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
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located enti ...
,
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
,
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, with over 100 million native speakers; and
Dutch, with 24 million native speakers. Other West Germanic languages include
Afrikaans
Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans g ...
, an offshoot of Dutch, with over 7.1 million native speakers;
Low German
:
:
:
:
:
(70,000)
(30,000)
(8,000)
, familycolor = Indo-European
, fam2 = Germanic
, fam3 = West Germanic
, fam4 = North Sea Germanic
, ancestor = Old Saxon
, ancestor2 = Middle L ...
, considered a separate collection of
unstandardized dialects, with roughly 4.35–7.15 million native speakers and probably 6.7–10 million people who can understand it
[Taaltelling Nedersaksisch](_blank)
H. Bloemhoff. (2005). p88.[STATUS UND GEBRAUCH DES NIEDERDEUTSCHEN 2016](_blank)
, A. Adler, C. Ehlers, R. Goltz, A. Kleene, A. Plewnia (2016)[Saxon, Low](_blank)
''Ethnologue''. (at least 2.2 million in
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...
(2016)
and 2.15 million in the Netherlands (2003));
Yiddish
Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...
, once used by approximately 13 million
Jews in pre-
World War II Europe,
now with approximately 1.5 million native speakers;
Scots
Scots usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including:
* Scots language, a language of the West Germanic language family native to Scotland
* Scots people, a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland
* Scoti, a Latin na ...
, with 1.5 million native speakers;
Limburgish varieties with roughly 1.3 million speakers along the
Dutch–
Belgian–
German border; and the
Frisian languages with over 500,000 native speakers in the Netherlands and Germany.
The largest
North Germanic languages are
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
,
Danish and
Norwegian, which are in part mutually intelligible and have a combined total of about 20 million native speakers in the
Nordic countries
The Nordic countries (also known as the Nordics or ''Norden''; literal translation, lit. 'the North') are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe and the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic. It includes the sovereign states of Denmar ...
and an additional five million second language speakers; since the Middle Ages, however, these languages have been strongly influenced by
Middle Low German, a West Germanic language, and Low German words account for about 30–60% of their vocabularies according to various estimates. Other extant North Germanic languages are
Faroese,
Icelandic, and
Elfdalian, which are more conservative languages with no significant Low German influence, more complex grammar and limited mutual intelligibility with other North Germanic languages today.
[Holmberg, Anders and Christer Platzack (2005). "The Scandinavian languages". In ''The Comparative Syntax Handbook,'' eds Guglielmo Cinque and Richard S. Kayne. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press]
Excerpt at Durham University
.
The
East Germanic branch included
Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
,
Burgundian Burgundian can refer to any of the following:
*Someone or something from Burgundy.
*Burgundians, an East Germanic tribe, who first appear in history in South East Europe. Later Burgundians colonised the area of Gaul that is now known as Burgundy (F ...
, and
Vandalic, all of which are now extinct. The last to die off was
Crimean Gothic, spoken until the late 18th century in some isolated areas of
Crimea
Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a p ...
.
The
SIL ''
Ethnologue
''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensi ...
'' lists 48 different living Germanic languages, 41 of which belong to the Western branch and six to the Northern branch; it places
Riograndenser Hunsrückisch German in neither of the categories, but it is often considered a German dialect by linguists. The total number of Germanic languages throughout history is unknown as some of them, especially the East Germanic languages, disappeared during or after the
Migration Period
The Migration Period was a period in European history marked by large-scale migrations that saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire and subsequent settlement of its former territories by various tribes, and the establishment of the post-Roman ...
. Some of the West Germanic languages also did not survive past the Migration Period, including
Lombardic. As a result of
World War II and subsequent
mass expulsion of Germans, the German language
suffered a significant loss of ''
Sprachraum'', as well as moribundity and extinction of several of its dialects. In the 21st century, German dialects are dying out as
Standard German
Standard High German (SHG), less precisely Standard German or High German (not to be confused with High German dialects, more precisely Upper German dialects) (german: Standardhochdeutsch, , or, in Switzerland, ), is the standardized variety ...
gains primacy.
The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic, also known as Common Germanic, which was spoken in about the middle of the 1st millennium BC in
Iron Age Scandinavia. Proto-Germanic, along with all of its descendants, notably has a number of unique linguistic features, most famously the
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced ...
change known as "
Grimm's law." Early varieties of Germanic entered history when the
Germanic tribes moved south from
Scandinavia in the 2nd century BC to settle in the area of today's northern Germany and southern Denmark.
Modern status
West Germanic languages
English is an
official language of
Belize
Belize (; bzj, Bileez) is a Caribbean and Central American country on the northeastern coast of Central America. It is bordered by Mexico to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and Guatemala to the west and south. It also shares a wa ...
, Canada, Nigeria,
Falkland Islands,
Saint Helena
Saint Helena () is a British overseas territory located in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is a remote volcanic tropical island west of the coast of south-western Africa, and east of Rio de Janeiro in South America. It is one of three constitu ...
,
Malta, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa, Philippines, Jamaica,
Dominica
Dominica ( or ; Kalinago: ; french: Dominique; Dominican Creole French: ), officially the Commonwealth of Dominica, is an island country in the Caribbean. The capital, Roseau, is located on the western side of the island. It is geographically ...
,
Guyana
Guyana ( or ), officially the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern mainland of South America. Guyana is an indigenous word which means "Land of Many Waters". The capital city is Georgetown. Guyana is bordered by the ...
,
Trinidad and Tobago,
American Samoa,
Palau,
St. Lucia,
Grenada
Grenada ( ; Grenadian Creole French: ) is an island country in the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea at the southern end of the Grenadines island chain. Grenada consists of the island of Grenada itself, two smaller islands, Carriacou and Pe ...
,
Barbados
Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of and has a population of about 287,000 (2019 estimate ...
,
St. Vincent and the Grenadines
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines () is an island country in the Caribbean. It is located in the southeast Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, which lie in the West Indies at the southern end of the eastern border of the Caribbean Sea wh ...
