Germanic languages
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What are Germanic languages?
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family. They are often divided into three groups: West Germanic, North Germanic, and East Germanic.
- West Germanic includes English, German, and Netherlandic (Dutch).
- North Germanic includes Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Faroese.
- East Germanic is now extinct, comprising only Gothic and the languages of the Vandals, Burgundians, and a few other tribes.
English has 450 million native speakers, ranking third worldwide, while German has about 98 million, ranking around tenth. The earliest evidence of Germanic languages comes from isolated words and names recorded by Latin authors in the 1st century BCE.
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Which well-known languages belong to the Germanic language family?
The Germanic language family is a branch of the Indo-European language family. It is often divided into three groups: West Germanic, North Germanic, and East Germanic.
Well-known languages that belong to the West Germanic group include English, German, and Netherlandic (Dutch). North Germanic languages include Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Faroese. The East Germanic group is now extinct, comprising only Gothic and the languages of the Vandals, Burgundians, and a few other tribes.
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Where are Germanic languages spoken today?
Today, Germanic languages are spoken across the globe, with a strong presence in Europe and communities elsewhere. These languages fall into North Germanic and West Germanic groups.
German, an inflected West Germanic language, is the official language of Germany and Austria, and one of the official languages of Switzerland. The German-speaking population extends into Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and parts of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy, with remnants of German communities in eastern Europe.
Dutch, also a West Germanic language, is spoken in most of the Netherlands, northern Belgium, and a small part of France along the North Sea.
The North Germanic languages, also known as Scandinavian languages, include Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. These are spoken in the Nordic countries, including Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, as well as the Faroe Islands and Iceland.
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What are some main differences between North Germanic and West Germanic languages?
The North Germanic and West Germanic languages share a common origin, but they evolved along different paths. North Germanic languages include Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Icelandic. English, German, and Dutch are West Germanic languages.
Key differences:
* Shared developments North Sea Germanic and South Germanic share a number of linguistic developments that North Germanic does not share. For example, West Germanic changed \u00f0 to d in all positions. Also, West Germanic replaced the inherited second person singular past tense forms of strong verbs.
* Medial sounds North Germanic uses ggj and ggv for medial jj and ww, respectively. West Germanic does not share this feature.
* Umlaut North Germanic rounds unrounded vowels through u-umlaut and loses initial j and w before rounded vowels. It also loses final nasals.
* Vocabulary North Germanic contains unique words not found in West or East Germanic, such as gólf ('floor') and ostr ('cheese').4 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
How did the Germanic languages spread across Europe?
The Germanic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family, are believed to have originated from a relatively uniform Germanic people in southern Scandinavia and along the North Sea and Baltic coasts around 750 BCE.
By 250 BCE, these groups had spread south, leading to the emergence of five general groups: North Germanic, North Sea Germanic, Rhine-Weser Germanic, Elbe Germanic, and East Germanic. The Germanic tribal migrations that began toward the end of the 4th century saw North Sea Germanic speakers spread south along the coast of the Low Countries and begin their conquest of Britain. Also, Rhine-Weser expanded into Gallo-Roman territory, and the Elbe group spread south to the Alps.
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How have Germanic languages influenced other world languages?
Germanic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family, have significantly influenced other languages through vocabulary, phonology, and grammar. English, a West Germanic language, ranks among the world's most widely used second languages, with 450 million native speakers.
Vocabulary
French has borrowed approximately 700 words from Frankish, a Germanic language. These words relate to agriculture, war, or social organization.
Examples of Germanic Influence
The term soap (Romanian săpun, Italian sapone, French savon) is one Germanic word found in both Eastern and Western Romance languages. The Proto-Germanic accent has impacted vowel reduction and mutation in other languages.
The Germanic languages' unique characteristics result from numerous phonological and grammatical changes.
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Germanic languages, branch of the Indo-European language family. Scholars often divide the Germanic languages into three groups: West Germanic, including English, German, and Netherlandic (Dutch); North Germanic, including Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Faroese; and East Germanic, now extinct, comprising only Gothic and the languages of the Vandals, Burgundians, and a few other tribes.
