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Germanic languages

The '''Germanic languages''' are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European languages|Indo-European (IE) language family. The common ancestor of all the languages in this branch is Proto-Germanic, spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Pre-Roman Iron Age|Iron Age northern Europe. Proto-Germanic, along with all of its descendants, is characterized by a number of unique linguistic features, most famously the consonant change known as Grimm's law. Early varieties of Germanic enter history with the Germanic tribes|Germanic peoples moving down from northern Europe in the second century BC, to settle in northern central Europe, along the boundary of Celts|Celtic civilization, in the northerly lands of the future Roman Empire. The most widely spoken Germanic languages are English language|English and German language|German, with approximately 309-400 millionEthnologue on EnglishCurtis, Andy. ''Color, Race, And English Language Teaching: Shades of Meaning''. 2006, page 192. and over 100 millionSIL Ethnologue (2006). 95 million speakers of Standard German; 95 million including Middle and Upper German dialects; 120 million including Low German|Low Saxon and Yiddish. native speakers respectively. The group includes other major languages, such as Dutch language|Dutch with 23 millionDutch, University College London and Afrikaans with over 6 million native speakersEthnologue on Afrikaans; and the North Germanic languages including Norwegian language|Norwegian, Danish language|Danish, Swedish language|Swedish, Icelandic language|Icelandic and Faroese language|Faroese with a combined total of about 20 million speakers.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 SIL International|SIL ''Ethnologue'' lists 53 different Germanic languages.

Characteristics

Germanic languages possess several unique features, such as the following:
- The leveling of the Indo-European verbal system of grammatical tense|tense and grammatical aspect|aspect into the present tense and the past tense (also called the preterite)
- A large class of verbs that use a dental suffix (/d/ or /t/) instead of Apophony|vowel alternation (Indo-European ablaut) to indicate past tense; these are called the Germanic weak verbs; the remaining verbs with vowel ablaut are the Germanic strong verbs
- The use of so-called strong and weak adjectives: different sets of inflectional endings for adjectives depending on the definiteness of the noun phrase (modern English adjectives do not inflect at all, except for the comparative and superlative; this was not the case in Old English language|Old English, where adjectives were inflected differently depending on the type of determiner they were preceded by)
- The consonant shift known as Grimm's Law (the consonants in High German have shifted farther yet by the High German consonant shift)
- A number of words with etymologies that are difficult to link to other Indo-European families, but variants of which appear in almost all Germanic languages; ''see Germanic substrate hypothesis''
- The shifting of stress (language)|stress accent onto the root of the stem and later to the first syllable of the word (though English has an irregular stress, native words always have a fixed stress regardless of what is added to them) Germanic languages differ from each other to a greater degree than do some other language family|language families such as the Romance languages|Romance or Slavic languages. Roughly speaking, Germanic languages differ in how conservative or how progressive each language is with respect to an overall trend toward analytic language|analyticity. Some, such as Icelandic language|Icelandic, and to a lesser extent German language|German, have preserved much of the complex inflectional morphology inherited from the Proto-Indo-European language. Others, such as English language|English, Swedish language|Swedish, and Afrikaans have moved toward a largely analytic type. Another characteristic of Germanic languages is the '''verb second''' or ''V2 word order'', which is quite uncommon cross-linguistically. This feature is shared by all modern Germanic languages except modern English language|English (which nevertheless appears to have had V2 earlier in its history), which has largely replaced the structure with an overall ''Subject Verb Object'' syntax.

Writing

The earliest evidence of Germanic languages comes from names recorded in the first century by Tacitus (especially from his work ''Germania (book)|Germania''), but the earliest Germanic writing occurs in a single instance in the second century BC on the Negau helmet. From roughly the second century AD, certain speakers of early Germanic varieties developed the Elder Futhark, an early form of the Runic alphabet. Early runic inscriptions also are largely limited to personal names, and difficult to interpret. The Gothic language was written in the Gothic alphabet developed by Bishop Ulfilas for his translation of the Bible in the fourth century. Later, Christianity|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. In addition to the standard Latin alphabet, many Germanic languages use a variety of diacritic|accent marks and extra letters, including umlaut (diacritic)|umlauts, the ß (''Eszett''), IJ (letter)|Ĳ, Ø, Æ, Å, Ä, Ü, Ö, Ð, Yogh|, and the runes Þ and wynn|. In print, German language|German used to be prevalently set in blackletter typefaces (e.g. fraktur (typeface)|fraktur or schwabacher) up until the 1940s (though see Antiqua–Fraktur dispute), whereas ''Kurrent'' and since the early 20th century ''Sütterlin'' was used for German handwriting.