, Puerto Rico,
Guam, Hong Kong, Singapore, Pakistan, India,
Papua New Guinea,
Namibia,
Vanuatu, the
Solomon Islands and former British colonies in Asia, Africa and Oceania. Furthermore, it is the ''
de facto
''De facto'' ( ; , "in fact") describes practices that exist in reality, whether or not they are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms. It is commonly used to refer to what happens in practice, in contrast with '' de jure'' ("by l ...
'' language of the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, as well as a recognized language in
Nicaragua and Malaysia.
German is a language of Austria, Belgium, Germany,
Liechtenstein,
Luxembourg and Switzerland and has regional status in Italy, Poland, Namibia and Denmark. German also continues to be spoken as a minority language by
immigrant communities in North America, South America, Central America, Mexico and Australia. A German dialect,
Pennsylvania Dutch
The Pennsylvania Dutch ( Pennsylvania Dutch: ), also known as Pennsylvania Germans, are a cultural group formed by German immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. They emigrated primarily from German-spe ...
, is still used among various populations in the American state of
Pennsylvania in daily life.
Dutch is an official language of
Aruba
Aruba ( , , ), officially the Country of Aruba ( nl, Land Aruba; pap, Pais Aruba) is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands physically located in the mid-south of the Caribbean Sea, about north of the Venezuela peninsula of ...
, Belgium,
Curaçao
Curaçao ( ; ; pap, Kòrsou, ), officially the Country of Curaçao ( nl, Land Curaçao; pap, Pais Kòrsou), is a Lesser Antilles island country in the southern Caribbean Sea and the Dutch Caribbean region, about north of the Venezuela coast ...
, the Netherlands,
Sint Maarten, and
Suriname
Suriname (; srn, Sranankondre or ), officially the Republic of Suriname ( nl, Republiek Suriname , srn, Ripolik fu Sranan), is a country on the northeastern Atlantic coast of South America. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north ...
. The Netherlands also
colonized Indonesia, but Dutch was scrapped as an official language after
Indonesian independence. Today, it is only used by older or traditionally educated people. Dutch was until 1983 an official language in South Africa but evolved into and was replaced by
Afrikaans
Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans g ...
, a
partially mutually intelligible daughter language of Dutch.
Afrikaans is one of the 11
official languages in South Africa and is a ''
lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
'' of Namibia. It is used in other
Southern African
Southern Africa is the southernmost subregion of the African continent, south of the Congo and Tanzania. The physical location is the large part of Africa to the south of the extensive Congo River basin. Southern Africa is home to a numbe ...
nations, as well.
Low German
:
:
:
:
:
(70,000)
(30,000)
(8,000)
, familycolor = Indo-European
, fam2 = Germanic
, fam3 = West Germanic
, fam4 = North Sea Germanic
, ancestor = Old Saxon
, ancestor2 = Middle L ...
is a collection of very diverse dialects spoken in the northeast of the Netherlands and northern Germany.
Scots is spoken in
Lowland Scotland and parts of
Ulster (where the local dialect is known as
Ulster Scots Ulster Scots, may refer to:
* Ulster Scots people
* Ulster Scots dialect
Ulster Scots or Ulster-Scots (', ga, Albainis Uladh), also known as Ulster Scotch and Ullans, is the dialect of Scots language, Scots spoken in parts of Ulster in North ...
).
Frisian is spoken among half a million people who live on the southern fringes of the
North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany.
Luxembourgish is a
Moselle Franconian dialect that is spoken mainly in the
Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, where it is considered to be an official language. Similar varieties of Moselle Franconian are spoken in small parts of Belgium, France, and Germany.
Yiddish, once a native language of some 11 to 13 million people, remains in use by some 1.5 million speakers in Jewish communities around the world, mainly in North America, Europe, Israel, and other regions with
Jewish populations.
Limburgish
varieties are spoken in the
Limburg and
Rhineland regions, along the Dutch–Belgian–German border.
North Germanic languages
In addition to being the official language in Sweden,
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
is also spoken natively by the
Swedish-speaking minority in Finland, which is a large part of the population
along the coast of western and southern Finland. Swedish is also one of the two official languages in Finland, along with
Finnish, and the only official language in
Åland. Swedish is also spoken by some people in Estonia.
Danish is an official language of Denmark and in its overseas territory of the
Faroe Islands
The Faroe Islands ( ), or simply the Faroes ( fo, Føroyar ; da, Færøerne ), are a North Atlantic archipelago, island group and an autonomous territory of the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark.
They are located north-northwest of Scotlan ...
, and it is a ''lingua franca'' and language of education in its other overseas territory of
Greenland, where it was one of the official languages until 2009. Danish, a locally recognized minority language, is also natively spoken by the Danish minority in the German state of
Schleswig-Holstein.
Norwegian is the official language of Norway. Norwegian is also the official language in the overseas territories of Norway such as
Svalbard
Svalbard ( , ), also known as Spitsbergen, or Spitzbergen, is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. North of mainland Europe, it is about midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. The islands of the group range ...
,
Jan Mayen,
Bouvet island,
Queen Maud Land and
Peter I island
Peter I Island ( no, Peter I Øy) is an uninhabited volcanic island in the Bellingshausen Sea, from continental Antarctica. It is claimed as a dependency of Norway and, along with Bouvet Island and Queen Maud Land, composes one of the three No ...
.
Icelandic is the official language of
Iceland.
Faroese is the official language of the Faroe Islands, and is also spoken by some people in Denmark.
Statistics
History
All Germanic languages are thought to be descended from a hypothetical
Proto-Germanic, united by subjection to the sound shifts of
Grimm's law and
Verner's law. These probably took place during the
Pre-Roman Iron Age of Northern Europe from c. 500 BC. Proto-Germanic itself was likely spoken after c. 500 BC, and
Proto-Norse from the 2nd century AD and later is still quite close to reconstructed Proto-Germanic, but other common innovations separating Germanic from
Proto-Indo-European suggest a common history of pre-Proto-Germanic speakers throughout the
Nordic Bronze Age.
From the time of their earliest attestation, the Germanic varieties are divided into three groups:
West,
East, and
North Germanic. Their exact relation is difficult to determine from the sparse evidence of runic inscriptions.
