Modern West Germanic languages

A brief look at the history of the Germanic languages

25.09.01

The Indo-European languages

The family of Germanic languages is a branch of the Indo-European language family (see the table below: Indo-European language tree). All languages within this family are derived from a parent Indo-European language of early migrants to Europe from southwestern Asia. The major subdivisions within the present day Indo-European languages spoken in Europe are Romance, Germanic, Slavic, Celtic (Breton, Welsh, Irish, Scottish) and Baltic (Latvian, Lithuanian) languages.

The Germanic languages

From the middle of the 1st millennium BC, there is evidence of Germanic populations in southern Scandinavia and northern Germany. Their migrations from the 2nd century BC onwards are recorded in history. The linguistic and archaeological data seem to indicate that the last linguistic changes affecting all of the Germanic languages took place in an area which has been located approximately in Southern Sweden, Southern Norway, Denmark, and the lower Elbe.

During their expansion, the Germanic tribes, who spoke an Indo-European language, mixed with other European tribes whose language is unknown. About 80 percent of Germanic word roots are of non-Indo-European origin.

The Germanic languages are organized into three groups, North Germanic, West Germanic and East Germanic. Gothic, an East Germanic language, is the oldest Germanic language of which much is known. The main text corpus is a Bible translation by the bishop Ulfila from the 4th century C.E. (Common Era, also known as AD). The East Germanic languages (Gothic, Vandalic, Burgundian, Lombardic, Rugian, Herulian, Bastarnae, and Scirian) do not have present-day descendants.

Modern North-Germanic languages

The North Germanic languages are modern Danish, Swedish, Norwegian (with two written variants, Bokmå l or Dano-Norwegian and Nynorsk or New Norwegian), Icelandic, and Faroese, as well as the various dialects of these languages. Here you will find some discussion of Gutnish and Dalska. North Germanic is historically divided into an East Scandinavian (Danish and Swedish) and a West Scandinavian (Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese) group.

Modern West Germanic languages

Out of the many West Germanic dialects, the following six present-day languages have distinctive written standards: Afrikaans, Dutch (Dutch-Flemish), English, Frisian, German, and Yiddish. Some discussion is also included here of Low German, Pennsylvanian German, Scots, and Black English Vernacular.

The Germanic Branch of the Indo-European languages