Without TV to keep everyone in contact, eventually those dialects changed so much that they became different languages. As the Old Germanic dialects continued to develop into the modern Germanic languages, both the pronunciation and meaning of this word changed. Jakob Grimm, the famous linguist who collected fairy tales on the side, figured out the rules by which Germanic sounds differed from those of Indo-European. English feather T hus the pot- of hippo pot amus and the feath of feath er share a common origin. By the way, the suffix -er has played an interesting role in these words.
Etymology is the study of the historical development of words, part of historical linguistics .
Check the Linguistics Program listings for what you can take next semester.