The western group would have formed in the late
Jastorf culture, and the eastern group may be derived from the 1st-century
variety of
Gotland
Gotland (, ; ''Gutland'' in Gutnish), also historically spelled Gottland or Gothland (), is Sweden's largest island. It is also a province, county, municipality, and diocese. The province includes the islands of Fårö and Gotska Sandön to the ...
, leaving southern Sweden as the original location of the northern group. The earliest period of
Elder Futhark
The Elder Futhark (or Fuþark), also known as the Older Futhark, Old Futhark, or Germanic Futhark, is the oldest form of the runic alphabets. It was a writing system used by Germanic peoples for Northwest Germanic dialects in the Migration Peri ...
(2nd to 4th centuries) predates the division in regional script variants, and linguistically essentially still reflects the
Common Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic bra ...
stage. The
Vimose inscriptions include some of the oldest datable Germanic inscriptions, starting in c. 160 AD.
The earliest coherent Germanic text preserved is the 4th-century
Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
translation of the
New Testament by
Ulfilas. Early testimonies of West Germanic are in
Old Frankish
Frankish ( reconstructed endonym: *), also known as Old Franconian or Old Frankish, was the West Germanic language spoken by the Franks from the 5th to 9th century.
After the Salian Franks settled in Roman Gaul, its speakers in Picardy an ...
/
Old Dutch (the 5th-century
Bergakker inscription),
Old High German (scattered words and sentences 6th century and coherent texts 9th century), and
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
(oldest texts 650, coherent texts 10th century). North Germanic is only attested in scattered runic inscriptions, as
Proto-Norse, until it evolves into
Old Norse by about 800.
Longer runic inscriptions survive from the 8th and 9th centuries (
Eggjum stone
The Eggja stone (also known as the Eggum or Eggjum stone), listed as N KJ101 in the Rundata catalog, is a grave stone with a runic inscription that was ploughed up in 1917 on the farm Eggja in Sogndal, Nordre Bergenhus amt (now in Vestland county), ...
,
Rök stone
Rök is a parish located in Östergötland, Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical ...
), longer texts in the Latin alphabet survive from the 12th century (
Íslendingabók), and some
skaldic poetry dates back to as early as the 9th century.
By about the 10th century, the varieties had diverged enough to make
mutual intelligibility difficult. The linguistic contact of the
Viking settlers of the
Danelaw with the
Anglo-Saxons
The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...
left traces in the English language and is suspected to have facilitated the collapse of Old English grammar that, combined with the influx of
Romance Old French vocabulary after the
Norman Conquest, resulted in
Middle English from the 12th century.
The East Germanic languages were marginalized from the end of the Migration Period. The
Burgundians
The Burgundians ( la, Burgundes, Burgundiōnes, Burgundī; on, Burgundar; ang, Burgendas; grc-gre, Βούργουνδοι) were an early Germanic tribe or group of tribes. They appeared in the middle Rhine region, near the Roman Empire, and ...
,
Goths, and
Vandals became linguistically assimilated by their respective neighbors by about the 7th century, with only
Crimean Gothic lingering on until the 18th century.
During the early Middle Ages, the West Germanic languages were separated by the insular development of Middle English on one hand and by the
High German consonant shift
In historical linguistics, the High German consonant shift or second Germanic consonant shift is a phonological development (sound change) that took place in the southern parts of the West Germanic dialect continuum in several phases. It probably ...
on the continent on the other, resulting in
Upper German and
Low Saxon, with graded intermediate
Central German
Central German or Middle German (german: mitteldeutsche Dialekte, mitteldeutsche Mundarten, Mitteldeutsch) is a group of High German dialects spoken from the Rhineland in the west to the former eastern territories of Germany.
Central German di ...
varieties. By early modern times, the span had extended into considerable differences, ranging from
Highest Alemannic
Highest Alemannic is a branch of Alemannic German and is often considered to be part of the German language, even though mutual intelligibility with Standard German and other non-Alemannic German dialects is very limited.
Highest Alemannic dialect ...
in the South to
Northern Low Saxon in the North, and, although both extremes are considered German, they are hardly mutually intelligible. The southernmost varieties had completed the second sound shift, while the northern varieties remained unaffected by the consonant shift.
The North Germanic languages, on the other hand, remained unified until well past 1000 AD, and in fact the mainland Scandinavian languages still largely retain mutual intelligibility into modern times. The main split in these languages is between the mainland languages and the island languages to the west, especially
Icelandic, which has maintained the grammar of Old Norse virtually unchanged, while the mainland languages have diverged greatly.
Distinctive characteristics
Germanic languages possess a number of defining features compared with other Indo-European languages.
Some of the best-known are the following:
# The
sound change
A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chang ...
s known as
Grimm's Law and
Verner's Law, which shifted the values of all the Indo-European stop consonants (for example, original * became Germanic * in most cases; compare ''three'' with
Latin , ''two'' with Latin , ''do'' with
Sanskrit ). The recognition of these two sound laws were seminal events in the understanding of the regular nature of linguistic sound change and the development of the
comparative method, which forms the basis of modern
historical linguistics.
# The development of a strong
stress on the first syllable of the word, which triggered significant phonological reduction of all other syllables. This is responsible for the reduction of most of the basic English, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish words into monosyllables, and the common impression of modern English and German as consonant-heavy languages. Examples are Proto-Germanic → ''strength'', → ''ant'', → ''head'', → ''hear'', → German "autumn, harvest", → German "witch, hag".
# A change known as
Germanic umlaut
The Germanic umlaut (sometimes called i-umlaut or i-mutation) is a type of linguistic umlaut in which a back vowel changes to the associated front vowel ( fronting) or a front vowel becomes closer to (raising) when the following syllable conta ...
, which modified vowel qualities when a high front vocalic segment (, or ) followed in the next syllable. Generally, back vowels were fronted, and front vowels were raised. In many languages, the modified vowels are indicated with a
umlaut mark (e.g., in German, pronounced , respectively). This change resulted in pervasive alternations in related words — still extremely prominent in modern German but present only in remnants in modern English (e.g., ''mouse/mice'', ''goose/geese'', ''broad/breadth'', ''tell/told'', ''old/elder'', ''foul/filth'', ''gold/gild'').
