West Germanic languages

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

West Germanic languages

The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three traditional branches of the Germanic

Germanic languages

The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European languages 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....
family of language

Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
s and include languages such as English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
, Dutch

Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic languages spoken by over 22 million people as a first language, and about 5 million people as a second language."1% of the EU population claims to speak Dutch well enough in order to have a conversation." Outside the European Union the number of second language speakers of Dutch is very small. Most native...
and Afrikaans

Afrikaans

Afrikaans is an Indo-European language, derived from Dutch language and thus classified as Low Franconian languages West Germanic languages. It is mainly spoken in South Africa and Namibia, with smaller numbers of speakers living in Botswana, Angola, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Zambia, Australia, New Zealand, United States of America, Taiwa...
, German

German language

Yiddish language

Yiddish is a non-territorial High German languages of Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. Unlike other such languages, Yiddish is written with the Hebrew alphabet as opposed to a Latin alphabet....
. The other two of these three traditional branches of the Germanic languages are the North

North Germanic languages

The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages, along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages....
and East Germanic languages

East Germanic languages

The East Germanic languages are a group of extinct Indo-European languages in the Germanic languages. The only East Germanic language of which texts are known is Gothic language; other languages that are assumed to be East Germanic include Vandalic language, Burgundian language , and Crimean Gothic language....
.

Origins and characteristics The Germanic languages are traditionally divided into three groups: West, East and North Germanic.

Discussion

Ask a question about 'West Germanic languages'

Start a new discussion about 'West Germanic languages'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Encyclopedia

The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three traditional branches of the Germanic

Germanic languages

Language

English language

Dutch language

Afrikaans

German language

Yiddish language

North Germanic languages

East Germanic languages

History

Origins and characteristics

The Germanic languages are traditionally 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

Migration Period

The Migration Period, also called Barbarian Invasions or V?lkerwanderung , was a period of human migration which occurred within the period of roughly 300?700 Common Era in Europe, marking the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages....
, so that some individual varieties are difficult to classify. The Western group presumably formed as a variety of Proto-Germanic in the late Jastorf culture

Jastorf culture

The Jastorf culture is an Iron Age material culture in what is now north Germany, spanning the 6th to 1st centuries BC, forming the southern part of the Pre-Roman Iron Age...
(ca. 1st century BC). The West Germanic group is characterized by a number of phonological

Phonology

Phonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system....
and morphological

Morphology (linguistics)

Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of structure of words . While words are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most languages, words can be related to other words by rules....
innovations not found in North and East Germanic, such as:

The loss of w after ng
Gemination
Gemination

In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant.Consonant length is distinctive in some languages, for instance Arabic language, Estonian language, Finnish language, Russian language, Hebrew language, Hungarian language, Italian language, Japanese language, L...
of consonants (except r) before /j/
Replacement of the 2nd person singular preterit ending -t with -i
Short forms of the verbs for "stand" and "go"^{[clarification needed]}
The development of a gerund
Gerund

In linguistics, ?gerund? is a term used to refer to various non-finite verb in various languages:* As applied to English language, it refers to what might be called a verb's action noun, which is one of the uses of the -ing form....

Nevertheless, many scholars doubt whether the West Germanic languages descend from a common ancestor later than Proto-Germanic, that is, they doubt whether a "Proto-West Germanic" ever existed. Rather, some have argued that after East Germanic broke off from the group, the remaining Germanic languages, the Northwest Germanic

Northwest Germanic

Northwest Germanic is a proposed grouping of the Germanic languages dialects. It does not challenge the late 19th-century tri-partite division of the Germanic dialects into North Germanic, West Germanic and East Germanic, but proposes additionally that North and West Germanic remained as a subgroup after the southward migration of the East Ge...
languages, divided into four main dialects: North Germanic, and the three groups conventionally called "West Germanic", namely

North Sea Germanic (Ingvaeonic
Ingvaeonic

Ingvaeonic, also known as North Sea Germanic, is a postulated grouping of the West Germanic languages that would fork into Old Frisian, Old English language and Old Saxon and according to some the local dialect of West Flemish....
, ancestral to Anglo-Frisian and Low German
Low German

Low German or Low Saxon is any of the regional language varieties of the West Germanic languages spoken mainly in northern Germany and the eastern part of the Netherlands....
)
Elbe Germanic (Irminonic
Irminones

