German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

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German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by Ser »

Back in the day when I was 9 and I started studying English, I remember that in my very first term of class we learned the 70 most common irregular English verbs in groups according to the vowel changes they had (so cost/cost/cost, hit/hit/hit, put/put/put, etc. were together, and so were buy/bought/bought, seek/sought/sought, etc.). I was surprised to find grammars of German I had consulted didn't group the irregular verbs of German, not even more pedagogical grammars like Routledge's Basic German: A Grammar and Workbook and Intermediate German: A Grammar and Workbook. So I made my own list of such verbs grouped as such, and here I present it, after getting a bunch corrections by guitarplayer/Jipí.

http://i.imgur.com/AKDLZgF.png

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Last edited by Ser on Thu Sep 05, 2013 8:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by Cedh »

This is pretty cool. A couple of nitpicks though:
- gießen has /iː iː ɔ ɔ/
- winken normally has gewunken as its Partizip Perfekt; when a form with /ɪ/ is used, it's the regular weak gewinkt. I have never encountered *gewinken.
- there's a typo in gesprungen (a superfluous <r>)
- gären has /ɛː/ in the standard language, it's /eː/ only in (northern) varieties that don't have an /ɛː/ phoneme. Since the latter holds for roughly half of all native speakers, it's perfectly acceptable to group it with /eː/ though. (I personally distinguish /ɛː/ vs. /eː/, but I do merge them before /r/, so for this particular word I have [eː] myself. The contrast is present in my 'lect e.g. in bewegen with [eː] vs. abwägen with [ɛː].)
- the Partizip Perfekt of schwören should be geschworen
- bergen, bersten, sterben and verderben etymologically belong in the group with short /a/ in the past tense (the gelten group). The forms barg, barst, starb and verdarb have long [aː] phonetically in most varieties, but that's only because of r-vocalisation. Interestingly, you have put the perfectly parallel werfen in the correct group already.
- fechten is currently listed as its own group, but if you look closely you'll see that it belongs with the flechten group right below it; the Partizip Perfekt doesn't have /a/.
- the same goes for wenden, which belongs with the denken group.
- I've never heard a Partizip Perfekt with /œ/ for können (although that's the Ersatzinfinitiv form); the PP is always gekonnt with /ɔ/.
- all the 3sg present forms with <ä> in the blasen and fahren groups have /ɛː/ in the standard language.
- what you have for scheinen is messed up; these forms belong to two different verbs: scheinen scheint schien geschienen /aɪ aɪ iː iː/ 'to seem; to shine' and schießen schießt schoss geschossen /iː iː ɔ ɔ/ 'to shoot'.
- heißen has a Partizip Perfekt geheißen - you've written this correctly, but it's pronounced with /aɪ/, so that verb should get a group of its own.
- haben has a long /aː/ in the infinitive.
- the Partizip Perfekt of schallen should be geschallt. This verb has a strong variant too: schallen schallt scholl geschollen.

Some semantic notes:
- riechen can also mean 'to perceive a smell', so it'd be more accurate to gloss it simply as 'to smell'
- sitzen should simply be glossed as 'to sit'. 'to sit down' would be setzen.
- dürfen might better be glossed as 'can, may (b/c of another person)'.
- gelten might better be glossed as 'to be valid' in modern usage.
- brechen is ambitransitive and labile, exactly like English 'to break' (so no 'sth' in the gloss).
- flechten is missing a gloss in your list. It means 'to braid'.
- raten should have an additional gloss 'to guess'.
- fahren should be glossed as 'to drive (a vehicle), to travel'.

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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by Jipí »

Sorry I didn't pay attention to the grouping when I looked over this list the other day, too. I just paid attention to spelling and even then seem to have missed some things. :O

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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by Ser »

cedh: Thanks! Every one of your corrections has been taken into account. You can find the corrected table in the first post.