# Large numbers of vowel qualities. English has around 11–12 vowels in most dialects (not counting diphthongs),
Standard Swedish has 17
pure vowels (monophthongs), standard German and Dutch 14, and
Danish at least 11. The Amstetten dialect of
Bavarian German has 13 distinctions among long vowels alone, one of the largest such inventories in the world.
# ''
Verb second'' (V2) word order, which is uncommon cross-linguistically. Exactly one noun phrase or adverbial element must precede the verb; in particular, if an adverb or prepositional phrase precedes the verb, then the subject must immediately follow the finite verb. In modern English, this survives only in a few relics, known in the EFL classroom as "inversion": examples include some constructions with ''here'' or ''there'' (''Here comes the sun; there are five continents''), verbs of speech after a quote (''"Yes", said John''), sentences beginning with certain conjunctions (''Hardly had he said this when...; Only much later did he realize...'') and sentences beginning with certain adverbs of motion to create a sense of drama (''Over went the boat; out ran the cat;
Pop Goes The Weasel''). However it is common in all other modern Germanic languages.
Other significant characteristics are:
# The reduction of the various
tense and
aspect combinations of the Indo-European verbal system into only two: the
present tense and the
past tense (also called the
preterite
The preterite or preterit (; abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense or verb form serving to denote events that took place or were completed in the past; in some languages, such as Spanish, French, and English, it is equivalent to the simple pas ...
).
# The development of a new class of
weak verbs that use a dental
suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
(, or ) instead of
vowel alternation
In linguistics, apophony (also known as ablaut, (vowel) gradation, (vowel) mutation, alternation, internal modification, stem modification, stem alternation, replacive morphology, stem mutation, internal inflection etc.) is any alternation wit ...
(
Indo-European ablaut) to indicate past tense. The vast majority of verbs in all Germanic languages are weak; the remaining verbs with vowel ablaut are the
strong verbs. The distinction has been lost in Afrikaans.
# A distinction in
definiteness of a
noun phrase that is marked by different sets of inflectional endings for
adjectives, the so-called strong and weak inflections. A similar development happened in the
Balto-Slavic languages. This distinction has been lost in modern English but was present in
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
and remains in all other Germanic languages to various degrees.
# Some words with etymologies that are difficult to link to other Indo-European families but with variants that appear in almost all Germanic languages. See
Germanic substrate hypothesis.
#
Discourse particles, which are a class of short, unstressed words which speakers use to express their attitude towards the utterance or the hearer. This word category seems to be rare outside of the Germanic languages. An example would be the word 'just', which the speaker can use to express surprise.
Note that some of the above characteristics were not present in Proto-Germanic but developed later as
areal features that spread from language to language:
* Germanic umlaut only affected the
North and
West Germanic languages (which represent all modern Germanic languages) but not the now-extinct
East Germanic languages, such as
Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
, nor Proto-Germanic, the common ancestor of all Germanic languages.
* The large inventory of vowel qualities is a later development, due to a combination of Germanic umlaut and the tendency in many Germanic languages for pairs of long/short vowels of originally identical quality to develop distinct qualities, with the length distinction sometimes eventually lost. Proto-Germanic had only five distinct vowel qualities, although there were more actual vowel phonemes because length and possibly nasality were phonemic. In modern German, long-short vowel pairs still exist but are also distinct in quality.
* Proto-Germanic probably had a more general S-O-V-I word order. However, the tendency toward V2 order may have already been present in latent form and may be related to
Wackernagel's Law
In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a ...
, an Indo-European law dictating that sentence
clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a w ...
s must be placed second.
Roughly speaking, Germanic languages differ in how conservative or how progressive each language is with respect to an overall trend toward
analyticity. Some, such as
Icelandic and, to a lesser extent, German, have preserved much of the complex
inflectional morphology inherited from Proto-Germanic (and in turn from
Proto-Indo-European). Others, such as English,
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
, and
Afrikaans
Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans g ...
, have moved toward a largely analytic type.
Linguistic developments
The subgroupings of the Germanic languages are defined by shared innovations. It is important to distinguish innovations from cases of linguistic conservatism. That is, if two languages in a family share a characteristic that is not observed in a third language, that is evidence of common ancestry of the two languages ''only if'' the characteristic is an innovation compared to the family's
proto-language.
The following innovations are common to the
Northwest Germanic languages (all but
Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
):
* The lowering of /u/ to /o/ in initial syllables before /a/ in the following syllable: → ''bode'', Icelandic "messages" ("a-Umlaut", traditionally called ''Brechung'')
* "Labial umlaut" in unstressed medial syllables (the conversion of /a/ to /u/ and /ō/ to /ū/ before /m/, or /u/ in the following syllable)
* The conversion of /ē
1/ into /ā/ (vs. Gothic /ē/) in stressed syllables. In unstressed syllables, West Germanic also has this change, but North Germanic has shortened the vowel to /e/, then raised it to /i/. This suggests it was an areal change.
* The raising of final /ō/ to /u/ (Gothic lowers it to /a/). It is kept distinct from the nasal /ǭ/, which is not raised.
* The
monophthongization of /ai/ and /au/ to /ē/ and /ō/ in non-initial syllables (however, evidence for the development of /au/ in medial syllables is lacking).
* The development of an intensified demonstrative ending in /s/ (reflected in English "this" compared to "the")
* Introduction of a distinct ablaut grade in Class VII
strong verbs, while Gothic uses
reduplication
In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change.
The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwa ...
(e.g. Gothic ''haihait''; ON, OE ''hēt'', preterite of the Gmc verb ''*haitan'' "to be called") as part of a comprehensive reformation of the Gmc Class VII from a reduplicating to a new ablaut pattern, which presumably started in verbs beginning with vowel or /h/ (a development which continues the general trend of de-reduplication in Gmc); there are forms (such as OE dial. ''heht'' instead of ''hēt'') which retain traces of reduplication even in West and North Germanic
The following innovations are also common to the
Northwest Germanic languages but represent
areal changes:
* Proto-Germanic /z/ > /r/ (e.g. Gothic ''dius''; ON ''dȳr'', OHG ''tior'', OE ''dēor'', "wild animal"); note that this is not present in
Proto-Norse and must be ordered after
West Germanic loss of final /z/
*
Germanic umlaut
The Germanic umlaut (sometimes called i-umlaut or i-mutation) is a type of linguistic umlaut in which a back vowel changes to the associated front vowel ( fronting) or a front vowel becomes closer to (raising) when the following syllable conta ...
