Allen & Greenough · Part First — Words and Forms › Orthography

§19. Kindred Forms

The most important correspondences in consonants between Latin and English, in cognate words, may be seen in the following table:—¹

LATIN	ENGLISH
p: pater	f: father, earlier fader ² ² The th in father is a late development. The older form fader seems to show an exception to the rule that English th corresponds to Latin t. The primitive Germanic form was doubtless in accordance with this rule, but, on account of the position of the accent, which in Germanic was not originally on the first syllable in this word, the consonant underwent a secondary change to d.
f from bh: ferō, frāter	b: to bear, brother
b from bh: lubet, libet	v, f: love, lief
t: tū, tenuis	th: thou, thin ³ ³ But to the group st of Latin corresponds also English st; as in Latin stō, English stand.
d: duo, dent-	t: two, tooth
f from dh: faciō	d: do
d from dh: medius	d: mid
b from dh: ruber	d: red
c: cord-, cornū	h: heart, horn
qu: quod	wh: what
g: genus, gustus	c, k, ch: kin, choose
h (from gh): hortus, haedus	y, g: yard, goat
cons. i: iugum	y: yoke
v: ventus, ovis	w: wind, ewe
v from gv: vīvus (for † gvīvos), veniō (for † gvemiō).	qu, c, k: quick, come

J. H. Allen and J. B. Greenough, New Latin Grammar (Boston: Ginn, 1903). Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.