As for the collation of schallen, considering that some dictionaries I consulted don't even bother containing that verb and that Duden marks scholl/geschollen as seltener 'rarer', I decided to put it along the verbs with /a/ that undergo no vowel change...

Jipí: Nah, it's ok, I understand you were distracted talking to ~~~***YOUR GIRLFRIEND***~~~

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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by Dewrad »

This is going to be useful: thanks.

(Wait, GP has a girlfriend? Why didn't he mention something?)
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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by Click »

If I recall correctly, he did mention that he's going for New Year to Seattle with his girlfriend.

Edit:
Jipí wrote:OH. MY. GOD. If everything goes according to plan, I'll spend 2 weeks in Seattle over New Year with my gf. I am one happy person right now.

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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by Jipí »

[02.09.2013 22:12:35] <guitarplayer> someone messaged me here
[02.09.2013 22:12:40] <guitarplayer> but i was talking with my gf
[02.09.2013 22:12:45] <guitarplayer> (for the past 4 hours)
[02.09.2013 22:12:50] <guitarplayer> ((because.))
[02.09.2013 22:13:06] <Legion> guitarplayer that's not how you do it, watch:
[02.09.2013 22:13:11] <Legion> <guitarplayer> someone messaged me here
[02.09.2013 22:13:16] <Legion> <guitarplayer> but i was talking
[02.09.2013 22:13:28] <Legion> <guitarplayer> WITH MY ***GIRLFRIEND***
[02.09.2013 22:13:38] <Legion> <guitarplayer> did I mention I have a girlfriend?
[02.09.2013 22:13:42] <Legion> <guitarplayer> because I do
[02.09.2013 22:13:46] <guitarplayer> since when am I that obtrusive :|
[02.09.2013 22:13:52] <Legion> :)
[02.09.2013 22:14:03] <guitarplayer> also, I, too, whined long enough about not being in a relationship, so
[02.09.2013 22:14:04] <guitarplayer> !
[02.09.2013 22:14:51] <Serafin> yes
[02.09.2013 22:15:09] <Serafin> you whined long enough we were expecting you to be like WITH MY ~~~GIRLFRIEND~~~
Is what is being referred to here, and I suppose I should never mention her again, since No Girlfriends in the Clubhouse etc. etc. If I do, you're free to slap me around a bit with a large trout.

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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by Drydic »

Jipí wrote:Is what is being referred to here, and I suppose I should never mention her again, since No Girlfriends in the Clubhouse etc. etc. If I do, you're free to slap me around a bit with a large trout.
That rule never passed, actually :)
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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by Jipí »

Drydic Guy wrote:
Jipí wrote:Is what is being referred to here, and I suppose I should never mention her again, since No Girlfriends in the Clubhouse etc. etc. If I do, you're free to slap me around a bit with a large trout.
That rule never passed, actually :)
/me uncharacteristically but gleefully talks about girls all over the place

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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by hwhatting »

cedh audmanh wrote: - gären has /ɛː/ in the standard language, it's /eː/ only in (northern) varieties that don't have an /ɛː/ phoneme. Since the latter holds for roughly half of all native speakers,
Only "roughly half"? I'm surprised, last time I read anything about it (I think in the "dtv-Atlas zur Deutschen Spache"), it said that /ɛː/ as a separate phoneme only exists in the Standard language and in some Alemannic dialects. Personally, I distinguish /ɛː/ from /eː/, despite being a Northerner, but I've always found that most other people don't, even South of the Weißwurst equator.

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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by Cedh »

I don't have statistics at hand, and "roughly half" was a very broad guess on my part. But considering that the /eː/ :: /ɛː/ distinction is part of the standard language, and that a large part of the population has (a regional variety of) the standard language as their L1 (as opposed to a true dialect), it doesn't seem too far off. In any case, my personal impression is that most people who grew up south of a line similar to the Benrath line have [ɛː] at least in some words. It may not be fully phonemic for all of them (and in fact many people don't really care much because it's well-known and well-accepted that most northerners don't make the distinction), and it may belong to a slightly higher-than-usual register, but it's certainly much more widespread than just "in the standard language [as used in formal situations] and in some Alemannic dialects".

