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How are Germanic languages related to the Indo-European language family?

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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 Distribution of the Germanic languages in Europe.

The Germanic languages constitute a major branch of the Indo-European language family. This relationship is defined by the fact that Germanic languages are historical developments originating from a common ancestral parent language known as Proto-Indo-European.12

While no written records of Proto-Indo-European exist, scholars have established this connection by using the comparative method to trace linguistic evolution across various branches, including Celtic, Italic, Greek, Baltic, Slavic, and Indo-Iranian languages. These groups share significant commonalities in their grammatical affixes and vocabulary, all of which are believed to have descended from a population that spoke Proto-Indo-European around 4000 BCE. Through this comparative analysis, linguists can demonstrate that Germanic is a subsequent development of this earlier, reconstructed parent language.12