Secrets of the Words You Know
Blog 7: English as a Germanic Language 4: The secrets of ‘cold’ and ‘chill’: the fronting of ‘k-’
Picking up from the last blog, ‘cold’ and ‘chill’ both go back to a single origin in a Proto-Germanic root *kal- but then underwent a subtly different evolution in English. You may have spotted that the ‘hard c’ of ‘cold’ is followed by the back vowel ‘o’ and the affricate ‘ch’ of ‘chill’ is followed by the front vowel ‘i’. This modern pronunciation reflects a similar difference between back vowels [‘a’, ‘o’ and ‘u’] and front vowels [‘e’ and ‘i‘] at the time of fronting.
So, whereas the change of initial ‘sk-‘ to ‘sh-‘ took place whatever the following vowel, Old English preserved an inherited ‘k’ sound before back vowels but changed it to ‘ch-‘ before front vowels.
Similar examples of an inherited initial ‘k’ or ‘hard c’ sound changing to ‘ch’ before a front vowel at the time of fronting include ‘cheap’, ‘cheek’, ‘cheese’, ‘chest’, ‘chew’, ‘chicken’, ‘chide’, ‘child’, ‘chin’, ‘chink’ and ‘chip’. As you can see, all these still show front vowels (‘i’ or ‘e’) after the ‘ch’.
The evolution of English vowels is very complex. So there are some inherited words beginning with ‘k’ which are now followed by a front vowel, but which were not at the time of fronting. In such cases, the initial ‘k’ sound is conserved.
A good example is the word ‘kin’, which is clearly related to German ‘kind’, meaning ‘child’ (as in ‘kindergarten’), both inherited from Proto-Germanic *kunja, meaning ‘family’. The reason that we talk of our relatives as ‘kin’ rather than as ‘chin’ is that the vowel sound at the time of fronting was still ’u’ rather than the ‘i’ to which it subsequently developed in certain positions via a sound like French ‘u’.
The same is true of inherited words such as ‘kind’ (a close relation of ‘kin’); ‘kith’ (a word now coincidentally surviving only in the phrase ‘kith and kin’); ‘kernel’ (linked to the same root as ‘corn’),‘King’; ‘kiss’; ‘kipper’ (from the same source as ‘copper’ in reference to the colour of the fish, initially salmon); and of two words borrowed into Germanic from Latin, ‘kiln’ (from the Latin word that gives us ‘culinary’) and ‘kitchen’ (from the Latin word which developed into ‘cuisine’ in French). In all of these the vowel after inherited ‘k’ would still have been ‘u’ at the relevant time.
Other modern English words with a hard ‘k’ sound before a front vowel are usually borrowings. As with ‘sk-’, many are from or influenced by Old Norse or other Scandinavian sources, such as ‘keel’, ‘keg’, ‘kettle’, ‘kick’, or ‘kid’. Some still conserve their Northern or Scottish feel, such as ‘ken’ or ‘kilt’.
Another such word is ‘kirk’. Both ‘kirk’ and ‘church’ descend from a Proto-Germanic *kirika, ultimately borrowed from the Greek word for ‘Our Lord’ familiar from the ‘Kyrie Eleison’ (‘Lord, have mercy’) of the Catholic Mass. So in Old English, the initial ‘hard c’ of ‘cirice’ (the Old English descendant of *kirika) was duly palatalized before the ‘i’ while ‘kirk’ (a borrowing from Old Norse) and similar words retained the unpalatalized initial ‘k’.
‘Kink’ (originally a nautical term for a twist in a rope) and ‘kit’ (originally a wooden jug or container) are borrowings from Dutch; ‘kestrel’ and ‘kitten’ probably from Old French; and the much-travelled ‘kiosk’ comes via French and Turkish from a Persian word for a portico or palace.
By no means all Modern English words beginning with ‘ch’ and a front vowel are inherited from Proto-Germanic. French later supplied such words as ‘cheat’; ‘cheer’; ‘cherish’; ‘cherry’; ‘chief’; and ‘chimney’, mostly of late Latin origin, as well as ‘check’ which derives ultimately, like ‘chess’, from the Persian word for King, modern ‘Shah’. These were all assimilated to the now well-entrenched affricate ‘t-sh’ after the fronting process had finished.
Before we leave ‘k’, here is an oddity of English: why do we chew with our jaw?
Box 2: The Effects of Analogy (1)
Why do we ‘chew’ with our ‘jaw’? The first word, as with so many other ‘ch-’ words, goes back to a Proto-Germanic *k. The second, which is from the same root, would be expected to give us ‘chaw’, but seems, like its close relation ‘jowl’, to have been affected by the French word for ‘cheek’, ‘joue’. This shows that closely-related meanings can sometimes override normal ‘sound-rules’. It is an example of ‘analogy’ (Technical Note 2), where a different logic affects a sound change that would otherwise have been expected. We can call this type ‘semantic analogy’. More examples will come our way when we reach PIE *d.
As before, this Box is being added to Technical Note 3 for ease of future reference.
To conclude this blog:
Finally, a cheap question for you:
- ‘cheap’ is part of family of English words about trade, such as ‘Chapman’ (originally a peddler), ‘Cheapside’ (the old market street in the City of London), and various towns and villages with ‘Chipping’ in their name. Its origin is probably a Proto-Germanic borrowing from a Latin word of similar meaning, as its cousins are found across most modern Germanic languages. Which major port in another Germanic-speaking country has a name meaning ‘Traders’ harbour’?