In the regional version of the standard language in the area where I grew up (i.e. near Cologne), there's definitely a robust phonemic distinction between /eː/ and /ɛː/, although some words written with <ä> are indeed generally pronounced with [eː]. For instance, I personally have [eː] in Mädchen (presumably because of the following palatal consonant; it's [meːtçn] for me) and in both members of the supposed minimal pair Bären :: Beeren (because of the diphthongizing effect of the following /ʁ/; I pronounce those as [beːɐn]), but in most other phonological environments the contrast is clearly present: Segen [zeːɡŋ] :: sägen [zɛːɡŋ], Leser [leːzɐ] :: Bläser [blɛːzɐ]. Also, as an anecdotal piece of evidence: Not just me and my classmates in the Rhineland, but also most of my fellow students at a university in Thuringia always found it odd or at least remarkable when someone from further north pronounced Käse as [keːzə] instead of [kɛːzə].

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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by Jipí »

As far as I can remember from an introductory class on German linguistics I took a couple of years ago, there are regions where a difference between /eː/ and /ɛː/ is only made for minimal pairs, but /eː/ is preferred otherwise. (I think I may actually do that?) I'm not sure if there's a Wenker map for this feature.

EDIT: There's a map for "täte" and "Schäfchen", but those don't have minimal pairs with /eː/ and both had <æ> in MHG. (Oooh, and now that I'm looking up the conjugation of "tuon", I see that the Pret. Ind. has tete for the singular, tâten for the plural, and the Pret. Conj. has tæte. Funfunfun.)

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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by Hallow XIII »

Most Alemannic varieties actually have /æ e/ rather than /ɛ e/
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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by hwhatting »

@cedh, GP - all good points, and I'm going to try to pay some attention to that feature; as I'm living in Bonn, there ought to be people distinguishing the phonemes if cedh's observations hold.
@ inversion: just to avoid any misunderstanding, the dtv-Atlas was not claiming that Alemanic had /ɛ: e:/ rather than /æ: e:/, only that some Alemannic dialects distinguished two phonemes here.

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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by Hallow XIII »

Yeah, I figured. I just thought it might be worth mentioning for those not in the know, since it hadn't been said yet.
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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by Basilius »

I thought the Standard distinction between *long* /eː/ and /ɛː/ had nothing to do with S. Germany.

Southern dialects (traditional) may have up to *three* different *short* vowels corresponding to (normalized) Middle High German *short* vowels /e/, /ë/ and /ä/, less commonly a similar distinction in long vowels; in both cases, the distribution is mostly faithfully etymological; it's irrelevant for lects which are closer to Standard except (IIRC) for some Halbmundart varieties.

Standard German spelling was once based on dialects which had no distinction of that sort, and often uses the two spellings to emphasize a derivational connection, which may contradict the actual sound history.

The orthoepic distinction in Standard German comes from *Northern* urban varieties, with local substrate dialects (mostly "Low German") having the additional height distinction only for the long vowels; the spellings /e/ and /ä/ were first assigned to those dialectal vowels, and their distribution in local accents of *High* German depended on spelling alone (since the dialectal vowels in question didn't consistently correspond to anything in Middle *High* German in the first place).

That's how the story is told in some books I've read; does it sound like just nonsense?
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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by Drydic »

Basilius wrote:I thought the Standard distinction between *long* /eː/ and /ɛː/ had nothing to do with S. Germany.

Southern dialects (traditional) may have up to *three* different *short* vowels corresponding to (normalized) Middle High German *short* vowels /e/, /ë/ and /ä/, less commonly a similar distinction in long vowels; in both cases, the distribution is mostly faithfully etymological; it's irrelevant for lects which are closer to Standard except (IIRC) for some Halbmundart varieties.

