Encyclopedia
The
Germanic languages are a group of related languages constituting a branch of the
Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all languages comprising this branch is
Proto-Germanic, spoken in approximately the latter 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 2nd century.
The largest Germanic languages are
English and
German, with approximately 380 and 120 million native speakers respectively. The group consists of other notable languages, such as
Dutch with 22 and
Afrikaans with 16 million speakers; and the
Scandinavian languages including
Danish,
Norwegian and
Swedish with a combined total of about 20 million speakers. The SIL
Ethnologue lists 53 different Germanic languages and dialects.
Characteristics
Germanic languages possess several unique features, such as the following:
- The leveling of the IE tense and aspect system into the present tense and past tense .
- The use of a dental suffix instead of vowel alternation to indicate past tense. See Germanic weak verb.
- The presence of two distinct types of verb conjugation: weak and strong . English has 161 strong verbs; almost all are of Germanic origin. See: Germanic strong verb.
- The use of strong and weak adjectives. Modern English adjectives don't change except for comparative and superlative; this was not 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.
- 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's added to them. This is arguably the most important change.
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 towards analycity. Some, like
German,
Dutch and Icelandic, have preserved much of the complex inflectional morphology inherited from the Proto-Indo-European language. Others, like
English,
Swedish and
Afrikaans have moved towards a largely analytic type.
Another characteristic of Germanic languages is
verb second or V2 word order, which is quite uncommon cross-linguistically. This feature is shared by all Germanic languages except
English, which has largely replaced the structure with an overall SVO structure.
Most Germanic languages have fairly complex vowel systems with a large phoneme inventory.
Writing
The earliest evidence of Germanic comes from names recorded in the 1st century by
Tacitus, and in a single instance in the 2nd century BC, on the
Negau helmet.
From roughly the 2nd century AD, certain speakers of early Germanic varieties developed the
Elder Futhark, an early form of the
runic alphabet. Early runic inscriptions are also 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
4th 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, various Germanic languages use a variety of accent marks and extra letters, including umlauts, the
ß , IJ,
Ø,
Æ,
Å,
Ð,
?, and Þ and
?, from runes. Historic printed
German is frequently set in
blackletter typefaces .
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 took place probably 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 6th 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 1st century variety of
Gotland , leaving southern
Sweden as the original location of the Northern group . The earliest coherent Germanic text preserved is the 4th century
Gothic translation of the
New Testament by
Ulfilas. Early testimonies of West Germanic are in
Old Dutch , Old High German ,
Old English . 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 , longer texts in the Latin alphabet survive from the 12th century , and some skaldic poetry held to date back to as early as the 9th century.
By about the 10th century, the varieties had diverged enough to make intercomprehensibility 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 12th 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 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 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 are 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 larger languages largely retaining mutual intelligibility into modern times.
Classification
Note that divisions between subfamilies of Germanic are rarely 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 , and their approximate groupings in subfamilies . Horizontal sequence within each group does not imply a measure of greater or lesser similarity.
Note 1: There are conflicting opinions on the classification of Lombardic. Contrary to its isolated position in the table above, it has also been classified as close to either Upper German or Old Saxon. See the article on the Lombardic language for more information.
Note 2: Late Middle Ages refers to the post
Black Death period. Especially for the language situation in
Norway this event was important.
Note 3: The speakers of Norn were assimilated to speak the
Modern Scots varieties, and the Gutnish language is today practically a dialect of Swedish.
Contemporary
Mentioned here are only the principal contemporary varieties; individual articles linked to below contain larger family trees. For example, many Low Saxon varieties are discussed on
Low Saxon besides just Northern Low Saxon and Plautdietsch. Note: The ] has a varying list.
- Alternative classification of contemporary North Germanic languages
- Insular Scandinavian
- Continental Scandinavian
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 cognate with the English word 'starve'. There is also at least one example of a common borrowing from a Non-Germanic source .
