as in Old Dutch and Old Saxon, the voiceless and voiced dental fricatives and stood in allophonic relationship (as did , and , ), with in final position and used initially and medially. The sound then became , while became . In Old Frisian, the voiceless fricatives were only voiced medially, and remained voiceless initially except in some pronouns and determiners, much as in Old and Modern English. Thus, modern Frisian varieties have word-initially in most words, and medially. early OHG > classical OHG (English that, Icelandic : Dutch , German , West Frisian ) early OHG > classical OHG (English think : Dutch , German , West Frisian ) early OHG > classical OHG (English thane : Dutch , German "warrior", West Frisian ) early OHG > classical OHG (English thirsty : Dutch , German , West Frisian , Swedish ) early OHG / > classical OHG (English brother, Icelandic : Dutch , German , West Frisian ) early OHG > classical OHG (English mouth, Old Norse : Dutch , German ) early OHG / > classical OHG , (English thou, Icelandic : Low German , German , West Frisian ) In dialects affected by phase 4 but not by the dental variety of phase 3 (Central German, Low German, and Dutch), two Germanic phonemes merged: þ becomes d, but original Germanic d remains unchanged: One consequence of this is that there is no dental variety of in Middle Dutch. A peculiar development took place in stems which had the onsets and in OHG. They were merged in MHG and subsequently shifted to in Upper German and in Central German. Modern German has in , , , , but in , , , . The stems with the Upper German development appear to have undergone the High German consonant shift several times, e.g. ("to force") < MHG < OHG < Germanic . In 1955, Otto Höfler suggested that a change analogous to the fourth phase of the High German consonant shift may have taken place in Gothic (East Germanic) as early as the 3rd century AD, and he hypothesised that it may have spread from Gothic to High German as a result of the Visigothic migrations westward (c. 375–500 AD). This has not found wide acceptance; the modern consensus is that Höfler misinterpreted some sound substitutions of Romanic languages as Germanic, and that East Germanic shows no sign of