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In historical linguistics, the 'Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law' (also called the 'Anglo-Frisian' or 'North Sea Germanic nasal spirant law') is a description of a phonological development in some dialects of West Germanic, which is attested in Old English, Old Frisian, and Old Saxon. By this sound change, in the combination vowel + nasal + fricative, the nasal disappeared, with compensatory lengthening of the vowel. ("Spirant" is an older term for "fricative".) The sequences in question are original ''-ns-'', ''-mf-'', and ''-nþ-''.
Compare the first person plural pronoun ''us'' in various old Germanic languages:

★ Old English ''ūs''

★ Old Frisian ''ūs''

★ Old Saxon ''ūs''

★ Old High German ''uns''

★ Middle Dutch ''ons''

★ Gothic ''uns''
Gothic represents East Germanic, and its correspondence to German and Dutch shows it retains the more conservative form. The /n/ has disappeared in English, Frisian and Old Saxon, with compensatory lengthening of the /u/.
Likewise:

★ Germanic ''
★ tanþ-'' becomes English ''tooth'', Old Frisian ''tōth'' (cf. Low German ''Tähn'', Dutch ''tand'', German ''Zahn'').

★ Germanic ''
★ anþara-'' becomes English ''other'', West Frisian ''oar'', East Frisian ''uur'', Old Saxon ''āthar'' (cf. German & Dutch ''ander-'' [þ→d]).

★ Germanic ''
★ fimf'' becomes English ''five'', West Frisian ''fiif'', East Frisian ''fieuw'', Dutch ''vijf'', Low German ''fiev, fief'' (cf. German ''fünf'').

★ Germanic ''
★ samft-'' becomes English ''soft'', West Frisian ''sêft'', Low German ''sacht'', Dutch ''zacht'' [ft→xt] (cf. German ''sanft'').

★ Germanic ''
★ gans-'' becomes English ''goose'', West Frisian ''goes'', Low German ''Goos'' (cf. Dutch ''gans'', German ''Gans'').
Note that Dutch is inconsistent, following the law in some words but not others; this must be understood in terms of the standard language drawing from a variety of dialects, only some of which were affected by the sound change. Similarly, certain North German dialects retain Old Saxon forms, with the result that a very few words in Modern Standard German have this shift: alongside ''sanft'' German also has ''sacht'', both meaning "soft", "gentle".
One consequence of this is that English has very few words ending in ''-nth''; those which do exist must be more recent than the productive period of the Anglo-Frisian nasal spirant law:

★ ''month'' - in Old English this was ''monaþ'' (cf. German ''Monat''); the intervening vowel made the law inoperable.

★ ''tenth'' - a neologism in Middle English. Germanic ''
★ tehunþ-'' did originally follow the law, producing Old English ''tēoþa'' (Modern English ''tithe''), but the force of analogy to the cardinal number ''ten'' caused Middle English to recreate the regular ordinal.

★ ''plinth'' - a Greek loan-word in Modern English ().

Contents

References

References

★ Markey, Thomas L. ''Germanic dialect grouping and the position of Ingvæonic.''(Inst. f. Sprachwissenschaft d. Univ. Innsbruck, 1976.) ISBN:3851245296