| English | Scots | Frisian | Afrikaans | Dutch | Low Saxon | German | Gothic | Icelandic | Faroese | Swedish | Danish | Norwegian | Norwegian |
|---|
| Apple | Aiple | Appel | Appel | Appel | Appel | Apfel | Aplus | Epli | Epl | Äpple | Æble | Eple | Eple |
| Board | Buird | Board | Bord | Bord | Boord | Brett | Baúrd | Borð | Borð | Bord | Bræt | Bord | Bord |
| Beech | Beech | Boeke/ Boekebeam | Beuk | Beuk | Böke | Buche | Boka / -bagms | Bók | Bók | Bok | Bøg | Bøk | Bøk, Bok |
| Book | Beuk | Boek | Boek | Boek | Book | Buch | Boka | Bók | Bók | Bok | Bog | Bok | Bok |
| Breast | Breest | Boarst | Bors | Borst | Bost | Brust | Brusts | Brjóst | Bróst | Bröst | Bryst | Bryst | Brjost |
| Brown | Broun | Brún | Bruin | Bruin | Bruun | Braun | Bruns | Brúnn | Brúnur | Brun | Brun | Brun | Brun |
| Day | Day | Dei | Dag | Dag | Dag | Tag | Dags | Dagur | Dagur | Dag | Dag | Dag | Dag |
| Dead | Deid | Dea | Dood | Dood | Dood | Tot | Dauþs | Dauður | Deyður | Död | Død | Død | Daud |
| Die | Dee | Stjerre | Sterf | Sterven | Döen/ Starven | Sterben | Diwan | Deyja | Doyggja | Dö | Dø | Dø | Døy |
| Enough | Eneuch | Genôg | Genoeg | Genoeg | Noog | Genug | Ganohs | Nóg | Nóg/ Nógmikið | Nog | Nok | Nok | Nog |
| Finger | Finger | Finger | Vinger | Vinger | Finger | Finger | Figgrs | Fingur | Fingur | Finger | Finger | Finger | Finger |
| Give | Gie | Jan | Gee | Geven | Geven | Geben | Giban | Gefa | Geva | Giva / Ge | Give | Gi | Gje |
| Glass | Gless | Glês | Glas | Glas | Glas | Glas | | Gler | Glas | Glas | Glas | Glass | Glas |
| Gold | Gowd | Goud | Goud | Goud | Gold | Gold | Gulþ | Gull | Gull | Guld/ Gull | Guld | Gull | Gull |
| Hand | Haund | Hân | Hand | Hand | Hand | Hand | Handus | Hönd | Hond | Hand | Hånd | Hånd | Hand |
| Head | Heid | Holle | Hoof / Kop | Hoofd/ Kop | Kopp | Haupt/ Kopf | Háubiþ | Höfuð | Høvd/ Høvur | Huvud | Hoved | Hode | Hovud |
| High | Heich | Heech | Hoog | Hoog | Hoog | Hoch | Háuh | Hár | Høg/ur | Hög | Høj | Høy | Høg |
| Home | Hame | Hiem | Heim / Tuis | Heim | Oll | Alt | Sineigs | Gamall | Gamal | Gammal | Gammel | Gammel | Gamal |
| One | Ane | Ien | Een | Een | Een | Eins | Áins | Einn | Ein | En | En | En | Ein |
| Ounce | Unce | Ons | Ons | Ons | Ons | Unze | Unkja | Únsa | Únsa | Uns | Unse | Unse | Unse |
| Snow | Snaw | Snie | Sneeu | Sneeuw | Snee | Schnee | Snáiws | Snjór | Kavi/ Snjógvur | Snö | Sne | Snø | Snø |
| Stone | Stane | Stien | Steen | Steen | Steen | Stein | Stáins | Steinn | Steinur | Sten | Sten | Sten | Stein |
| That | That | Dat | Dit | Dat, Die | Dat | Das | Þata | Það | Tað | Det | Det | Det | Det |
| Two | Twa | Twa | Twee | Twee | Twee | Zwei/ Zwo | Twái | Tveir/ Tvær/ Tvö | Tveir | Två | To | To | To |
| Who | Wha | Wie | Wie | Wie | Wokeen | Wer | ?as | Hver | Hvør | Vem | Hvem | Hvem | Kven |
| Worm | Wirm | Wjirm | Wurm | Wurm/ Worm | Worm | Wurm | Maþa | Maðkur, Ormur | Maðkur/ Ormur | Mask/ Orm | Orm | Mark/ Orm | Makk/ Orm |
| English | Scots | Frisian | Afrikaans | Dutch | Low Saxon | Standard German | Gothic | Icelandic | Faroese | Swedish | Danish | Norwegian | Norwegian |
|---|
Notes
See also
- Germanic verb and its various subordinated articles.
- Language families and languages
- Non-Indo-European roots of Germanic languages
- Folkspraak, a planned language designed to be quickly learnable by a speaker of any Germanic language.
- List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents
- Germanization and Anglicization
- Germanic placenames
External links
