Sound Change
As with the Anglo-Frisian languages and the North Germanic languages, Low German has not been influenced by the High German consonant shift except for old /ð/ having shifted to /d/. Therefore a lot of Low German words sound similar to their English counterparts. One feature that does distinguish Low German from English generally is final devoicing of obstruents, as exemplified by the words 'good' and 'wind' below. This is a characteristic of Dutch and German as well and involves positional neutralization of voicing contrast in the coda position for obstruents (i.e. t = d at the end of a syllable.) This is not used in English except for in the English county of Yorkshire, where there is a process known as Yorkshire assimilation.
For instance: water, later, bit, dish, ship, pull, good, clock, sail, he, storm, wind, grass, hold, old .
Low German is a West Germanic language of the lowlands and as such did not experience the High German consonant shift. The table below shows the relationship between English and Low German consonants which were unaffected by this chain shift and gives the modern German counterparts, which were affected by the sound shift.
| Proto-Germanic | High German | Low German | Dutch | English | German | Frisian |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| k | ch | maken, moaken, maaken | maken | make | machen | meitsje |
| k | k | Kerl "fellow" | kerel | churl | Kerl * | tsjirl (arch.) |
| d | t | Dag, Dach | dag | day | Tag | dei |
| t | ss | eten, äten | eten | eat | essen | ite |
| t | z (/ts/) | teihn, tian | tien | ten | zehn | tsien |
| t | tz, z (/ts/) | sitten | zitten | sit | sitzen | sitte |
| p | f, ff | Schipp, Schepp | schip | ship | Schiff | skip |
| p | pf | Peper, Päpa | peper | pepper | Pfeffer | piper |
| β | b | Wief, Wiewer | wijf, wijven ** | wife, wives | Weib, Weiber ** | wiif, wiven |
Notes: *German Kerl is a loanword from Low German; **The series Wief-wijf, etc. are cognates, not semantic equivalents. The meanings of some of these words have shifted over time. For example, the correct equivalent term for "wife" in modern Dutch and German is vrouw and Frau respectively; using wijf or Weib for a human is considered archaic in German and derogatory in Dutch, comparable to "bitch". No cognate to Frau/vrouw has survived in English (cf. Old English frōwe "lady").
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