2015-09-06
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The Germanic languages are a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family spoken by Germanic peoples. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic (also known as Common Germanic), which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC inIron Age northern Europe. Proto-Germanic, along with all of its descendants, is characterized by a number of unique linguistic features, most famously theconsonant change known as Grimm's law. Early varieties of Germanic enter history with the Germanic tribes moving south from northern Europe in the 2nd century BC, to settle in north-central Europe.
The most widely spoken Germanic languages are English and German, with approximately 300–400 million and over 100 million native speakers respectively. They belong to the West Germanic family. The West Germanicgroup also includes other major languages, such as Dutch with 23 million and Afrikaans with over 6 million native speakers. The North Germanic languages include Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese, which have a combined total of about 20 million speakers. The SIL Ethnologue lists 53 different Germanic languages.
Classification
Note that divisions between and among subfamilies of Germanic are rarely precisely defined; most form continuous clines, with adjacent varieties being mutually intelligible and more separated ones not.
Diachronic
The table below shows the succession of the significant historical stages of each language (horizontally), and their approximate groupings in subfamilies (vertically). Vertical sequence within each group does not imply a measure of greater or lesser similarity.
Classification of Germanic languages
| Pre-Roman Iron Age 500–100 BCE | Early Roman Iron Age 100 BCE–100 CE | Late Roman Iron Age 100–300 | Migration Period 300–600 | Early Middle Ages 600–1100 | Middle Ages 1100–1350 | Late Middle Ages2 1350–1500 | Early Modern Age 1500–1700 | Modern Age 1700 to present | |
| Proto-Germanic | West Germanic | Irminonic (Elbe Germanic) | Primitive Upper German | Old Upper German, Lombardic1 | Middle Upper German | Early New Upper German | Upper German varieties | ||
| Standard German | |||||||||
| Istvaeonic (Weser-Rhine Germanic) | Primitive Frankish | Old Frankish | Old Central German | Middle Central German | Early New Central German | ||||
| Central German varieties | |||||||||
| Old Low Franconian (Old Dutch) | Early Limburgish Middle Dutch | Late Limburgish Middle Dutch | EarlyLimburgish | Limburgish | |||||
| Early Middle Dutch | Late Middle Dutch | Early Modern Dutch | Dutch varieties | ||||||
| Afrikaans | |||||||||
| Ingvaeonic (North Sea Germanic) | Primitive Saxon (Southeast Ingvaeonic) | Old Saxon | Middle Low German | Low German varieties | |||||
| Anglo-Frisian (Northwest Ingvaeonic) | Primitive Frisian | Old Frisian | Middle Frisian | Frisian varieties | |||||
| Primitive Anglic | Old English (Anglo-Saxon) | Early Middle English | Late Middle English | Early Modern English | English varieties | ||||
| Early Scots3 | Middle Scots | Scots varieties | |||||||
| North Germanic | Proto-Norse | Runic Old West Norse | Old Icelandic | Late Old Icelandic | Icelandic | ||||
| Old Norwegian6 | Old Faroese | Faroese | |||||||
| Old Norn | Norn | extinct4 | |||||||
| Runic Old East Norse | Middle Norwegian | Norwegian | |||||||
| Early Old Danish | Late Old Danish | Danish | |||||||
| Early Old Swedish | Late Old Swedish | Swedish and Dalecarlian dialects | |||||||
| Runic Old Gutnish | Early Old Gutnish | Late Old Gutnish | Gutnish | extinct5 | |||||
| East Germanic | Gothic | (unattested Gothic dialects) | Crimean Gothic | extinct | |||||
| Vandalic | Extinct | ||||||||
| Burgundian | Extinct | ||||||||