History

All Germanic languages are thought to be descended from a hypothetical Proto-Germanic language|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 ca. 500 BC, 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 Germanic languages|West, East Germanic languages|East, and North Germanic languages|North Germanic. Their exact relation is difficult to determine from the sparse evidence of runic inscriptions, and they remained mutually intelligible throughout the Migration period, so that some individual varieties are difficult to classify. The sixth century Lombardic language for instance, may be a variety originally either Northern or Eastern, before being assimilated by West Germanic as the Lombards settled at the Elbe. The Western group would have formed in the late Pre-Roman Iron Age#Jastorf culture|Jastorf culture, the Eastern group may be derived from the first century variety of Gotland (see Old Gutnish), leaving southern Sweden as the original location of the Northern group. The earliest coherent Germanic text preserved is the fourth century Gothic language|Gothic translation of the New Testament by Ulfilas. Early testimonies of West Germanic are in Old High German (scattered words and sentences sixth century, coherent texts ninth century) and Old English language|Old English (coherent texts tenth century). North Germanic is only attested in scattered runic inscriptions, as Proto-Norse language|Proto-Norse, until it evolves into Old Norse by about 800. Longer runic inscriptions survive from the eighth and ninth centuries (Eggjum stone, Rök stone), longer texts in the Latin alphabet survive from the twelfth century (Íslendingabók), and some skaldic poetry held to date back to as early as the ninth century. By about the tenth century, the varieties had diverged enough to make mutual intelligibility|inter-comprehensibility difficult. The linguistic contact of the Viking settlers of the Danelaw with the Anglo-Saxons left traces in the English language, and is suspected to have facilitated the collapse of Old English grammar that resulted in Middle English from the twelfth century. The East Germanic languages were marginalized from the end of the Migration period. The Burgundians, Goths, and Vandals became linguistically assimilated by their respective neighbors by about the seventh century, with only Crimean Gothic language|Crimean Gothic lingering on until the eighteenth 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 on the continent on the other, resulting in Upper German and Low German|Low Saxon, with graded intermediate Central German varieties. By Early modern times, the span had extended into considerable differences, ranging from Highest Alemannic German|Highest Alemannic in the South to Northern Low Saxon in the North and, although both extremes are considered German language|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 more unified, with the peninsular languages largely retaining mutual intelligibility into modern times.

Classification

Note that divisions between and among subfamilies of Germanic are rarely precisely defined; most form continuous clines, with adjacent variety (linguistics)|varieties being mutually intelligible and more separated ones not.

Diachronic

The table below shows the succession of the significant historical stages of each language (vertically), and their approximate groupings in subfamilies (horizontally). Horizontal sequence within each group does not imply a measure of greater or lesser similarity.

Contemporary

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 language|English and all its English languages|variants, while Continental West Germanic includes German language|German (Standard German|standard register and German dialects|dialects) as well as Dutch language|Dutch (Standard Dutch|standard register and Dutch dialects|dialects).
- West Germanic languages
    - High German languages (includes Standard German, see also German dialects)
    - * Central German
    - ** East Central German
    - ** West Central German
    - *** Luxembourgish language|Luxembourgish
    - *** Pennsylvania German language|Pennsylvania German (spoken by the Amish and other groups in southeastern Pennsylvania)
    - * Upper German
    - ** Alemannic German
    - ** Austro-Bavarian German
    - * Yiddish language|Yiddish
    - Low Franconian languages|Low Franconian
    - * Dutch language|Dutch (see Dutch dialects)
    - * Afrikaans (separate standard language)
    - Low German
    - * West Low German
    - * East Low German
    - ** Plautdietsch
    - Anglo-Frisian languages|Anglo-Frisian
    - * Frisian languages|Frisian group
    - * English languages|English group
    - ** English language|English (see English dialects)
    - ** Scots language|Lowland Scots
    - ** Yola language|Yola
- North Germanic languages|North Germanic
    - West Scandinavian
    - * Norwegian language|Norwegian (genealogically Western branch, but heavy influence from Eastern branch)
    - * Icelandic language|Icelandic
    - * Faroese language|Faroese
    - * Norn language|Norn (extinct)
    - East Scandinavian
    - * Danish language|Danish
    - * Swedish language|Swedish
    - * Gutnish language|Gutnish

Vocabulary comparison

Several of the terms in the table below have had semantic drift. For example, the form ''Sterben'' and other terms for ''die'' are cognates with the English word ''starve''. There is also at least one example of a common borrowing from a non-Germanic source (''ounce'' and its cognates from Latin).

Notes

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.
- ''Bibliographie der Schreibsprachen'': Bibliography of medieval written forms of High and Low German and Dutch
- Ethnologue Report for Germanic
- Todays geographical extension, Worldmap on the German Wiki
- 'Hover & Hear' pronunciations of the same Germanic words in dozens of Germanic languages and 'dialects', including English accents, and compare instantaneously side by side. Category:Germanic languages| Category:Indo-European languages Category:History of the Germanic peoples|Languages zh-min-nan:German gí-giân be-x-old:Германскія мовы nds-nl:Germaanse sproaken simple:Germanic languages

Related Images

- '''West Germanic languages ''' '''North Germanic languages '''
- 300px

Sources: StartLearningNow, Wikipedia | Usage license: GNU FDL

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