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Northwest Germanic
Northwest Germanic is a proposed grouping of the Germanic languages, representing the current consensus among Germanic historical linguists. It does not challenge the late 19th-century tri-partite division of the Germanic dialects into North Germanic, West Germanic and East Germanic, but proposes additionally that North and West Germanic (i.e. all surviving Germanic languages today) remained as a subgroup after the southward migration of the East Germanic tribes, only splitting into North and West Germanic later. Whether this subgroup constituted a unified proto-language, or simply represents a group of dialects that remained in contact and close geographical proximity, is a matter of debate, but the formulation of Ringe and Taylor probably enjoys widespread support: There is some evidence that North and West Germanic developed as a single language, Proto-Northwest Germanic, after East Germanic had begun to diverge. However, changes unproblematically datable to the PNWGmc period a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Germanic Languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, English, is also the world's most widely spoken language with an estimated 2 billion speakers. All Germanic languages are derived from Proto-Germanic, spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia. The West Germanic languages include the three most widely spoken Germanic languages: English with around 360–400 million native speakers; German language, German, with over 100 million native speakers; and Dutch language, Dutch, with 24 million native speakers. Other West Germanic languages include Afrikaans, an offshoot of Dutch, with over 7.1 million native speakers; Low German, considered a separate collection of Standard language, unstandardized dialects, with roughly 4.35–7.15 million native speakers and probably 6.7–10 million people who can understand ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Word Formation
In linguistics, word formation is an ambiguous term that can refer to either: * the processes through which words can change (i.e. morphology), or * the creation of new lexemes in a particular language Morphological A common method of word formation is the attachment of inflectional or derivational affixes. Derivation Examples include: * the words ''governor'', ''government'', ''governable'', ''misgovern'', ''ex-governor'', and ''ungovernable'' are all derived from the base word ''(to) govern'' Inflection Inflection is modifying a word for the purpose of fitting it into the grammatical structure of a sentence. For example: * ''manages'' and ''managed'' are inflected from the base word ''(to) manage'' * ''worked'' is inflected from the verb ''(to) work'' * ''talks'', ''talked'', and ''talking'' are inflected from the base ''(to) talk'' Nonmorphological Abbreviation Examples includes: * ''etc.'' from et caetera Acronyms & Initialisms An acronym is a word formed from the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because they share an etymological origin, and calques, which involve translation. Loanwords from languages with different scripts are usually transliterated (between scripts), but they are not translated. Additionally, loanwords may be adapted to phonology, phonotactics, orthography, and morphology of the target language. When a loanword is fully adapted to the rules of the target language, it is distinguished from native words of the target language only by its origin. However, often the adaptation is incomplete, so loanwords may conserve specific features distinguishing them from native words of the target language: loaned phonemes and sound combinations, partial or total conserving of the original spelling, foreign plural or case forms or indecli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global population. Its adherents, known as Christians, are estimated to make up a majority of the population in 157 countries and territories, and believe that Jesus is the Son of God, whose coming as the messiah was prophesied in the Hebrew Bible (called the Old Testament in Christianity) and chronicled in the New Testament. Christianity began as a Second Temple Judaic sect in the 1st century Hellenistic Judaism in the Roman province of Judea. Jesus' apostles and their followers spread around the Levant, Europe, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, the South Caucasus, Ancient Carthage, Egypt, and Ethiopia, despite significant initial persecution. It soon attracted gentile God-fearers, which led to a departure from Jewish customs, and, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alps
The Alps () ; german: Alpen ; it, Alpi ; rm, Alps ; sl, Alpe . are the highest and most extensive mountain range system that lies entirely in Europe, stretching approximately across seven Alpine countries (from west to east): France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Austria, Germany, and Slovenia. The Alpine arch generally extends from Nice on the western Mediterranean to Trieste on the Adriatic and Vienna at the beginning of the Pannonian Basin. The mountains were formed over tens of millions of years as the African and Eurasian tectonic plates collided. Extreme shortening caused by the event resulted in marine sedimentary rocks rising by thrusting and folding into high mountain peaks such as Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn. Mont Blanc spans the French–Italian border, and at is the highest mountain in the Alps. The Alpine region area contains 128 peaks higher than . The altitude and size of the range affect the climate in Europe; in the mountains, precipitation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old High German
