Secrets of the Words You Know
Blog 29 *k̂ and *k, and the secrets of hear….and of hard
Now to round up our tour of the gutturals of PIE with Voiceless palatal *k̂ and velar*k
(i) *k̂ and *k at the start of a word
As with the voiced and voiced aspirate guttural sounds of PIE, Proto Germanic (like other ‘centum’ language groups like Italic, Greek and Celtic) makes no distinction between these two sounds.
In line with Grimm’s Law, in Proto Germanic these voiceless stop consonants shift to the most closely related fricative sound. Just as PIE voiceless *p and *t shift to *f and *th respectively in Proto Germanic, *k̂ and *k shift to *h in initial position.
This Proto Germanic *h does not undergo fronting before front vowels (as happens in English with Proto Germanic *k and *g). It is generally conserved in initial position before a vowel in standard English, though routinely lost in that position in several dialects. As we will see, it disappears even in standard English before a consonant.
Fronting of *k̂ and *k is, by contrast, evident in two main cases:
- the ‘satəm’ languages (such as Indic, Iranian and Balto-Slavic) typically change palatal *k̂ to ‘s’ (or in some cases, such as Sanskrit, ‘sh’, see below) and velar *k before a front vowel to the affricate ‘ch’.
- many ‘centum’ languages also show fronting of inherited *k sounds, though at a later date. For example:
- we have already seen it in the development of Proto-Germanic *k (from PIE *g) to English ‘ch’ before a front vowel, as in ‘cheese’ (Blog post 7)
- it is equally significant in Romance languages, where Latin words with a hard ‘c’ (pronounced ‘k’) have regularly evolved into affricates or sibilants before front vowels. Thus Latin ‘centum’ gives Italian ‘cento’ with an initial English ‘ch’ sound, and French ‘cent’, with an initial ‘s’.
So while the ‘h’ of English ‘hundred’ matches the inherited *k of Latin ‘centum’, it matches an ‘s’ not only in ‘satəm’ languages like Russian, where the word for ‘100’is ‘sto’, but also in French, derived from a ‘centum’ language. This is a case where the English spelling convention does help historical understanding, since the use of the letter ‘c’, as in French, signals that (in our many borrowings from Latin and French) the word has evolved from a historical *k̂ or *k rather than from an *s.
Here are some more examples of the evolution of the PIE palatal *k̂.
The PIE root *k̂ei- appears to have had a core sense of ‘lie in bed’, and so also the sense of ‘beloved’. In Latin, with a *-wo- suffix, this gives a word for ‘citizen’, from which English has borrowed ‘civic’, ‘civil’, ‘civility’ and the like. That the root is indeed in *k̂ rather than *k is shown by Indian matches such as the important Hindu god Shiva, whose name means ‘auspicious’ or ‘kind’, so matching the concept of ‘civility’ already noted. The standard reflex of *k̂ in Sanskrit is, as this shows, ‘sh’ rather than ’s’.
The same root is to be seen in Irish ‘ceilidh’, from a word meaning ‘companion’ and Greek-derived ‘cemetery’ (the place where we will one day lie!).
Another, more widespread, root beginning with *k̂ is *̂k̂erd-, which has a meaning identical to the English word inherited from it, ‘heart’, with the Grimm’s Law change of *k̂ to ‘h’.
This has the expected ‘k’ forms in Latin and Greek, both the source of many English words. From Latin they include ‘core’ (the ‘heart’ of a fruit), ‘cordial’, ‘courage’ (its vowel showing its transition via French), and prefixed words like ‘accord’, ‘discord’ and (because the heart was sometimes seen as the seat of memory, as in ‘learn by heart’) ‘record’. Greek borrowings, as often, are more technical, such as ‘cardiac’ or ‘myocardial’.
We saw under *dh the important PIE root *dheH-, which means roughly ‘put’ or ‘make’. When you add *dheH- to *̂k̂erd- (so, *k̂red-dheH-) you are literally ‘putting your heart’, and so believing or trusting. This is the origin of the Latin word that gives us ‘creed’, ‘credible’ and ‘credulous’, and even ‘credit’ (you are trusting someone with a loan).
