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All Germanic languages are derived from Proto-Germanic, spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia and Germany. The West Germanic languages include the three most widely spoken Germanic languages: English with around 360–400 million native speakers; German, with over 100 million native speakers; and Dutch, with 24
- 52- (phylozone)
- Proto-Germanic
- Indo-EuropeanGermanic
- Overview
- Linguistic characteristics of the protolanguage
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.
See table for the names and approximate dates of the earliest recorded Germanic languages.
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Languages & Alphabets
The special characteristics of the Germanic languages that distinguish them from other Indo-European languages result from numerous phonological and grammatical changes.
Vor 4 Tagen · The recorded history of Germanic languages begins with their speakers’ first contact with the Romans, in the 1st century bce. At that time and for several centuries thereafter, there was only a single “Germanic” language, with little more than minor dialect differences.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
History of German. The appearance of the German language begins in the Early Middle Ages with the High German consonant shift. Old High German, Middle High German, and Early New High German span the duration of the Holy Roman Empire. The 19th and 20th centuries saw the rise of Standard German and a decrease of dialectal variety. High German.
22. Okt. 2020 · How has its pronunciation changed? Take a dive into the exciting, centuries-old history of the German language. By Sarah Waldmann. October 22, 2020. With over 100 million speakers, German is currently the most spoken language in the EU.
Derivation of Germanic languages from Proto-Germanic. Like every language spoken over a considerable geographic area, Proto-Germanic presumably consisted of a number of geographic varieties or dialects that over time developed in different ways into the different early and modern Germanic languages.
28. Jan. 2021 · Revising the History of Germanic Languages: The Concept of Germance. International Journal of Language and. Linguistics. Vol. 9, No. 1, 2021, pp. 1-5. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20210901.11....
