Germanic verbs in English

These are lists of germanic verbs that are in modern use in both German and English.

It is generally understood that English is a germanic language, imported into England over a thousand years ago. It is a mixture of languages and dialects. There was no “High German” a thousand years ago, either. Modern High German and modern English simply formed from different groups of dialects.

In many ways English is much more like Low German and Dutch (and even more like Frisian). Lists such as these comparing English to those languages would be much longer. But I know German better, and for the purposes of comparison, it serves as well as those nearer languages—maybe better, because of the more pronounced divergence.

Many germanic verbs in English are no longer used as such in German, and many others are so altered as to be unrecognizable. Also, the notion of the “germanness” is contrived: there are no original languages (the linguist’s “proto-germanic” and “proto indo-european” are purely hypothetical: they serve as points of reference, but at no time did any people speak these languages), and the language actually being spoken in Northern Europe 2000 years ago formed a continuum of dialects stretching from Celtic and Latin in the South to Slavic in the East to Scandanavian in the North. In particular, all germanic languages have been absorbing heaps of Latin words so long as those languages have been recorded. Yet some of these absorbed Latin words were cognate with already existing germanic words. Ultimately, it comes down to a personal choice: am I satisfied that a word has been in germanic languages long enough that it qualifies as being “germanic”, and that given modern German and English words evolved from a single word being spoken by some ancient germanic people?

What’s the point? Perhaps that, there are enough words here to do some serious talking (and these are just verbs!). But also, it is rather interesting which words survived, and the form they took. Considering that German and English were distinct to begin with, and have been so long geographically separated, I find the similarity very impressive. We see here a part of the “common germanic” that linguists talk about.

You could almost speak using just the words English and German have in common. There are some holes, of course. Maybe a list of common English words that are not of germanic origin would also be interesting. (The criteria for such a list would be even hazier than the present one.)

Most of these verbs I got from the list at the Cactus 2000 site. Where it wasn’t clear to me, I checked with Dictionary.com, to corroborate that the English word was of germanic origin. I often consulted the Duden “Deutsches Universalwörterbuch”, and an old Langenscheidts Taschenwörterbuch. Other important resources were Sergei Nikolayev’s fascinating Germanic etymology database, (which can be found at the Tower of Babel (Starostin Etymological databases)), the excellent “Oxford Online Etymological Database”, and the ever-popular LEO Deutsch-Englisches Wörterbuch.

I left out

• verbs of clearly non-germanic origin
• verbs that do not have a verbal form in both languages
  (many German verbs exist in English not as verbs, but other parts of speech, and vice-versa.)
• recent loan-words

There are certainly mistakes here. I haven’t checked carefully. This list should not be considered authoritative.

First let’s take care of the messiest verb, 'to be': sein. In German, its conjugation seems to take elements from at least three different words ('bin', 'sein, ist', 'war'). English adds Norse elements:

The English past/conditional 'were' is spread across several German tenses. Maybe closest is the conjunctive 'wäre' in sound and function.

Next are the modal verbs, which except for their fancy grammar, mostly correspond directly to English counterparts. The English “modal” forms come from a common past tense:

English 'ought' is an old past tense of 'owe', which has come to be used as a sort of modal verb. Old English had a cognate of 'dürfen', but it didn't survive into Middle English.

German makes a distinction "Ich werde..." to indicate future tense, and "Ich will..." to indicate intent. This is lost in English, along with the very useful verb "werden" (to become).

The verb 'to eat': essen, has a complicated conjugation in German. It is most similar to German 2nd person imperative 'iss', but 3rd plural is 'esst' 2nd person past is 'asst'. Somewhere between them, is a sound like 'eat'.

Most German verbs passed into English in a form nearest their second-person imperative in German.

As to why…perhaps because it is the simplest form, basically with conjugation endings stripped off. But a more sinister thought would be, perhaps it was the language of people who learned the verbs as commands.

There are hundreds of such verbs. A few everyday examples are below.

Here is a list of several hundred more such verbs.

Although several prepositions (for:für, under:unter, in:ein) are shared by German and English, very few compound words survived the move to England. Those I found mostly have prefix ver- or vor- in German; all these have the English prefix: for-.

Note how often these transformations hold:

These difference are to be ascribed to the “High German consonent shift”, that occurred around the 5th to 8th centuries, rather than changes in English.

A few verbs seem to have come across sounding more like the simple past tense form of their German cognates.

A smaller class of verbs in German is found only with the prefix ge- (usually an intensifier). Often this prefix is lost or modified in English.

Verbs that end in -n or -en in English often compare better with the infinitives of their German cognates.

With the exceptions of ‘turn’ and ‘rain’, these are all verbs of becoming, and are to be interpreted as a past participle. The regular German past pariticiple is identical to the infinitive.

A few English verbs are more like the German 1st-person singular indicative form than anything else.

A few others are more like the German 2nd-person singular indicative form than anything else.

It is striking how few compound verbs are shared between German and English, the vast majority of old English compounds having been replaced by Latin or French equivalents.

A few remain, although the meaning of the prefixes in English is mostly lost. The distinction between the prefixes ver- and vor- is lost in English, becoming in both cases for-; the prefix be- still exists in English, but its semantic effect is lost. Note that some of these changes in prefixes pre-date the emmigration to the British Isles.

The prefixes over-über, under-unter, and fore-vor have almost identical functions in the two languages, so compounds with them are rather cheap, and could be constructed at will. Be that as it may, there are several with each that are identical. The following table omits the over- and under- words.

Furthermore, several Germanic compound verbs exist in English only as adjectives. German verlieren, verloren (to lose, lost) becomes English forlorn; besetzen (to occupy) becomes English beset. And some have specialized in both languages, differently: German belieben (be pleased to) is used in English as beloved, which would in turn translate into the German geliebte.

Of course, due to the ascendency of English as the primary international language, English words have been flowing into German at a great rate. There are many interesting effects, including the inclusion of words of common Germanic origin, which have German cognates, being spelled and pronounced as in English! There are also words of common Germanic origin that have fallen out of use in German, which have been re-introduced as English words. This process strikes me as being very natural and proper.