Dahl's Law
Encyclopedia
Dahl's Law is a sound rule of Northeast Bantu
Northeast Bantu
The Northeast Bantu languages are a group of Bantu languages of East African which share a phonological innovation called Dahl's Law that is unlikely to be borrowed...

 languages, a case of voicing dissimilation
Dissimilation
In phonology, particularly within historical linguistics, dissimilation is a phenomenon whereby similar consonant or vowel sounds in a word become less similar...

. In the history of these languages, a voiceless stop, such as /p t k/, became voiced
Voice (phonetics)
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...

 (/b d ɡ/) when immediately followed by a syllable with another voiceless stop. So, for example, Nyamwezi
Nyamwezi language
Nyamwezi is a major Bantu language of central Tanzania. It forms a dialect continuum with Sukuma, but is more distinct from other neighboring languages....

 has -datu "three" where Swahili
Swahili language
Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...

, a Bantu language which did not undergo Dahl's Law, has -tatu, and Shambala has mgate "bread" where Swahili has mkate. Dahl's Law is the reason for the name Gikuyu
Gikuyu language
Gikuyu or Kikuyu is a language of the Bantu family spoken primarily by the Kikuyu people of Kenya. Numbering about 6 million , they are the largest ethnic group in Kenya. Gikuyu is spoken in the area between Nyeri and Nairobi. Gikuyu is one of the five languages of the Thagichu subgroup of the...

, when the language prefix normally found in that language is ki-.

The law was named in 1903 by Carl Meinhof
Carl Meinhof
Carl Friedrich Michael Meinhof was a German linguist and one of the first linguists to study African languages.-Early years and career:...

, after the missionary Edmund Dahl who had discovered it.

Dahl's Law is often portrayed as the African equivalent of Grassmann's Law
Grassmann's Law
Grassmann's law, named after its discoverer Hermann Grassmann, is a dissimilatory phonological process in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit which states that if an aspirated consonant is followed by another aspirated consonant in the next syllable, the first one loses the aspiration...

 in Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...

. However, Grassman's Law (which is aspiration
Aspiration (phonetics)
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...

, not voicing, dissimilation) has taken place in the Bantu language Makhuwa, where it is called Katupha's Law.
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