A similar-looking root *k̂er- offers us a ‘cornucopia’ of words based on the meaning of an animal ‘horn’. This is evident in its root form with borrowings from Greek like ‘rhinoceros’ (literally ‘nose-horn’), or, with the same nasal suffix as ‘horn’, Latin-derived ‘unicorn’. The ‘cornet’ and the ‘cor anglais’, like ‘horn’ itself, take us into musical instruments, when animal horns were the main material for wind instruments, before metallurgy. A ‘hart’ is so named for its horns, and matches the generic Latin-based name for deer, ‘cervids’. The root also gives words related to the head and neck such as ‘cranium’ (from Greek) and ‘cervix’ from Latin. It is also the origin of the English borrowing ‘cairn’ from Gaelic and the similar term ‘carn’ used to describe stony hills in Wales.
That the root does indeed begin with *k̂, rather than *k, is shown by the much-travelled word ‘ginger’ (Box 10):
Box 10: A much-travelled word
The word ’ginger’ reached English from late Latin ‘zingiberi’, from a very similar Greek word derived from Prakrit (the successor to Sanskrit) ‘singabera’, which in turn comes from Sanskrit ‘śrngaveram’, where the first element is from ‘śrngam’, meaning ‘horn’ and ‘vera’ meaning ‘body’, reflecting the shape of the ginger root.
The Sanskrit word confirms, thanks to its initial sibilant, which sounds ‘sh’, that the PIE root did indeed begin with *k̂. To make the story even more complicated, the Sanskrit may well be a ‘folk etymology’ from a Southern Indian language (not Indo European) where the first element in fact meant ‘root’!
The fact that the root is *k̂er-, rather than starting with a velar *k, is also confirmed by the military term ‘sirdar’, for a senior commander, from Persian ‘sardar’, where the first element, also from *k̂er-, means ‘head’. This also shows the standard Iranian ‘s’ as opposed to the Sanskrit ‘sh’, as the fronted form of PIE *k̂.
Roots in *kw- lead to two outcomes in English.
- In most cases, English uses the ‘wh’ spelling (in most forms of spoken English nowadays pronounced simply ‘w’) to reflect this opening combination, which merged with the true labio-velar *kʷ in Germanic and several other language groups. For example, ‘White’ and ‘wheat’ (the grain that produces white flour) both go back to a root *k̂weid/t, meaning ‘to shine white’, starting not with a labio-velar but with *kw-.
- However, before ‘o’, as we can see in ‘hound’ from * k̂won- (dog), an ‘h’ is used without a ‘w’, just as we will shortly see in ‘how’ from a labio-velar. This is a form of ‘dissimilation’ (Technical Note 3, Box 7), the ‘w’ element of the initial consonant group being too similar to the following vowel to be retained.
From the same root we have Latin-derived ‘canine’. The second element of the well-known Welsh breed the corgi also comes from this root. The first element ‘cor’ means ‘dwarf’ in Welsh; the second element in its unmutated form is ‘ci’, with a hard ‘c’, which is the standard Welsh term for a dog.
As a final example of initial *k̂, let’s take the PIE root *k̂el-, which seems to have meant ‘conceal’ or ‘protect’. The English forms, beginning as expected with ‘h’, include ‘hole’, ‘hall’, ‘helm/helmet’, and, possibly through borrowing from another Germanic language, ‘holster’. From Latin, we have borrowed words like ‘cell’, ‘cellar’ and ‘conceal’, and from Greek, with a suffix, ‘eucalyptus’ (literally, ‘well hidden’ as the unopened flower of the eucalyptus is protected by a cap). A similar root *k̂lep-, probably an extension of *k̂el, gives us Greek borrowings around ‘stealing’ like ‘kleptomaniac’.
