Shifts

Sound shifts are to languages the same as annual rings to the tree stumps. They allow us to see in the past, and make conclusions about dead trees and extinct languages. And based on these observations we can predict possible changes in weather patterns to come, or how the people whose languages we are looking at now, were interacting in their past.

Here's the one well-known shift, actually two of them:

k/g -> j (/ch)
a/e/o -> a

These are typical for the Vedic Sanskrit, as in Parjanas


Gothic fairguni (mountain?)
Hittite Perkunas
Latvian Perkons
Lithuanian Perkunas
Old Norse deity Fjörgunn
Prussian Perkunos
Sanskrit Parjanas
Slavic Perun


Perkunas -> Parjanas since the shift j -> k is impossible (unnatural) we can safely conclude that the Perkunas is the ancient form, closer to PIE than that in Sanskrit. And, therefore, makes it possible to reconstruct some of the Vedas words back to their previous (pre-shift) form.

p -> f is another form modified by shifts: Fjörgunn <- Perkun.


haus (house) <-> xizh{in}(a) [maja]
maus (mouse) <-> mish(a)
aus (out) <-> iz [aiz]