Germanic languages

The Germanic languages form one of the branches of the Indo-European (IE) language family, spoken by the Germanic peoples who were settled north along the borders of the Roman Empire. It is characterised by a number of unique linguistic features, most famously the consonant change known as Grimm's law.

Table of contents

1 Writing
2 Linguistic Markers
3 Family tree
4 Comparison of Selected Terms
5 See also
6 External links

Writing

Some early Germanic languages developed runic alphabets of their own, but use of these alphabets was comparatively limited. East Germanic languages were written in the Gothic alphabet developed by Bishop Ulfilas for his translation of the Bible into Gothic. Later, Christian priests and monks who spoke and read Latin in addition to their native Germanic tongue began writing the Germanic languages with slightly modified Latin letters.

In addition to the standard Latin alphabet, various Germanic languages use a variety of accent marks and extra letters, including umlauts, the ess-tsett (ÃÂÃÂ), ÃÂÃÂ, ÃÂÃÂ, ÃÂÃÂ, ÃÂÃÂ, ȝ from Gaelic, and ÃÂÃÂ and ƿ, from runes. Historic printed German is frequently set in a distinctive typeface called Fraktur.

Linguistic Markers

Some unique features of Germanic languages are:

The levelling of the IE tense system into past and present (or common)
The use of a dental suffix (/d/ or /t/) instead of vowel alternation (ablaut) to indicate past tense.
The presence of two distinct types of verb conjugation: weak (regular) and strong (irregular). English has 161 strong verbs; all are of native English origin.
The use of strong and weak adjectives. Modern English adjectives don't change except for comparative and superlative; this was not the case with Old English, where adjectives were inflected differently depending on whether they were preceded by an article or demonstrative, or not.
The consonant shift known as Grimm's Law.
The abundance of non-IE roots. There are many Germanic roots that are not found in other IE tongues. These include words for universal actions such as "bite" and "chew" and all words about ships and the sea, except "boat".
The shifting of stress onto the root of the stem. 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.

Family tree

All Germanic languages are thought to be descended from a hypothetical Proto-Germanic. Note that divisions between subfamilies of Germanic are rarely precisely defined; most form continuous clines, with adjacent dialects being mutually intelligible and more separated ones not.

Mentioned here are only the principal or unusual dialects; individual articles linked to below contain larger family trees. For example, many Low Saxon dialects are discussed on Low Saxon besides just Standard Low Saxon and Plautdietsch.

West Germanic
- High German
  - German
    - Middle German
      - East Middle German
        Standard German (Hochdeutsch)
      - Luxembourgeois
      - West Middle German
        Pennsylvania German (spoken by the Amish and other groups in southeastern Pennsylvania)
    - Upper German
      - Swiss German, Austrian, etc
      - Alemán Coloneiro (spoken in Venezuela)
      - Hutterite German (aka "Tirolean")
  - Yiddish (with a significant influx of vocabulary from Hebrew and traditionally written in the Hebrew alphabet)
- Low German
  - Low Franconian
    - Dutch
    - Afrikaans (with a significant influx of vocabulary from other languages)
  - Low Saxon
    - Standard Low Saxon
    - Plautdietsch (Mennonite Low German)
  - East Low German
- Frisian
- Anglic (descending from Anglo-Saxon)
  - Modern English (with a significant influx of French vocabulary)
  - Modern Scots
  - Cayman Islands English (not a creole)
  - Angloromany (with a significant influx of Romany vocabulary)
East Germanic (descending from Gothic)
- Crimean Gothic (extinct in the 1800s)
- Vandalic (extinct)
- Lombardic (extinct)
- Burgundian (extinct)
North Germanic (descending from Old Norse):
- West (Insular) Nordic
  - Icelandic
  - Faroese
  - Norn (extinct)
  - Norwegian Nynorsk
- East (Continental) Nordic
  - Danish
    - Norwegian BokmÃÂÃÂ¥l (dano-norwegian)
  - Swedish

Many of the present-day divisions between Germanic/Baltic and Celtic/Slav peoples are rooted in the imperial structure of the Roman Empire's division between West and East, as well as the subsequent division called the Great Schism, which had most Celts within the influence of Rome and Latin Catholic; while Slavs revolved around Byzantium and Greek Orthodox. In turn, the Germanic people were under influence by the Celts and the Balts were revolving around the Slavs, as Mediterranean culture spread northwards. This cultural osmosis and subsequent split is primarily responsible for the classification of these peoples and their languages as parallel, but otherwise, the differences aren't so great along the borders of their cultural spheres, at least.

Comparison of Selected Terms

Please add to this table.

Afrikaans	Dutch	English	High German	Danish	Gothic	Icelandic	Swedish
vir	voor	for	fÃÂÃÂ¼r	for	faur	fyrir	fÃÂÃÂ¶r
vry	vrij	free	frei	fri	freis	frjÃÂÃÂ¡ls	fri
my	mijn	my	mein	min	meins	minn	min
hond	hond	dog / hound	Hund	hund	hunds	hundur	hund
lughawe	luchthaven	airport	Flughafen / Flugplatz	lufthavn	-	flugstÃÂÃÂ¶ð / flugvÃÂÃÂ¶llur	flygplats
skool	school	school	Schule	skole		skÃÂÃÂ³li	skola
sleg	slecht	bad	schlecht / schlimm	slet	ubils	slÃÂÃÂ¦mur	dÃÂÃÂ¥lig
eggenoot	echtgenoot	husband	Ehemann	ÃÂÃÂ¦gtemand		eiginmaður	man/husbonde
saam	samen	together	zusammen	tilsammen	samana	saman	tillsammans
aksie	actie	action	Aktion	aktion	waurstwei		aktion
voÃÂÃÂ«l	vogel	bird / fowl	Vogel	fugl	fugls	fugl	fÃÂÃÂ¥gel
asseblief	alstublieft	please	bitte		jabai wileis		varsÃÂÃÂ¥god
goeienaand	goedenavond	good evening	guten Abend	god aften		gÃÂÃÂ³ða kvÃÂÃÂ¶ldið	god kvÃÂÃÂ¤ll
oop	open	open	offen	ÃÂÃÂ¥ben	us-lukan	opinn	ÃÂÃÂ¶ppen
vrou	vrouw	woman	Frau	frue / kvinde	qino	kona	kvinna
water	water	water	Wasser	vand	wato	vatn	vatten