The following innovations are common to the
West Germanic languages:
* Loss of final /z/. In single-syllable words, Old High German retains it (as /r/), while it disappears in the other West Germanic languages.
* Change of
(fricative allophone of /d/) to stop
in all environments.
* Change of /lþ/ to stop /ld/ (except word-finally).
*
West Germanic gemination of consonants, except ''r'', before /j/. This only occurred in short-stemmed words due to
Sievers' law. Gemination of /p/, /t/, /k/ and /h/ is also observed before liquids.
* Labiovelar consonants become plain velar when non-initial.
* A particular type of ''umlaut'' /e-u-i/ > /i-u-i/.
* Changes to the 2nd person singular past-tense: Replacement of the past-singular stem vowel with the past-plural stem vowel, and substitution of the ending ''-t'' with ''-ī''.
* Short forms (''*stān, stēn'', ''*gān, gēn'') of the verbs for "stand" and "go"; but note that
Crimean Gothic also has ''gēn''.
* The development of a
gerund.
The following innovations are common to the
Ingvaeonic subgroup of the
West Germanic languages, which includes English, Frisian, and in a few cases Dutch and Low German, but not High German:
* The so-called
Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law
In historical linguistics, the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law (also called the Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic nasal spirant law) is a description of a phonological development that occurred in the Ingvaeonic dialects of the West Germanic langu ...
, with loss of /n/ before voiceless fricatives: e.g. ''*munþ'', ''*gans'' > Old English ''mūþ, gōs'' > "mouth, goose", but German ''Mund, Gans''.
* The loss of the Germanic
reflexive pronoun . Dutch has reclaimed the reflexive pronoun from Middle High German .
* The reduction of the three Germanic
verbal
plural forms into one form ending in ''-þ''.
* The development of Class III weak verbs into a relic class consisting of four verbs (''*sagjan'' "to say", ''*hugjan'' "to think", ''*habjan'' "to have", ''*libjan'' "to live"; cf. the numerous Old High German verbs in ''-ēn'').
* The split of the Class II weak verb ending ''*-ō-'' into ''*-ō-/-ōja-'' (cf. Old English ''-ian'' < ''-ōjan'', but Old High German ''-ōn'').
* Development of a plural ending *-ōs in a-stem nouns (note, Gothic also has ''-ōs'', but this is an independent development, caused by
terminal devoicing of ''*-ōz'';
Old Frisian has ''-ar'', which is thought to be a late borrowing from
Danish). Cf. modern English plural ''-(e)s'', but German plural ''-e''.
* Possibly, the
monophthongization of Germanic ''*ai'' to ''ē/ā'' (this may represent independent changes in Old Saxon and
Anglo-Frisian).
The following innovations are common to the
Anglo-Frisian subgroup of the
Ingvaeonic languages:
* Raising of nasalized ''a, ā'' into ''o, ō''.
*
Anglo-Frisian brightening
The phonology, phonological system of the Old English language underwent many changes during the period of its existence. These included a number of vowel shifts, and the palatalization (sound change), palatalisation of velar consonants in ma ...
: Fronting of non-nasal ''a, ā'' to ''æ,ǣ'' when not followed by ''n'' or ''m''.
*
Metathesis of ''CrV'' into ''CVr'', where ''C'' represents any consonant and ''V'' any vowel.
*
Monophthongization of ''ai'' into ''ā''.
Common linguistic features
Phonology
The oldest Germanic languages all share a number of features, which are assumed to be inherited from Proto-Germanic. Phonologically, it includes the important sound changes known as
Grimm's Law and
Verner's Law, which introduced a large number of
fricative
A fricative is a consonant manner of articulation, produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two Place of articulation, articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the ba ...
s; late
Proto-Indo-European had only one, /s/.
The main vowel developments are the merging (in most circumstances) of long and short /a/ and /o/, producing short /a/ and long /ō/. That likewise affected the
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
s, with PIE /ai/ and /oi/ merging into /ai/ and PIE /au/ and /ou/ merging into /au/. PIE /ei/ developed into long /ī/. PIE long /ē/ developed into a vowel denoted as /ē
1/ (often assumed to be phonetically ), while a new, fairly uncommon long vowel /ē
2/ developed in varied and not completely understood circumstances. Proto-Germanic had no
front rounded vowels, but all Germanic languages except for
Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
subsequently developed them through the process of
i-umlaut.
Proto-Germanic developed a strong stress accent on the first syllable of the root, but remnants of the original free PIE accent are visible due to Verner's Law, which was sensitive to this accent. That caused a steady erosion of vowels in unstressed syllables. In Proto-Germanic, that had progressed only to the point that absolutely-final short vowels (other than /i/ and /u/) were lost and absolutely-final long vowels were shortened, but all of the early literary languages show a more advanced state of vowel loss. This ultimately resulted in some languages (like Modern English) losing practically all vowels following the main stress and the consequent rise of a very large number of monosyllabic words.
Table of outcomes
The following table shows the main outcomes of Proto-Germanic vowels and consonants in the various older languages. For vowels, only the outcomes in stressed syllables are shown. Outcomes in unstressed syllables are quite different, vary from language to language and depend on a number of other factors (such as whether the syllable was medial or final, whether the syllable was
open or
closed
Closed may refer to:
Mathematics
* Closure (mathematics), a set, along with operations, for which applying those operations on members always results in a member of the set
* Closed set, a set which contains all its limit points
* Closed interval, ...
and (in some cases) whether the preceding syllable was
light or
heavy).
Notes:
* ''C-'' means before a vowel (word-initially, or sometimes after a consonant).
* ''-C-'' means between vowels.
* ''-C'' means after a vowel (word-finally or before a consonant). Word-final outcomes generally occurred ''after'' deletion of final short vowels, which occurred shortly after Proto-Germanic and is reflected in the history of all written languages except for
Proto-Norse.
* The above three are given in the order ''C-'', ''-C-'', ''-C''. If one is omitted, the previous one applies. For example, ''f, -
'' means that ''
' occurs after a vowel regardless of what follows.