The Irminones, also referred to as Herminones or Hermiones, were a group of early Germanic tribes settling in the Elbe watershed and by the 1st century AD expanding into Bavaria, Swabia and Bohemia....
, ancestral to High German)
Weser-Rhine Germanic (Istvaeonic
Istvaeones

The Istvaeones, also called Istaevones, Istriaones, Istriones, Sthraones, Thracones, Rhine Germans and Weser-Rhine Germans , were a West Germanic cultural group or proto-tribe....
, ancestral to Old Frankish)

Evidence for this view comes from a number of linguistic innovations found in both North Germanic and West Germanic, including:

The retraction of Proto-Germanic to a
The development of umlaut
Germanic umlaut

In linguistics, umlaut is a process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a vowel or semivowel in a following syllable.The term umlaut was originally coined and is principally used in connection with the study of the Germanic languages....
The rhotacism
Rhotacism

Rhotacism may refer to several phenomena related to the usage of the consonant r .*the excessive or idiosyncratic use of the r;*conversely, the inability or difficulty in pronouncing r....
of z to r
The development of the demonstrative
Demonstrative

Demonstratives are deictic expression words that indicate which entities a speaker refers to, and distinguishes those entities from others. Demonstratives are employed for spatial deixis and as discourse deictics, referring to propositions mentioned in speech....
pronoun ancestral to English this

Under this view, the properties that the West Germanic languages have in common separate from the North Germanic languages are not inherited from a "Proto-West-Germanic" language, but rather spread by language contact

Language contact

Language contact occurs when speakers of distinct speech varieties interact. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics....
among the Germanic languages spoken in central Europe, not reaching those spoken in Scandinavia. Nevertheless, it has been argued that, judging by their nearly identical syntax, the West Germanic languages of the Old period were close enough to have been mutually intelligible.

Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

File:Karl 1 mit papst gelasius gregor1 sacramentar v karl d kahlen.jpgThe Middle Ages of European history are a period in history which lasted for roughly a millennium, commonly dated from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the division of Western Christi...
, the West Germanic languages were separated by the insular development of Middle English

Middle English

Middle English is the name given by historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman conquest of England of 1066 and about 1470, when the #Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the introduction of the printing press into England by William...
on one hand, and by the second Germanic sound shift on the continent on the other.

The High German consonant shift

High German consonant shift

In historical linguistics, the High German consonant shift or second Germanic consonant shift was a phonological development which took place in the southern parts of the West Germanic dialect continuum in several phases, probably beginning between the 3rd and 5th centuries AD, and was almost complete before the earliest written recor...
distinguished the High German languages

High German languages

The High German languages are any of the variety of German language, Luxembourgish language and Yiddish language, as well as the local German dialects spoken in central and southern Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Luxembourg and in neighbouring portions of Belgium, France , Italy, and Poland....
from the other West Germanic languages. By early modern times, the span had extended into considerable differences, ranging from Highest Alemannic

Highest Alemannic German

Highest Alemannic is a branch of Alemannic German and belongs to the German language, even though mutual intelligibility with Standard German and other non-Alemannic German dialects is very limited....
in the South (the Walliser

Walliser German

The Walliser German is a group of Highest Alemannic German dialects spoken in Switzerland, specifically in the German-speaking part of the Canton of Valais , in the uppermost Rh?ne River valley....
dialect being the southernmost surviving German dialect) to Northern Low Saxon

Northern Low Saxon

Northern Low Saxon is a West Low German dialect.It is considered to be "Standard language Low German" within Germany because it is spoken and understood in a huge central area including most of Lower Saxony, Bremen , Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein, areas north of the Benrath line....
in the North. Although both extremes are considered German

German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
, they are not mutually intelligible. The southernmost varieties have completed the second sound shift, while the northern dialects remained unaffected by the consonant shift.