Old High German (OHG; german: Althochdeutsch (Ahd.)) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally covering the period from around 750 to 1050. There is no standardised or supra-regional form of German at this period, and Old High German is an umbrella term for the group of continental West Germanic dialects which underwent the set of consonantal changes called the Second Sound Shift. At the start of this period, the main dialect areas belonged to largely independent tribal kingdoms, but by 788 the conquests of Charlemagne had brought all OHG dialect areas into a single polity. The period also saw the development of a stable linguistic border between German and Gallo-Romance, later French. The surviving OHG texts were all written in monastic scriptoria and, as a result, the overwhelming majority of them are religious in nature or, when secular, belong to the Latinate literary culture of Christianity. The earliest written texts in Old High German, glosses and i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Holtzmann's Law
Holtzmann's law is a Proto-Germanic sound law originally noted by Adolf Holtzmann in 1838. It is also known by its traditional German name ''Verschärfung'' (literally: "sharpening"). (A similar sound law which has affected modern Faroese, called ''skerping'' in Faroese itself, is also known as "Faroese ''Verschärfung''" in English.) Description and occurrences The law involves the gemination, or doubling, of PIE semivowels (glides) ' and ' in strong prosodic positions into Proto-Germanic ' and ', which had two outcomes: * hardening into occlusive onsets: ** '/' in North Germanic; ** '/' in East Germanic * vocalization of the first semivowel, its addition to a diphthong, and division of the diphthong and remaining semivowel into two separate segments in West Germanic. The process is brought about by the fact that vowels (or semivowels) in the syllable margin are invariably transformed into consonantal articulations. The conditions of the sound change were long debated, since ther ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Germanic A-mutation
''A''-mutation is a metaphonic process supposed to have taken place in late Proto-Germanic (c. 200). General description In ''a''-mutation, a short high vowel ( or ) was lowered when the following syllable contained a non-high vowel (, or ).Gordon 1957, § 32. Thus, since the change was produced by other vowels besides */a/, the term ''a''-mutation is something of a misnomer. It has also been called "''a''-umlaut", "''a''/''o''-umlaut", "velar umlaut" and, formerly, "Brechung".Lloyd (1966), p. 738. (This last was Grimm's term, but nowadays German ''Brechung'', and its English equivalents ''breaking'' and ''fracture'', are generally restricted in use to other unrelated sound-changes which later affected individual Germanic languages.) :* *''hurną'' > Old English ''horn'' "horn" :* *''wiraz'' > Old English ''wer'' "man" The high vowel was not lowered, however, if intervened between it and the following non-high vowel. An intervening nasal consonant followed by a consonant of a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inscription
Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the writing and the writers. Specifically excluded from epigraphy are the historical significance of an epigraph as a document and the artistic value of a literary composition. A person using the methods of epigraphy is called an ''epigrapher'' or ''epigraphist''. For example, the Behistun inscription is an official document of the Achaemenid Empire engraved on native rock at a location in Iran. Epigraphists are responsible for reconstructing, translating, and dating the trilingual inscription and finding any relevant circumstances. It is the work of historians, however, to determine and interpret the events recorded by the inscription as document. Often, epigraphy and history are competences practised by the same person. Epigraphy is a primar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Runes
Runes are the letter (alphabet), letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised purposes thereafter. In addition to representing a sound value (a phoneme), runes can be used to represent the concepts after which they are named (ideographs). Scholars refer to instances of the latter as ('concept runes'). The Scandinavian variants are also known as ''futhark'' or ''fuþark'' (derived from their first six letters of the script: ''Feoh, F'', ''Ur (rune), U'', ''Thurisaz, Þ'', ''Ansuz (rune), A'', ''Raido, R'', and ''Kaunan, K''); the Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Saxon variant is ''Anglo-Saxon runes, futhorc'' or ' (due to sound-changes undergone in Old English by the names of those six letters). Runology is the academic study of the runic alphabets, runic inscriptions, runestones, and their history. Runology f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gothic Language
Gothic is an extinct East Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the ''Codex Argenteus'', a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizeable text corpus. All others, including Burgundian and Vandalic, are known, if at all, only from proper names that survived in historical accounts, and from loanwords in other languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, and French. As a Germanic language, Gothic is a part of the Indo-European language family. It is the earliest Germanic language that is attested in any sizable texts, but it lacks any modern descendants. The oldest documents in Gothic date back to the fourth century. The language was in decline by the mid-sixth century, partly because of the military defeat of the Goths at the hands of the Franks, the elimination of the Goths in Italy, and geographic isolation (in Spain, the Gothic language lost its last and probably already declining fu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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