The English language may be said to have taken its start when the Germanic tribes settled in Britain in the fifth century after the Romans had abandoned the British province in 412 A.D. These Germanic settlers were cut off from their original intercourse with their kinsmen on the continent, and the German dialects which they spoke ultimately fused into one language. By being isolated from the continent, the English language developed its own distinctive features.
Grimm’s Law and Verner’s Law help to explain the Consonant Shift that characterises the Germanic Languages and how it evolved out of Indo-European family.
Watch this video to get a preliminary idea about Consonant Shift, Grimm’s Law and Verner’s Law. This is the second lecture in the bi-lingual series made exclusively for English Honours students of Bengal.