As for the velar *k, some examples are:
- English ‘hen’ versus Latin-derived ‘cantor’ and French-derived ‘chant’, all going back to a root *kan-, meaning ‘to sing’. The name ‘Carmen’ comes directly from the Latin for ‘song’, the expected *can-men having presumably been altered to ‘carmen’, again as a result of dissimilation between the two original ‘n’-sounds. In Old English, a masculine version of the same word gave the standard word for a ‘cock’, which is more obviously the lead singer of the pair. This however disappeared in favour of ‘cock’, an onomatopoeic word, probably from Old French.
- English ‘have’ versus Latin-derived words like ‘captive’, from a root *kap-, which seems to have the core sense of ‘grasp’ or ‘take’, but in Germanic languages has the broader sense of ‘have’. This root has given us some quite diverse inherited English words, and a vast number of words derived from Latin or French. Here are just a sample of each:
- Inherited English words from *kap- include: behave, haft, hawk, heave and heavy
- Latin-derived words in English from *kap- include: capable, capacity, intercept, accept, except
- French-derived words developed from Latin include: deceive, receive, catch, chase, and even sashay (a version of French ‘chassé’, a step in square dancing, literally ‘chased’).
- English ‘whore’ (the addition of the ‘w’ to the spelling is not etymological: the word would have normally been spelt just with the ‘h’, as it is pronounced) versus Sanskrit ‘Kama Sutra’, Italian-derived ‘caress’ and French-derived ‘charity’. These are from a PIE root *keH-, meaning ‘love’, with an *-r suffix in Germanic and Italic, and also in similar Celtic words, like Old Irish ‘caraid’ and Welsh ‘cariad’, both meaning ‘love’.
- English ‘head’versus Latin-derived words like ‘decapitate’, ‘capital’ or the three-headed muscle ‘triceps’, and French-derived words like ‘chef’ and ‘chief’. (Old English ‘heafod’ shows the middle labial ‘missing’ from the modern English word.)
- English ‘hearth’ versus Latin-derived ‘carbon’ from a root *ker meaning ‘to burn’. The zero-grade root *kr-, with an *-em suffix, is also the origin of borrowings from Latin like ‘cremate’.
We have seen that the expected development of a velar *k before a front vowel in the ‘satəm’ languages is towards an affricate. We can see this in a term imported from India – the fabric ‘chintz’ – from a Sanskrit word that conveys brightness. It can also be seen in the Slavic term for ‘black’ from a root *kers-, meaning ‘dark’ or ‘dirty’ with a nasal suffix: the name of the Ukrainian town of Chernobyl means ‘black grass’, a reference to Artemisia vulgaris or common wormwood. (The same root is the origin of the name of the ‘dark’ Hindu god Krishna, the velar *k preserved as such before *r.)
As mentioned above, Proto Germanic*h (the usual outcome of PIE *k̂ and *k) is routinely lost in English before consonants. If not taken into account, this can easily mislead one in considering how inherited and borrowed words relate to one another.
Here are four examples:
- the English word corresponding to Latin-derived ‘incline’ and Greek-derived ‘clinic’, both from PIE *klei-, meaning ‘to lean’ with an *n suffix, is indeed ‘lean’, which would originally have had an initial ‘h’;
- similarly, English shows ‘raw’, not *hraw, from a root *kreuH-, meaning ‘raw flesh’ and the origin of such borrowings as ‘crude’ and ‘cruel’ from Latin and Old French respectively. This root is also the origin of the Greek word meaning ‘flesh’ that we saw under *t in the coinage ‘creosote’;
- a ‘rook’ is a type of ‘corvid’, the first word inherited and the second from Latin, both from a root *ker- (to make a loud sound), also the origin of ‘ring’ (as in ‘make a loud sound’), ‘retch’ and another raucous bird, the ‘raven’. In each case, English has lost the initial Proto Germanic *h.
- a ‘reindeer’ (a borrowing from Old Norse) is so called not from any ‘reins’, but from its horns (root *k̂er-, above), but the initial ‘h’ has again been lost before the following consonant.