Of modern German varieties, Low German

Low German

Low German or Low Saxon is any of the regional language varieties of the West Germanic languages spoken mainly in northern Germany and the eastern part of the Netherlands....
is the one that most resembles modern English. The district of Angeln

Angeln

Modern Angeln, also known as Anglia , is a peninsula in Southern Schleswig in the northern Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, protruding into the Bay of Kiel....
(or Anglia), from which the name English derives, is in the extreme northern part of Germany between the Danish border and the Baltic coast. The area of the Saxons (parts of today's Schleswig-Holstein

Schleswig-Holstein

Schleswig-Holstein is the Northern Germany of the sixteen States of Germany of Germany. Its capital city is Kiel, other notable cities are L?beck and Flensburg....
and Lower Saxony

Lower Saxony

Lower Saxony lies in northern Germany and is second in area and fourth in population among the sixteen States of Germany of Germany. In rural areas Low German is still spoken, but the number of speakers is declining....
) lay south of Anglia. The Anglo-Saxons

Anglo-Saxons

Anglo-Saxons is the term usually used to describe the invading tribes in the south and east of Great Britain starting from the early 5th century AD, and their creation of the English nation, lasting until the Norman conquest of England of 1066....
, two Germanic tribes, were a combination of a number of peoples from northern Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
and the Jutland

Jutland

File:Jutland peninsula 2.pngJutland , historically also called Cimbria, is a peninsula in Europe. Jutland forms the mainland part of Denmark as well as the northernmost part of Germany....
Peninsula.

Family tree

Note that divisions between subfamilies of Germanic are rarely precisely defined; most form dialect continua

Dialect continuum

A dialect continuum is a range of dialects spoken across a large geographical area, differing only slightly between areas that are geographically close, and gradually decreasing in mutual intelligibility as the distances become greater....
, with adjacent dialect

Dialect

A dialect is a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class....
s being mutually intelligible and more separated ones not.

Anglo-Frisian
Anglo-Frisian languages

The Anglo-Frisian languages are a group of Ingvaeonic West Germanic languages consisting of Old English language, Old Frisian, and their descendants....

English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
Frisian languages
Yola
Yola language

Yola is an Extinct language West Germanic language formerly spoken in Ireland. A branch of Middle English language, it evolved separately among the English who followed the Normans barons Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke and Robert Fitz-Stephen to eastern Ireland in 1169....
(now extinct)

Low Franconian
Low Franconian languages

Low Franconian, or Low Frankish, is a group of several West Germanic language languages spoken in the Netherlands, northern Belgium , in the northern department of France, in western Germany , as well as in Suriname, South Africa and Namibia that originally descended from Old Frankish....

Afrikaans
Afrikaans

Afrikaans is an Indo-European language, derived from Dutch language and thus classified as Low Franconian languages West Germanic languages. It is mainly spoken in South Africa and Namibia, with smaller numbers of speakers living in Botswana, Angola, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Zambia, Australia, New Zealand, United States of America, Taiwa...
(in South Africa
South Africa

The Republic of South Africa, also known by Official names of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of the continent of Africa....
and Namibia
Namibia

Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in southern Africa on the Atlantic Ocean coast. It shares borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east, and South Africa to the south....
)
Dutch
Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic languages spoken by over 22 million people as a first language, and about 5 million people as a second language."1% of the EU population claims to speak Dutch well enough in order to have a conversation." Outside the European Union the number of second language speakers of Dutch is very small. Most native...
Limburgish (in the Netherlands
Netherlands

The Netherlands is a country that is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands is located in North-West Europe, and bordered by the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east....
, Germany
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
, and Belgium
Belgium

* A small German-speaking Community of Belgium exists in eastern Wallonia. Belgium's linguistic diversity and related political and cultural conflicts are reflected in the history of Belgium and a complex Communities and regions of Belgium....
)

Low German
Low German

Low German or Low Saxon is any of the regional language varieties of the West Germanic languages spoken mainly in northern Germany and the eastern part of the Netherlands....
(sometimes called Low Saxon)
High German
High German languages

The High German languages are any of the variety of German language, Luxembourgish language and Yiddish language, as well as the local German dialects spoken in central and southern Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Luxembourg and in neighbouring portions of Belgium, France , Italy, and Poland....

Alemannic German
Alemannic German

Alemannic German is a group of dialects of the Upper German branch of the Germanic language. It is spoken by approximately ten million people in six countries, including southern Germany, Switzerland, France, Austria, Liechtenstein, and Italy....
German
German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
Luxembourgish
Luxembourgish language

Luxembourgish , also called Luxembourgian, also spelled Luxemburgish, is one of the West Central German dialects of High German spoken in Luxembourg....
Yiddish
Yiddish language

Yiddish is a non-territorial High German languages of Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. Unlike other such languages, Yiddish is written with the Hebrew alphabet as opposed to a Latin alphabet....
Vilamovian