* Something like ''a(…u)'' means "''a'' if /u/ occurs in the next syllable".
* Something like ''a(n)'' means "''a'' if /n/ immediately follows".
* Something like ''(n)a'' means "''a'' if /n/ immediately precedes".
Morphology
The oldest Germanic languages have the typical complex inflected morphology of old
Indo-European language
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch ...
s, with four or five noun cases; verbs marked for person, number, tense and mood; multiple noun and verb classes; few or no articles; and rather free word order. The old Germanic languages are famous for having only two tenses (present and past), with three PIE past-tense aspects (imperfect, aorist, and perfect/stative) merged into one and no new tenses (future, pluperfect, etc.) developing. There were three moods: indicative, subjunctive (developed from the PIE
optative mood
The optative mood ( or ; abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood that indicates a wish or hope regarding a given action. It is a superset of the cohortative mood and is closely related to the subjunctive mood but is distinct from the desiderative mood. ...
) and imperative. Gothic verbs had a number of archaic features inherited from PIE that were lost in the other Germanic languages with few traces, including dual endings, an inflected passive voice (derived from the PIE
mediopassive voice), and a class of verbs with reduplication in the past tense (derived from the PIE perfect). The complex tense system of modern English (e.g. ''In three months, the house will still be being built'' or ''If you had not acted so stupidly, we would never have been caught'') is almost entirely due to subsequent developments (although paralleled in many of the other Germanic languages).
Among the primary innovations in Proto-Germanic are the
preterite present verb
The Germanic language family is one of the language groups that resulted from the breakup of Proto-Indo-European (PIE). It in turn divided into North, West and East Germanic groups, and ultimately produced a large group of mediaeval and modern l ...
s, a special set of verbs whose present tense looks like the past tense of other verbs and which is the origin of most
modal verbs in English; a past-tense ending; (in the so-called "weak verbs", marked with ''-ed'' in English) that appears variously as /d/ or /t/, often assumed to be derived from the verb "to do"; and two separate sets of adjective endings, originally corresponding to a distinction between indefinite semantics ("a man", with a combination of PIE adjective and pronoun endings) and definite semantics ("the man", with endings derived from PIE ''n''-stem nouns).
Note that most modern Germanic languages have lost most of the inherited inflectional morphology as a result of the steady attrition of unstressed endings triggered by the strong initial stress. (Contrast, for example, the
Balto-Slavic languages, which have largely kept the Indo-European
pitch accent and consequently preserved much of the inherited morphology.)
Icelandic and to a lesser extent modern German best preserve the Proto–Germanic inflectional system, with four noun cases, three genders, and well-marked verbs. English and Afrikaans are at the other extreme, with almost no remaining inflectional morphology.
The following shows a typical masculine ''a''-stem noun, Proto-Germanic ''*fiskaz'' ("fish"), and its development in the various old literary languages:
Strong vs. weak nouns and adjectives
Originally, adjectives in Proto-Indo-European followed the same declensional classes as nouns. The most common class (the ''o/ā'' class) used a combination of ''o''-stem endings for masculine and neuter genders and ''ā''-stems ending for feminine genders, but other common classes (e.g. the ''i'' class and ''u'' class) used endings from a single vowel-stem declension for all genders, and various other classes existed that were based on other declensions. A quite different set of "pronominal" endings was used for pronouns,
determiners
A determiner, also called determinative (abbreviated ), is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determiner m ...
, and words with related semantics (e.g., "all", "only").
An important innovation in Proto-Germanic was the development of two separate sets of adjective endings, originally corresponding to a distinction between indefinite semantics ("a man") and definite semantics ("the man"). The endings of indefinite adjectives were derived from a combination of pronominal endings with one of the common vowel-stem adjective declensions – usually the ''o/ā'' class (often termed the ''a/ō'' class in the specific context of the Germanic languages) but sometimes the ''i'' or ''u'' classes. Definite adjectives, however, had endings based on ''n''-stem nouns. Originally both types of adjectives could be used by themselves, but already by Proto-Germanic times a pattern evolved whereby definite adjectives had to be accompanied by a
determiner
A determiner, also called determinative (abbreviated ), is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determiner m ...
with definite semantics (e.g., a
definite article,
demonstrative pronoun,
possessive pronoun
A possessive or ktetic form (Glossing abbreviation, abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession (linguistics), possessio ...
, or the like), while indefinite adjectives were used in other circumstances (either accompanied by a word with indefinite semantics such as "a", "one", or "some" or unaccompanied).
In the 19th century, the two types of adjectives – indefinite and definite – were respectively termed "strong" and "weak", names which are still commonly used. These names were based on the appearance of the two sets of endings in modern German. In German, the distinctive case endings formerly present on nouns have largely disappeared, with the result that the load of distinguishing one case from another is almost entirely carried by determiners and adjectives. Furthermore, due to regular sound change, the various definite (''n''-stem) adjective endings coalesced to the point where only two endings (''-e'' and ''-en'') remain in modern German to express the sixteen possible inflectional categories of the language (masculine/feminine/neuter/plural crossed with nominative/accusative/dative/genitive – modern German merges all genders in the plural). The indefinite (''a/ō''-stem) adjective endings were less affected by sound change, with six endings remaining (''-, -e, -es, -er, -em, -en''), cleverly distributed in a way that is capable of expressing the various inflectional categories without too much ambiguity. As a result, the definite endings were thought of as too "weak" to carry inflectional meaning and in need of "strengthening" by the presence of an accompanying determiner, while the indefinite endings were viewed as "strong" enough to indicate the inflectional categories even when standing alone. (This view is enhanced by the fact that modern German largely uses weak-ending adjectives when accompanying an indefinite article, and hence the indefinite/definite distinction no longer clearly applies.) By analogy, the terms "strong" and "weak" were extended to the corresponding noun classes, with ''a''-stem and ''ō''-stem nouns termed "strong" and ''n''-stem nouns termed "weak".
