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Germanic languages
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Thematic map of Europe displaying the distribution of Germanic languages, with different colors indicating regions where English, German, Netherlandic (Dutch), Frisian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese are spoken. Striped areas mark regions where bilingualism is common, and language regions cover countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and parts of surrounding countries. Proto-Indo-European vowels changed into Proto-Germanic vowels. A family tree diagram shows the evolution of Germanic languages from Proto-Germanic, branching into West, North, and East Germanic groups. West Germanic splits into Anglo-Frisian (English, Frisian) and Netherlandic-German (Netherlandic, German). North Germanic divides into West Scandinavian (Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian) and East Scandinavian (Danish, Swedish). East Germanic is represented by Gothic. Map of Northern Europe showing the distribution of Germanic languages, with color-coded regions for Swedish in Sweden, Norwegian in Norway, Danish in Denmark, Icelandic in Iceland, Faeroese in the Faeroe Islands, English in the United Kingdom and Ireland, German in Germany, Austria, and parts of Switzerland, Netherlandic in the Netherlands and northern Belgium, and Frisian in small areas along the Dutch and German coasts. Mixed language areas are also indicated. Thematic map of Eurasia showing the approximate geographic distribution of Indo-European language families, each represented by a different color. Areas include Celtic in western Europe, Germanic in northern and central Europe, Romance in southwestern Europe, Slavic in eastern Europe and Russia, and Indo-Iranian languages in South Asia. Non-Indo-European language regions and areas of common bilingualism are also indicated.
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Thematic map of Europe displaying the distribution of Germanic languages, with different colors indicating regions where English, German, Netherlandic (Dutch), Frisian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese are spoken. Striped areas mark regions where bilingualism is common, and language regions cover countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and parts of surrounding countries.
Germanic languages in Europe Distribution of the Germanic languages in Europe.

Germanic languages

language family
Written by
William G. Moulton
Professor of Linguistics, Princeton University, 1960–79. Professor of Germanic Linguistics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 1949–60. Author of The Sounds of English and German.
William G. MoultonAll
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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...

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