.
II. Among the most important of the changes common to Eng lish and Scandinavian must be classed (I) the affection (umlaut) of vowels by the vowels (generally i, u) of following syllables. In early German the only case of this kind was the affection of a by a following i and even this seems to have taken place much later. In the same category we must reckon (2) the early loss of h between sonants; (3) the loss of n before s.
III. Among the chief changes common to English and German were : (I) The loss of final z. In short monosyllables, however, z became r in High German, as in Scandinavian; (2) The change z b.,- before d (whereas assimilation took place in Scand.); (3) The change db. d in all positions (in Scand. only initially and after 1) ; (4) The lengthening of all consonants (except r) before j (in Scand. only gutturals).
The Frisian dialects agree with English in the phenomena enumerated above and in changes peculiar to these languages, such as (I) the change a y a before nasals ; (2) the change a ae (later e) in other positions; (3) the labialization of a before nasals; (4) the change (lb. ae (e in Fris.) in close syllables (also in open syllables before front vowels); (5) the diphthongization of vowels before h; (6) the loss of n before To ; (7) the palatali zation of gutturals before front vowels. The differences between the two languages in early times were few : (I) a, e, i, are diph thongized before r followed by a consonant in English, but not in Frisian; (2) the diphthong ai became a in English everywhere, but in Frisian only in open syllables (5 in close syllables) ; (3) the diphthong au (aeu, then) became ea in English, but a in Frisian; (4) i was labialized in Frisian, but not in English, before (orig inal) w in the following syllable. Frisian texts of the r3th and i4th centuries show many characteristic changes which must have rendered the language almost, if not wholly, unintelligible to an Englishman of the same period ; but it is hardly probable that these changes were for the most part of any great antiquity.