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If the original kt was preceded by a nasal, this disappeared, thus:
It will be seen that this development bears some similarities to the High German Consonant Shift , which caused the same voiceless stops to undergo the same change (though in different phonetic environments) in German, and the Ingvaeonic Nasal Spirant Law , which caused a nasal to disappear before a spirant in English and Dutch. However it is unrelated to these, it is significantly earlier, and its causes are different. The effect has an important consequence for the oldest Weak Verbs . As the preterite and participle were formed with a -t, the assimilation occurred whenever the stem ended with a stop. Thus the change took place in past tense forms, but not in the present stem. This results in a small number of irregular weak verbs which have survived into the modern languages:
(The vowel changes in these verbs is an unrelated development caused by Rückumlaut .) However most such verbs have been restored to regularity through subsequent processes of levelling. Note that although this looks similar to Grammatischer Wechsel , which causes a superficially similar consonant alternation in Strong Verbs , it is unrelated. The effect of the Germanic spirant law can also be very neatly observed by comparing certain verbs with related nouns. Some examples from German:
However, German has few examples with voiceless stops, as the High German consonant shift levelled these in most cases. They can be observed in Dutch:
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