Phonological history of Old English Proto-Germanic phonology and Old English phonology. Proto-Germanic had two allophones each: stops and fricatives . The stops occurred: By West Germanic times, was pronounced as a stop in all positions. The fricative allophones are sometimes indicated in reconstructed forms to make it easier to understand the development of Old English consonants. Old English retained the allophony , which in case of palatalization (see below) became . Later, non-palatalized became word-initially. The allophony was broken when merged with , the voiced allophone of . A number of phonological processes affected Old English in the period before the earliest documentation. The processes
God (word) God (word) The English word god continues the Old English ' (' in Gothic, ' in Old Norse, ' in Frisian and Dutch, and ' in modern German), which is derived from Proto-Germanic '. The Proto-Germanic meaning of ' and its etymology is uncertain. It is generally agreed that it derives from a Proto-Indo-European neuter passive perfect participle '. This is similar to Persian word for God, Khudan. This form within (late) Proto-Indo-European itself was possibly ambiguous, and thought to derive from a root "*" "to pour, libate" (Sanskrit ', see '), or from a root "*" ("*") "to call,