14
The Sources of Standard English.
no less than give a substantive and a verb, to show how our brethren (I may now at last drop the word cousins) formed their inflections.
| The Substantive Wolf. | ||||
| Old English. | Gothic. | Old High German. | Old Norse. | |
| singular. | ||||
| Nom. | wulf | vulfs | wulf | ulfr |
| Gen. | wulfes | vulfis | wulfes | ulfs |
| Dat. | wulfe | vulfa | wulfa | ulfi |
| Acc. | wulf | vulf | wulf | ulf |
| plural. | ||||
| Nom. | wulfas | vulfos | wulfa | ulfar |
| Gen. | wulfa | vulfe | wulfo | ulfa |
| Dat. | wulfum | vulfam | wulfum | ulfum |
| Acc. | wulfas | vulfans | wulfa | ulfa |
| Present Tense of the Verb niman, to take; whence comes our numb. | ||||
| Old English. | Gothic. | Old High German. | Old Norse. | |
| Ic nime | nima | nimu | nem | |
| þu nimest | nimis | nimis | nemr | |
| he nimeð | nimiþ | nimit | nemr | |
| we nimað | nimam | nemames | nmum | |
| ge nimað | nimiþ | nemat | nemið | |
| hi nimað | nimand | nemant | nema | |
All these Teutonic tribes must have easily understood each other, about the time of Christ's birth; since, hundreds of years after that event, they were using the above-cited inflections. They had by this time wandered far from the old Aryan framework of speech. Thus, to take one instance — the Dative Plural in um; the Sanscrit Nominative sûnus formed its Dative Plural