However, in Proto-Germanic – and still in
Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
, the most conservative Germanic language – the terms "strong" and "weak" are not clearly appropriate. For one thing, there were a large number of noun declensions. The ''a''-stem, ''ō''-stem, and ''n''-stem declensions were the most common and represented targets into which the other declensions were eventually absorbed, but this process occurred only gradually. Originally the ''n''-stem declension was not a single declension but a set of separate declensions (e.g., ''-an'', ''-ōn'', ''-īn'') with related endings, and these endings were in no way any "weaker" than the endings of any other declensions. (For example, among the eight possible inflectional categories of a noun — singular/plural crossed with nominative/accusative/dative/genitive — masculine ''an''-stem nouns in Gothic include seven endings, and feminine ''ōn''-stem nouns include six endings, meaning there is very little ambiguity of "weakness" in these endings and in fact much less than in the German "strong" endings.) Although it is possible to group the various noun declensions into three basic categories — vowel-stem, ''n''-stem, and other-consonant-stem (a.k.a. "minor declensions") — the vowel-stem nouns do not display any sort of unity in their endings that supports grouping them together with each other but separate from the ''n''-stem endings.
It is only in later languages that the binary distinction between "strong" and "weak" nouns become more relevant. In
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
, the ''n''-stem nouns form a single, clear class, but the masculine ''a''-stem and feminine ''ō''-stem nouns have little in common with each other, and neither has much similarity to the small class of ''u''-stem nouns. Similarly, in Old Norse, the masculine ''a''-stem and feminine ''ō''-stem nouns have little in common with each other, and the continuations of the masculine ''an''-stem and feminine ''ōn/īn''-stem nouns are also quite distinct. It is only in
Middle Dutch and modern German that the various vowel-stem nouns have merged to the point that a binary strong/weak distinction clearly applies.
As a result, newer grammatical descriptions of the Germanic languages often avoid the terms "strong" and "weak" except in conjunction with German itself, preferring instead to use the terms "indefinite" and "definite" for adjectives and to distinguish nouns by their actual stem class.
In English, both sets of adjective endings were lost entirely in the late
Middle English period.
Classification
Note that divisions between and among subfamilies of Germanic are rarely precisely defined; most form continuous clines, with adjacent
varieties being mutually intelligible and more separated ones not. Within the Germanic language family are
East Germanic,
West Germanic, and
North Germanic. However, East Germanic languages became extinct several centuries ago.
All living Germanic languages belong either to the
West Germanic or to the
North Germanic branch.
The West Germanic group is the larger by far, further subdivided into
Anglo-Frisian on one hand and
Continental West Germanic on the other. Anglo-Frisian notably includes English and all its
variants, while Continental West Germanic includes German (
standard register
Taylor Corporation is a privately owned printing company based in North Mankato, Minnesota. Established in 1975 by Glen Taylor. The company comprises more than 80 subsidiaries and employs more than 10,000 workers across the United Kingdom, Phili ...
and
dialects), as well as Dutch (
standard register
Taylor Corporation is a privately owned printing company based in North Mankato, Minnesota. Established in 1975 by Glen Taylor. The company comprises more than 80 subsidiaries and employs more than 10,000 workers across the United Kingdom, Phili ...
and
dialects). East Germanic includes most notably the extinct Gothic and Crimean Gothic languages.
Modern classification looks like this. For a full classification, see
List of Germanic languages
The Germanic languages include some 58 ( SIL estimate) languages and dialects that originated in Europe; this language family is part of the Indo-European language family. Each subfamily in this list contains subgroups and individual languages.
T ...
.
*
West Germanic
**
High German languages
The High German dialects (german: hochdeutsche Mundarten), or simply High German (); not to be confused with Standard High German which is commonly also called ''High German'', comprise the varieties of German spoken south of the Benrath and ...
(includes
Standard German
Standard High German (SHG), less precisely Standard German or High German (not to be confused with High German dialects, more precisely Upper German dialects) (german: Standardhochdeutsch, , or, in Switzerland, ), is the standardized variety ...
and
its dialects)
***
Upper German
****
Alemannic German
Alemannic, or rarely Alemannish (''Alemannisch'', ), is a group of High German dialects. The name derives from the ancient Germanic tribal confederation known as the Alamanni ("all men").
Distribution
Alemannic dialects are spoken by approxim ...
****
Austro-Bavarian German
Bavarian (german: Bairisch , Bavarian: ''Boarisch'') or alternately Austro-Bavarian, is a West Germanic language, part of the Upper German family, together with Alemannic and East Franconian.
Bavarian is spoken by approximately 12 million peop ...
*****
Mòcheno language
*****
Cimbrian language
Cimbrian ( cim, zimbar, links=no, ; german: Zimbrisch; it, cimbro) refers to any of several local Upper German varieties spoken in northeastern Italy. The speakers of the language are known as ''Zimbern'' in German.
Cimbrian is a Germanic l ...
*****
Hutterite German
***
Wymysorys
***
Hunsrik
***
Yiddish
Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...
***
High Franconian (a transitional dialect between Upper and Central German)
***
Central German
Central German or Middle German (german: mitteldeutsche Dialekte, mitteldeutsche Mundarten, Mitteldeutsch) is a group of High German dialects spoken from the Rhineland in the west to the former eastern territories of Germany.
Central German di ...
****
East Central German
****
West Central German
*****
Luxembourgish
*****
Pennsylvania Dutch
The Pennsylvania Dutch ( Pennsylvania Dutch: ), also known as Pennsylvania Germans, are a cultural group formed by German immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. They emigrated primarily from German-spe ...
**
Low German
:
:
:
:
:
(70,000)
(30,000)
(8,000)
, familycolor = Indo-European
, fam2 = Germanic
, fam3 = West Germanic
, fam4 = North Sea Germanic
, ancestor = Old Saxon
, ancestor2 = Middle L ...
***
West Low German
***
East Low German
***
Plautdietsch (Mennonite Low German)
**
Low Franconian
***
Dutch and
its dialects
***
Afrikaans
Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans g ...
(a separate
standard language
A standard language (also standard variety, standard dialect, and standard) is a language variety that has undergone substantial codification of grammar and usage, although occasionally the term refers to the entirety of a language that includes ...
)
***
Limburgish
Limburgish ( li, Limburgs or ; nl, Limburgs ; german: Limburgisch ; french: Limbourgeois ), also called Limburgan, Limburgian, or Limburgic, is a West Germanic language spoken in the Dutch and Belgian provinces of Limburg (Netherlands), L ...
