English
English shows the results of the shift consistently throughout its repertoire of native lexemes. One consequence of this is that English has very few words ending in -nth; those that exist must have entered the vocabulary subsequent to the productive period of the nasal spirant law:
- month - derives from Old English monaþ (cf. German Monat); the intervening vowel rendered the law inapplicable here.
- tenth - from Middle English tenthe. The original Germanic *tehundô, which was regularised to *tehunþô in early Ingvaeonic, was affected by the law, producing Old English teogoþa, tēoþa (Modern English tithe). But the force of analogy with the cardinal number ten caused Middle English speakers to recreate the regular ordinal and re-insert the nasal consonant.
- plinth - a loanword in Modern English from Greek (πλίνθος "brick, tile").
Likewise, the rare occurrences of the combinations -nf-, -mf- and -ns- have similar explanations.
- answer - originally had an intervening dental: Old English andswaru.
- unfair - the prefix un- is still productive.
Read more about this topic: Ingvaeonic Nasal Spirant Law
Famous quotes containing the word english:
“The English did not come to America from a mere love of adventure, nor to truck with or convert the savages, nor to hold offices under the crown, as the French to a great extent did, but to live in earnest and with freedom.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the the land,
In England there shall be dear bread—in Ireland, sword and brand;
And poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand,
So, rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand,
Of the fine old English Tory days;
Hail to the coming time!”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“An English man does not travel to see English men.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)