Germanic languagesBranch of the Indo-European language familyThe Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-Europeanlanguage family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, Northern 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.
Grimm's lawSound shift in the Germanic languages A diagram of Grimm's law and Verner's law Grimm's law, also known as the First Germanic Consonant Shift or First Germanic Sound Shift, is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the first millennium BCE, first discovered by Rasmus Rask but systematically put forward by Jacob Grimm.Proto-Indo-European languageProto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European has been discovered; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language.
Runic inscriptionsA runic inscription is an inscription made in one of the various runic alphabets. They generally contained practical information or memorials instead of magic or mythic stories. The body of runic inscriptions falls into the three categories of Elder Futhark (some 350 items, dating to between the 2nd and 8th centuries AD), Anglo-Frisian Futhorc (some 100 items, 5th to 11th centuries) and Younger Futhark (close to 6,000 items, 8th to 12th centuries).
Linguistic reconstructionLinguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of an unattested ancestor language of one or more given languages.Proto-languageIn the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattested, or partially attested at best. They are reconstructed by way of the comparative method. In the family tree metaphor, a proto-language can be called a mother language.
Germania (book)The Germania, written by the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus around 98 AD and originally titled On the Origin and Situation of the Germans (Latin: De origine et situ Germanorum), is a historical and ethnographic work on the Germanic peoples outside the Roman Empire.
Vimose inscriptionsThe Vimose inscriptions (Danish pronunciation: [ˈvimoːsə]), found on the island of Funen, Denmark, include some of the oldest datable Elder Futhark runic inscriptions in early Proto-Norse or late Proto-Germanic from the 2nd to 3rd century in the Scandinavian Iron Age and were written in the time of the Roman Empire. Vimose Comb (c. 160, considered the oldest known datable runic inscription altogether): harja (ᚺᚨᚱᛃᚨ) Vimose Buckle (c. 200) aadagasu =?
Roman Empire27 BC–476/1453 AD state and civilization
TacitusPublius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , Latin:; c. AD 56 – c. 120), was a Roman historian and politician. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars. His two major historical works, Annals (Latin: Annales) and the Histories (Latin: Historiae), originally formed a continuous narrative of the Roman Empire from the death of Augustus (14 AD) to the end of Domitian's reign (96 AD).
Negau helmetsThe 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, sometimes described as of the Negau type. It is not clear when they were buried, but they seem to have been left at the Ženjak site for ceremonial reasons.
Comparative methodIn linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards to infer the properties of that ancestor.*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.