In numbers of native speakers, English, with 450 million, clearly ranks third among the languages of the world (after Mandarin and Spanish); German, with some 98 million, probably ranks 10th (after Hindi, Bengali, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, and Japanese). To these figures may be added those for persons with another native language who have learned one of the Germanic languages for commercial, scientific, literary, or other purposes. English is unquestionably the world’s most widely used second language.
The earliest historical evidence for Germanic is provided by isolated words and names recorded by Latin authors beginning in the 1st century bce. From approximately 200 ce there are inscriptions carved in the 24-letter runic alphabet. The earliest extensive Germanic text is the (incomplete) Gothic Bible, translated about 350 ce by the Visigothic bishop Ulfilas (Wulfila) and written in a 27-letter alphabet of the translator’s own design. Later versions of the runic alphabet were used sparingly in England and Germany but more widely in Scandinavia—in the latter area down to early modern times. All extensive later Germanic texts, however, use adaptations of the Latin alphabet.
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See table for the names and approximate dates of the earliest recorded Germanic languages.
| approximate dates CE | |
|---|---|
| *Standard cutoff date for beginnings of modern Germanic languages. | |
| early runic | 200–600 |
| Gothic | 350 |
| Old English (Anglo-Saxon) | 700–1050 |
| Old High German | 750–1050 |
| Old Saxon (Old Low German) | 850–1050 |
| Old Norwegian | 1150–1450 |
| Old Icelandic | 1150–1500* |
| Middle Netherlandic | 1170–1500* |
| Old Danish | 1250–1500* |
| Old Swedish | 1250–1500* |
| Old Frisian | 1300–1500* |
The Germanic languages are related in the sense that they can be shown to be different historical developments of a single earlier parent language. Although for some language families there are written records of the parent language (e.g., for the Romance languages, which are variant developments of Latin), in the case of Germanic no written records of the parent language exist. Much of its structure, however, can be deduced by the comparative method of reconstruction (a reconstructed language is called a protolanguage; reconstructed forms are marked with an asterisk). For example, a comparison of Runic -gastiz, Gothic gasts, Old Norse gestr, Old English giest, Old Frisian iest, and Old Saxon and Old High German gast ‘guest’ leads to the reconstruction of Proto-Germanic *ǥastiz. Similarly, a comparison of Runic horna, Gothic haurn, and Old Norse, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Saxon, and Old High German horn ‘horn’ leads scholars to reconstruct the Proto-Germanic form *hornan.
Such reconstructions are, in part, merely formulas of relationship. Thus, the Proto-Germanic *o of *hornan in this position yielded au in Gothic and o in the other languages. In other positions (e.g., when followed by a nasal sound plus a consonant) *o yielded u in all the languages: Proto-Germanic *dumbaz, Gothic dumbs, Old Norse dumbr, Old English, Old Frisian, and Old Saxon dumb, Old High German tumb ‘dumb.’ What may be deduced is that this vowel sounded more like u in some environments, but like o in others; it may be written as *u∼o, with the tilde indicating that it varied between these two pronunciations.
The above example shows that such reconstructions are more than mere formulas of relationship; they also give some indication of how Proto-Germanic actually sounded. Occasionally scholars are fortunate enough to find external confirmation of these deductions. For example, on the basis of Old English cyning, Old Saxon and Old High German kuning ‘king,’ the Proto-Germanic *kuningaz can be reconstructed; this would seem to be confirmed by Finnish kuningas ‘king,’ which must have been borrowed from Germanic at a very early date.
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By pushing the comparative method still farther back, it can be shown that Germanic is related to a number of other languages, notably Celtic, Italic, Greek, Baltic, Slavic, Iranian, and Indo-Aryan (Indic). All these language groups are subsequent developments of a still earlier parent language for which there are, again, no written records but which can be reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European (see Indo-European languages).
Linguistic characteristics of the protolanguage
The special characteristics of the Germanic languages that distinguish them from other Indo-European languages result from numerous phonological and grammatical changes.