As noted in Blog posts 14 and 15, this underlines why English initial ‘l’ or ‘r’ sounds (or occasionally other sonorants, as we have seen with words like ‘noble’ and ‘native’ under *ĝh) do not always go back to the equivalent PIE initial consonant.
The sound code for English initial ‘h’ can be set out as:
English inherited h (only before vowels) = PIE*k̂/*k = Latin/Celtic hard c = Greek k = Germanic h.
In satəm languages PIE*k̂ = Balto-Slavonic/Iranian s = Indic sh; PIE*k = Balto-Slavonic/Indo-Iranian k before an initial back vowel, and palatalized before front vowels.
(ii) Secrets of hear….and of hard
We will take one example of each of *k̂ and *k here, in both cases with some emphasis on personal names.
For *k̂, let’s look at a root *k̂leu-, meaning ‘to hear’. As you will expect from our earlier discussion, the English inherited descendants of the root will begin with ‘l’ as the Proto Germanic *h from PIE *k̂ will be lost before the following consonant, so no surprise that we have ‘listen’, and also ‘loud’, both beginning with ‘l’ rather than ‘h’. We have already seen the German term ‘ablaut’, which is similarly about sounds, and whose main element also starts with ‘l’.
German also illustrates how the root has been used in personal names, in this case ‘Ludwig’ (the origin also of ‘Louis’), meaning ‘famous in war’. We can follow this notion of ‘fame’, linked to one quality or another, across other Indo-European languages.
For example, Greek deploys the same term in the form ‘-cles’ at the end of names claiming fame for wisdom (‘Sophocles’), among the people (‘Damocles’), in the law (‘Themistocles’) or simply ‘far and wide’ (‘Pericles’). In the Slavic languages *k̂ is palatalized to ‘s’, and the term derived from *k̂leu- is therefore ‘slav’ or feminine ‘slava’. So we get a whole set of names linking fame or glory to peace (Russian ‘Miroslav’), God (Czech ‘Bohuslav’), or more generally achieving it (‘Stanislav’). Good King Wenceslas of Bohemia, his name slightly disguised by translation via mediaeval Latin, stood for ‘greater glory’.
For *k, there is a root that seems to have two forms *kar- and *ker-, in each case with a core meaning of ‘hard’ as in ‘solid’. No surprise that the main English manifestation of this root is indeed ‘hard’. This quality is reflected in names like ‘Richard’ (as noted earlier ‘strong in rule’), ‘Leonard’ (‘strong as a lion’), and Bernard (‘strong as a bear’).
The Greek word for strength is from the same source. It is visible in the numerous words ending in the element ‘-cracy’, such as ‘democracy’ (when the people exert power) or ‘plutocracy’ (when the rich do). We saw under *t above that the Greek for ‘safety’ had a core containing the sounds ‘so’. This same word, allied to ‘strength’, gives Athens’ most famous philosopher his name: ‘Socrates’, perhaps a suitable combination of qualities for a high-profile shaper of discourse.
(iii) What’s an inherited English word from another PIE root beginning with *k̂ or *k?
Our root this time is PIE *kerp-, meaning ‘to pluck or gather’. We can see this in Latin in the phrase ‘carpe diem’ or ‘seize the day’. Old French adaptations of the same Latin verb prefixed by ‘ex’ provide English with ‘excerpt’ and ‘scarce’. A ‘carpet’ is thought to get its name (also via French) from the use of ‘plucked’ pieces of wool. In Greek, the word for ‘fruit’ is from this root, visible in the important tropical hardwood trees whose fruit spiral down on two wings, the ‘Di- [two] -ptero- [feather] –carps’ [fruit].
What’s an English inherited verb and noun (the two are identical) from this root? Think about what both the initial *k and the later *p might look like in English. The word is seven letters long, but the first four are quite predictable.
As usual, subscribers will be sent the answer next week.
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