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From: Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de>
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Somewheres
Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2024 18:17:43 -0000 (UTC)
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On 2024-09-02, jerryfriedman <jerry.friedman99@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Loss of the final consonant in "of"
>
> and "and"
>
> While my finger was clicking on "Send", my brain realized that the
> final consonant of "an" has disappeared when not followed by a
> vowel, and the final consonant of the determiner "mine" first
> disappeared when not followed by a vowel, then completely.
> "Thine" went through a similar process while it was mostly
> disappearing".). And "I" used to have a final consonant.

Yes.  I was thinking in terms of general sound changes.  Very high
frequency words show irregular attrition.

For a striking example, compare the conjugation of the unremarkable
Latin verb "habere" and that of its descendant, French "avoir".
You might think that "avoir" was cobbled together from different
stems, like "être" and "aller", but no, it's all from "habere",
albeit aggressively reduced and transformed from heavy use as an
auxiliary.

Also, endings can be lost in specific grammatical contexts while
persisting elsewhere.  Since the reduction of vowels in final
syllables to [ə] between Old and Middle High German, there hasn't
been a general change affecting endings in German, I think.  However,
people who studied German as a foreign language are probably very
aware of the masculine/neuter singular strong dative -e, e.g. "mit
dem Kind(e)".  Apart from fixed expressions, conscious archaization,
or such, that -e is completely dead now, but you'll still find it
in texts from the 19th and early 20th century.  Nowadays, first
person singular -e in verbs is under pressure.  But there is no
general change that would delete final -e across Standard German.

> Deletion of final consonants and vowels in a High German dialect

Standard German is notably conservative.

> in this folk song as Brahms set it.
>
> Da unten im Tale
> Läuft's Wasser so trüb
> Und i kann dir's nit sagen
> I hab' di so lieb.

Note the parallel developments in the history of English:

ich  > i  : ic  > I
dich > di : ðec > thee

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de