Common Germanic Vowel Shift.

There are approximately 7000 languages in the world. In accordance with the
Genealogical classification of languages, all of them can be subdivided into groups,
which are often called families. English belongs to the Germanic branch of Indo-
European family. Nowadays Germanic languages are spoken in many countries;
English is spoken in England, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and partly
elsewhere. In India English is considered a second official language.

Principal Features of Germanic Languages.

Stress falls on the initial syllable (root syllable) of word. Changes of vowels
(Germanic Vowel Shift) and consonants (Grimm’s and Verner’s Law). Strong and
weak declensions of adjectives and verbs

Word Stress in Indo-European and Common Germanic and its influence upon
the morphological system of English.
The main characteristic feature in the Germanic langs is the treatment of the Indo-
European short vowels o and a and long ā and ō. IE s hort o and a appear as short a in
Germanic langs. E. G.: Ночь – Nacht. IE long ā and ō appear as long ō in Germanic.
As result there was neither a short o nor a long ā in Germanic langs.

The quality of stressed vowel is in some cases dependent on a following sound –

fracture (also called breaking). It’s about the pair e andi and the pair u ando.

In Indo-European there were two kinds of stress – musical and dynamic; in Germanic
languages only dynamic stress is preserved. In Indo-European stress was free and
movable, in Proto-Germanic and Old English it became fixed upon the first syllable
primarily.