Standard German spelling was once based on dialects which had no distinction of that sort, and often uses the two spellings to emphasize a derivational connection, which may contradict the actual sound history.

The orthoepic distinction in Standard German comes from *Northern* urban varieties, with local substrate dialects (mostly "Low German") having the additional height distinction only for the long vowels; the spellings /e/ and /ä/ were first assigned to those dialectal vowels, and their distribution in local accents of *High* German depended on spelling alone (since the dialectal vowels in question didn't consistently correspond to anything in Middle *High* German in the first place).

That's how the story is told in some books I've read; does it sound like just nonsense?
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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by Jipí »

OK, since the different e-sounds seem somewhat complicated in MHG, here's a summary of what Paul et al.'s Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik (25th ed. 2007) says on a normalized version of MHG phonology (of course, individual dialects may differ and as usual, historical sources confront us with a great variety of spellings):
- /e/ closed (primary umlaut of early OHG /a/), <e/ẹ> (NHG merges /e, ɛ, ä/)
- /ë/ half-open (from Germanic */e/ or */i/), <ë>, elsewhere transcribed as /ɛ/
- /ä/ open (secondary umlaut of OHG /a/), <ä/e>
- /ǟ/ (umlaut of /ā/), <æ>
- /ē/ (monophthongization of Germanic */ai/ before r, w, h, in codas and unstressed syllables), <ê>
(Besides, there's of course also the unstressed vowel <e>, which, I suppose, was [ə] and which was frequently lost to apocope later on in both Northern Germany and Upper Germany independently.)

They make all kinds of further explanations and assumptions on the phonetic value of those sounds, but that'd be too much to quote and too complex to paraphrase now :( If you have access to the grammar, look on pages 88 ff.

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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by Basilius »

Jipí: thank you, it's relevant; I don't have access to the specific edition you used, but I'm happy to hear that nothing has changed in, like, past 100 years :)

However, above I was speaking of the origin of the modern orthoepic standard, which is related to MHG phonemes in very indirect ways.

For the origins of modern standard, explanations along the lines of "written High German as pronounced by Low German speakers" (warning: huge simplification) used to be the mainstream, or part of mainstream. I am curious if anything happened to *this* while I wasn't watching.

Rephrasing some basic points:

(1) The standard spelling was originally based on dialects that had no additional height distinction for either short or long e's.

(2) In N. Germany, local dialects mostly had only /ɛ/ as short vowel, but kept long /eː/ and /ɛː/ distinct; this latter distinction was mapped onto standard High German spelling straightly and somewhat artificially (for the dialects in question were stigmatized and too different from the original dialectal basis of the written standard).

(3) In S. Germany, short vowels often supported the distinction /e/ :: /ɛ/, while the distinction /eː/ :: /ɛː/ was either lacking or faithful to historical phonetics (ultimately MHG) rather than to the standard spelling.

(4) Bühnenaussprache and today's orthoepic standard were based on Northern pronunciation (partly due to the economic situation in late 19th century, and partly due to more straightforward correspondence of the Northern pronunciation to the spelling, in this point and others). In particular, it has sole short /ɛ/ but retains /eː/ :: /ɛː/ contrast for the long vowels. This type of vowel inventory is stable in the North (where it also complies with traditional dialectal or semi-dialectal phonology), but in the South the long vowels tend to merge where the local dialects didn't support such distinction (for *long* vowels); the "Southern" contrast /e/ :: /ɛ/ (for *short* vowels) does not exist in urban varieties of German except on the level of Halbmundarten (i. e. substandard accents).

Is this still the mainstream, or part thereof?
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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by Jipí »

Just to clarify Drydic's objection to a supposed overuse of slashes for the casual passer-by: Of course, since there are no MHG speakers anymore and we only have written sources with wild orthographic differences (which nonetheless show some regional consistency and allow to make educated guesses also by help of analyzing rhymes in verse), I suppose MHG grammatography is shy to assign definitive phonemes, and also, there's the problem of archiphonemes developing differently in different regions. This, I suppose, is why even the Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik, the standard work on MHG grammar that's been continusously revised for over 100 years now, doesn't give phonemes in IPA.