Phonology
Consonants
Proto-Indo-European had 12 stop consonants: *p, *t, *k, *kw; *b, *d, *g, *gw; *bh, *dh, *gh, and *gwh; and one sibilant, *s. (Stops are produced with momentary complete stoppage of the breath stream at some point in the vocal tract.) By a change known as the Germanic consonant shift (or Grimm’s law), the 12 stops changed in Germanic to voiceless fricatives, voiceless stops, and voiced fricatives (see Click Here to see full-size table
table). A few examples: (1) Proto-Indo-European *p, *t, *k, and *kw, as in Latin piscis, tenuis, centum, and quod, became Proto-Germanic *f, *þ, *x, and *xw, as in English fish, thin, hund(red), and what. Proto-Germanic *x and *xw early became *h and *hw in some positions, giving the alternations of *h∼x and *hw∼xw. (2) Proto-Indo-European *d and *g, as in Latin decem and genus, became Proto-Germanic *t and *k, as in English ten and kin. (3) Proto-Indo-European *bh, *dh, and *gh, as in Sanskrit bhū-, dhā-, and (g)hā-, became Proto-Germanic *ƀ, *ð, and *ǥ, which later changed to the stops b, d, and g in some positions (e.g., English be, do, and go), yielding *b∼ƀ, *d∼ð, and *g∼ǥ. Proto-Indo-European *s, as in Latin sedeō, was unchanged; Proto-Germanic kept *s, as in English sit.
In addition to these general changes, there were two special ones. (1) Proto-Indo-European *p, *t, and *k remained voiceless stops when preceded by *s or another stop; thus, Proto-Indo-European *sp, *st, *sk, *pt, and *kt yielded Proto-Germanic *sp, *st, *sk, *ft, and *xt, respectively. For example, Proto-Indo-European *sp and *st, as in Latin spuō and hostis, remained *sp and *st in Proto-Germanic, as in English spew and guest; Proto-Indo-European *pt and *kt, as in Latin captus and octō, became Proto-Germanic *ft and *xt, respectively, in Old English hæft ‘captured’ and eahta ‘eight.’ (By still another change, Proto-Indo-European *tt yielded Proto-Germanic *ss—e.g., Sanskrit sattá-, Old English sess ‘seat.’) (2) By a change known as Verner’s law early Germanic voiceless *f, *þ, *x, *xw, and *s (from Proto-Indo-European *p, *t, *k, *kw, and *s) were voiced to *ƀ, *ð, *ǥ, *ǥw, and *z, respectively, when they followed an unaccented syllable, and the first four of these thereby merged with the already existing *ƀ, *ð, *ǥ, and *ǥw (from Proto-Indo-European *bh, *dh, *gh, and *gwh). Thus, Proto-Indo-European *bhrātēr became Proto-Germanic *brōþēr (with þ after an accented syllable) and Old English brōþor ‘brother’; but by Verner’s law Proto-Indo-European *mātēr became Proto-Germanic *mōðēr (with ð after an unaccented syllable) and Old English mōdor ‘mother.’ (Proto-Germanic *ð yielded Old English d; the th of modern English mother is the result of a subsequent change.)
These changes yielded the following Proto-Germanic system of consonants: voiceless stops and fricatives, *p, *f, *t, *þ, *k, *h∼x, *kw, *hw∼xw; voiced stops and fricatives, *b∼ƀ, *d∼ð, *g∼ǥ, (*gw∼ǥw); sibilants, *s, *z; nasals, *m, *n; liquids, *l, *r; and semivowels, *w, *j (y). The sound alternation of *gw∼ǥw is parenthesized because it early became either *g∼ǥ or *w. The sounds *kw and *hw∼xw occurred as such more or less clearly only in Gothic; elsewhere they became the sequences *kw and *hw∼xw, or the labial element w was lost. All remaining consonants except z occurred between vowels both singly and doubly (e.g., -p- and -pp-, -t- and -tt-).