section_path: Consonant shifts
section_name: Consonant shifts
paragraph_text: Consonant shifts
  
  German does not have any dental fricatives (the category containing English ⟨ th ⟩). All of the ⟨ th ⟩ sounds, which the English language still has, disappeared on the continent in German with the consonant shifts between the 8th and 10th centuries. It is sometimes possible to find parallels between English and German by replacing the English ⟨ th ⟩ with ⟨ d ⟩ in German, e.g. "thank" → Dank, "this" and "that" → dies and das, " thou " (old 2nd person singular pronoun) → du, "think" → denken, "thirsty" → durstig, etc.
  
  Likewise, the ⟨ gh ⟩ in Germanic English words, pronounced in several different ways in modern English (as an ⟨ f ⟩ or not at all), can often be linked to German ⟨ ch ⟩, e.g. "to laugh" → lachen, "through" → durch, "high" → hoch, "naught" → nichts, "light" → leicht or Licht, "sight" → Sicht, "daughter" → Tochter, "neighbour" → Nachbar. This is due to the fact that English ⟨ gh ⟩ was historically pronounced in the same way as German ⟨ ch ⟩ (as /x/ and /ç/ in an allophonic relationship, or potentially as /x/ in all circumstances as in modern Dutch) with these word pairs originally (up until around the mid to late 16th century) sounding far more similar than they do today.