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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by hwhatting »

Basilius wrote:(4) Bühnenaussprache and today's orthoepic standard were based on Northern pronunciation (partly due to the economic situation in late 19th century, and partly due to more straightforward correspondence of the Northern pronunciation to the spelling, in this point and others). In particular, it has sole short /ɛ/ but retains /eː/ :: /ɛː/ contrast for the long vowels. This type of vowel inventory is stable in the North (where it also complies with traditional dialectal or semi-dialectal phonology), but in the South the long vowels tend to merge where the local dialects didn't support such distinction (for *long* vowels); the "Southern" contrast /e/ :: /ɛ/ (for *short* vowels) does not exist in urban varieties of German except on the level of Halbmundarten (i. e. substandard accents).
I can't say anything right now on what conditions held during the formation of the current orthoepic norms or about the phonology of current Northern German dialects, but I can only repeat that in current Northern pronounciation of the Standard language, there is no contrast /eː/ :: /ɛː/; they're merged into /eː/. I may be able to read up on the history this weekend, when I'll be back at home and have my library at hand, but no promises. ;-)

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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by Basilius »

Jipí, I think he meant this:
I wrote:<...> the spellings /e/ and /ä/ <...>
- and was correct, it was a typo.

For MHG, why? If we're discussing phonemic contrasts, we should use slashes. Not (always) using the IPA is good, too, since (1) we know about contrasts more than about phonetic detail, and (2) a manual must enable the students to read more special literature on the subject, thus introduce them to designations that are traditional for this specific branch of science in the first place.

hwhatting: yes, it was that statement that made me wonder, for it contradicts more-less everything I've read on the subject. Perhaps, "Northern" is too broad a category.
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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by hwhatting »

Basilius wrote:hwhatting: yes, it was that statement that made me wonder, for it contradicts more-less everything I've read on the subject. Perhaps, "Northern" is too broad a category.
I can only assume that your books refer 1) to a distinction that was existent in the 19th century and now has disappeared or that 2) with "Northern" they actually mean the Northern part of the Hochdeutsch (=Non-Niederdeutsch) area, i.e. the Mitteldeutsch area South of the Benrath line, where, at least in certain regions as per the observations of GP and cedh, the distinction is maintained in the regional variants of Standard German.

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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by Drydic »

Basilius wrote:Jipí, I think he meant this:
I wrote:<...> the spellings /e/ and /ä/ <...>
- and was correct, it was a typo.

For MHG, why? If we're discussing phonemic contrasts, we should use slashes. Not (always) using the IPA is good, too, since (1) we know about contrasts more than about phonetic detail, and (2) a manual must enable the students to read more special literature on the subject, thus introduce them to designations that are traditional for this specific branch of science in the first place.
I was also spitfiring about
Southern dialects (traditional) may have up to *three* different *short* vowels corresponding to (normalized) Middle High German *short* vowels /e/, /ë/ and /ä/, less commonly a similar distinction in long vowels; in both cases, the distribution is mostly faithfully etymological; it's irrelevant for lects which are closer to Standard except (IIRC) for some Halbmundart varieties.
I just didn't have any backup for lambasting you on that. Fortunately GP was able to work things out masterfully, as he is wont to.
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Re: German Irregular Verbs by Vowel Change

Post by jal »

Funny, I don't think we were ever taught (Netherlands, 80s) the difference between /e:/ and /E:/, instead always using /e:/, resulting in pronunciations like [meIdgj@n]. Also, it seems German has a lot of distinctions in its irregular verbal paradigms that Dutch doesn't make (or no longer makes, I'm not too versed in Middle and Old Dutch).


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