Once upon a time (the early 1800s to be exact), a scholar named Jacob Grimm lived in Germany. In addition to collecting and rewriting Teutonic fairy tales about Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin and Little Red Riding Hood with his brother Wilhelm, he delved into extensive studies of languages.

At that time, several scholars were suggesting that an ancient language they called "Indo-European" might be the common ancestor of many modern European and Asian tongues. After all, these languages shared similar words for snow, beech tree, deer, pig, wolf, goat and oak, for instance.

But if all European languages had been derived from the same Indo-European language, scholars asked, why are their words for the same objects so different?

Why, for instance, was a foot "pedus" in Latin but "Fot" in German, a dog "canis" in Latin but "Hund" in German, a brother "frater" in Latin but "Bruder" in German? And, while we're at it, why was the dwarf "Doc" named for a profession instead of a personality trait?

Grimm explained these aberrations when he discovered a fascinating correlation between certain consonants in English.

He observed, for instance, that the letter "p" in English words derived from Latin often correlated with the letter "f" in English words derived from Germanic languages, e.g., "pedal/foot," "pentagon/five" and "paternal/father."

He also noticed similar relationships between other English consonants. The "c" of Latin words, for instance, correlated with "h" of Germanic words, as in canine/hound, century/hundred and cornet/horn; the Latin "g" with the Germanic "k" in genuflect/knee, genus/kind and grain/kernel; the Latin "f" with " Germanic "b" in foliage/blossom, fraternal/brother and fundamental/bottom.

Grimm attributed these consonant changes to shifts in sound that had occurred when Indo-European words were adopted by Germanic languages. Based on his research, he formulated "Grimm's Law," which states that sound changes in language follow a pattern and are not random.

Grimm's Law provides us not only with a handy explanation for the many doublets in English — why a pedestrian travels by foot, why we genuflect on our knees, and why a cent is one-hundredth of a dollar — but also with verification of what many linguists had previously considered only a fairy tale: English, German, Latin and scores of other tongues descended in a systematic way from the same parent language — Indo-European.

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Connecticut, invites your language sightings. His book, "Mark My Words," is available for $9.99 on Amazon.com. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via email to WordGuy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.

Photo credit: Cederic Vandenberghe at Unsplash