Everything about The Germanic Language totally explained
The
Germanic languages are a group of related languages constituting a branch of the
Indo-European (IE) language family. The common ancestor of all languages comprising this branch is
Proto-Germanic, spoken in approximately the mid-
1st millennium BC in
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 Germanic varieties enter history with the
Germanic peoples who settled in northern Europe along the borders of the
Roman Empire from the second century.
The most-spoken Germanic languages are
English and
German, with approximately 400 and 100 million native speakers respectively. The group includes other major languages, such as
Dutch with 23 million and
Afrikaans with over 16 million speakers; and the
North Germanic languages including
Norwegian,
Danish,
Swedish,
Icelandic, and
Faroese with a combined total of about 20 million speakers. The
SIL Ethnologue lists 53 different Germanic languages.
Characteristics
Germanic languages possess several unique features, such as the following:
- The leveling of the Indo-European (IE) tense and aspect system into the present tense and past tense (also called preterite)
- A large class of verbs that use a dental suffix (/d/ or /t/) instead of 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 don't inflect at all, except for the comparative and superlative; this wasn't the case in Old English, where adjectives were inflected differently depending on whether they were preceded by an article or demonstrative)
- 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 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 families such as the
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
analyticity. Some, such as
German,
Dutch, and
Icelandic have preserved much of the complex
inflectional morphology inherited from the
Proto-Indo-European language. Others, such as
English,
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 (which nevertheless appears to have had V2 earlier in its history), but 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), 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,
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
accent marks and extra letters, including
umlauts, the
ß (
Eszett),
IJ,
Ø,
Æ,
Å,
Ä,
Ö,
Ð,
Ȝ, and the runes
Þ and
Ƿ. Historical printed
German is frequently set in
blackletter typefaces (for example
fraktur or
schwabacher).
History
All Germanic languages are thought to be descended from a hypothetical
Proto-Germanic, united by their having been subjected 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,
East, and
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 constitute an originally, either North or East, Germanic variety that became assimilated to West Germanic as the
Lombards settled at the
Elbe. The Western group would have formed in the late
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 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),
Old English (coherent texts tenth 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 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
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 to their respective neighbors by about the seventh century, with only
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 Saxon, with graded intermediate
Central German varieties. By Early modern times, the span had extended into considerable differences, ranging from
Highest Alemannic in the South to
Northern Low Saxon in the North and, although both extremes are considered
German, they're hardly mutually intelligible. The southernmost varieties have 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 rarely are precisely defined; most form continuous clines, with adjacent
varieties being mutually intelligible and more separated ones not.
Diachronic
General Note: The table shows the succession of the significant historical stages of each language (vertically), and their approximate groupings in subfamilies (horizontally). Horizontal sequence within each group doesn't imply a measure of greater or lesser similarity.
Contemporary
Mentioned here are all the principal and some secondary contemporary varieties; individual articles linked to below, may contain larger family trees. For example, many Low Saxon varieties are discussed on
Low Saxon besides just Northern Low Saxon and Plautdietsch.
Proto-Germanic
