ABSTRACT
English is a member of the West Germanic branch of Indo-European, which also includes German, Dutch and Frisian. It derives from three Low German dialects spoken by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who came from Denmark and North Germany – perhaps under the leadership of Hengist and Horsa – to settle in England from the middle of the fifth century onwards. These dialects are marked by retention of the unvoiced stops /p t k/, which were mutated to the corresponding fricatives /f s x/ in High German, and of the voiced stops /b d g/, which were in turn mutated to /p t k/. These mutations may be illustrated by such equations as: https://www.niso.org/standards/z39-96/ns/oasis-exchange/table">
Low German
English
High German
d ör
d oor
T ür
ski p
shi p
Schi ff
hei t
ho t
hei ss