(an
official minority language)
**
Anglo-Frisian
***
Anglic (or English)
****
English and
its dialects
****
Scots
Scots usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including:
* Scots language, a language of the West Germanic language family native to Scotland
* Scots people, a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland
* Scoti, a Latin na ...
in Scotland and
Ulster
***
Frisian
****
West Frisian
****
East Frisian
*****
Saterland Frisian (last remaining dialect of East Frisian)
****
North Frisian
*
North Germanic
** West Scandinavian
***
Norwegian (of Western branch origin, but heavily influenced by the Eastern branch)
***
Icelandic
***
Faroese
***
Elfdalian
** East Scandinavian
***
Danish
***
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
****
Dalecarlian dialects
**
Gutnish
*
East Germanic
**
Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
†
***
Crimean Gothic † (relationship to earlier Gothic unclear)
**
Burgundian Burgundian can refer to any of the following:
*Someone or something from Burgundy.
*Burgundians, an East Germanic tribe, who first appear in history in South East Europe. Later Burgundians colonised the area of Gaul that is now known as Burgundy (F ...
†
**
Vandalic †
Writing
The earliest evidence of Germanic languages comes from names recorded in the 1st century by
Tacitus (especially from his work ''
Germania
Germania ( ; ), also called Magna Germania (English: ''Great Germania''), Germania Libera (English: ''Free Germania''), or Germanic Barbaricum to distinguish it from the Roman province of the same name, was a large historical region in north- ...
''), but the earliest Germanic writing occurs in a single instance in the 2nd century BC on the
Negau helmet
The Negau helmets are 26 bronze helmets (23 of which are preserved) dating to c. 450 BC–350 BC, found in 1812 in a cache in Ženjak, near Negau, Duchy of Styria (now Negova, Slovenia). The helmets are of typical Etruscan ' vetulonic' shape, s ...
.
From roughly the 2nd century AD, certain speakers of early Germanic varieties developed the
Elder Futhark
The Elder Futhark (or Fuþark), also known as the Older Futhark, Old Futhark, or Germanic Futhark, is the oldest form of the runic alphabets. It was a writing system used by Germanic peoples for Northwest Germanic dialects in the Migration Peri ...
, an early form of the
runic alphabet
Runes are the 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 ...
. Early runic inscriptions also are largely limited to personal names and difficult to interpret. The
Gothic language
Gothic is an extinct
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although ...
was written in the
Gothic alphabet
The Gothic alphabet is an alphabet used for writing the Gothic language. Ulfilas (or Wulfila) developed it in the 4th century AD for the purpose of translating the Bible.
The alphabet essentially uses uncial forms of the Greek alphabet, wit ...
developed by Bishop
Ulfilas for his translation of the
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts o ...
in the 4th century.
[ Cercignani, Fausto, ''The Elaboration of the Gothic Alphabet and Orthography'', in "Indogermanische Forschungen", 93, 1988, pp. 168–185.] Later, Christian priests and monks who spoke and read
Latin in addition to their native Germanic varieties began writing the Germanic languages with slightly modified Latin letters. However, throughout the
Viking Age, runic alphabets remained in common use in Scandinavia.
Modern Germanic languages mostly use an alphabet derived from the
Latin Alphabet. In print, German used to be predominately set in
blackletter
Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norweg ...
typefaces (e.g.,
fraktur or
schwabacher)
until
Until may refer to
Music
*''Until'', a 1967 album by Robin Kenyatta
*''Until'', a 2008 album by One Little Plane
*"Until", a song by Wilfred Sanderson
*A version of the song " Anema e core" with English lyrics
* "Until..." (Sting song), a 2001 ...
the 1940s, while ''
Kurrent
() is an old form of German-language handwriting based on late medieval cursive writing, also known as ("cursive script"), ("German script") and ''German cursive''. Over the history of its use into the first part of the 20th century, many ...
'' and, since the early 20th century, ''
Sütterlin
(, " script") is the last widely used form of , the historical form of German handwriting that evolved alongside German blackletter (most notably ') typefaces. Graphic artist Ludwig Sütterlin was commissioned by the Prussian Ministry of Scien ...
'' were formerly used for German handwriting. Yiddish is written using an adapted
Hebrew alphabet.
Vocabulary comparison
The table compares cognates in several different Germanic languages. In some cases, the meanings may not be identical in each language.
See also
*
List of Germanic languages
The Germanic languages include some 58 ( SIL estimate) languages and dialects that originated in Europe; this language family is part of the Indo-European language family. Each subfamily in this list contains subgroups and individual languages.
T ...
*
Language families and languages
A language family is a group of languages related through Genetic relationship (linguistics), descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree m ...
*
List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents
This list contains Germanic elements of the English language which have a close corresponding Latinate form. The correspondence is semantic—in most cases these words are not cognates, but in some cases they are doublets, i.e., ultimately deriv ...
*
Germanization
*
Anglicization
Anglicisation is the process by which a place or person becomes influenced by Culture of England, English culture or Culture of the United Kingdom, British culture, or a process of cultural and/or linguistic change in which something non-English ...
*
Germanic name
*
Germanic verb and its various subordinated articles
*
Germanic placename etymology
*
German name
*
German placename etymology
*
Isogloss
An isogloss, also called a heterogloss (see Etymology below), is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or the use of some morphological or syntactic feature. Major d ...
*
South Germanic languages
South Germanic is a term used for a number of proposed groupings of the Germanic tribes or dialects. However, it is not widely used and has no agreed definition.
Uses
The following uses of the term "South Germanic" are found:
* As a straightforwar ...
Footnotes
Notes
Sources
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Germanic languages in general
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Proto-Germanic
*
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;Gothic
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Old Norse
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Old English
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*
*
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*
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Old High German
*
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External links
Germanic Lexicon Project'Hover & Hear' pronunciations of the same Germanic words in dozens of Germanic languages and 'dialects', including English accents, and compare instantaneously side by side
*
ttps://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Swadesh_lists_for_Germanic_languages Swadesh lists of Germanic basic vocabulary words(from Wiktionary'
Swadesh-list appendix
Germanic languages fragmentsYouTube (14:06)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Germanic Languages
Indo-European languages