Germanic languages
 

Germanic languages

The Germanic languages form one of the branches of the Indo-European (IE) language family, spoken by the Germanic peoples who settled in northern Europe along the borders of the Roman Empire. They are characterised by a number of unique linguistic features, most famously the consonant change known as Grimm's law.


Writing

Some early Germanic languages developed runic alphabets of their own, but use of these alphabets was comparatively limited. East Germanic languages were written in the Gothic alphabet developed by Bishop Ulfilas for his translation of the Bible into Gothic. Later, Christian priests and monks who spoke and read Latin in addition to their native Germanic tongue began writing the Germanic languages with slightly modified Latin letters.

In addition to the standard Latin alphabet, various Germanic languages use a variety of accent marks and extra letters, including umlauts, the ß (Eszett), Ø, Æ, Å, Ð, ȝ, and Þ and ƿ, from runes. Historic printed German is frequently set in a distinctive typeface called Fraktur.

Linguistic Markers

Some unique features of Germanic languages are:

1. The levelling of the IE tense system into past and present (or common)
2. The use of a dental suffix (/d/ or /t/) instead of vowel alternation (ablaut) to indicate past tense.
3. The presence of two distinct types of verb conjugation: weak (regular) and strong (irregular). English has 161 strong verbs; all are of native English origin.
4. The use of strong and weak adjectives. Modern English adjectives don't change except for comparative and superlative; this was not the case with Old English, where adjectives were inflected differently depending on whether they were preceded by an article or demonstrative, or not.
5. The consonant shift known as Grimm's Law.
6. A number of words with etymologies that are difficult to link to other Indo-European families, but variants of which appear in almost all Germanic languages. See Non-Indo-European roots of Germanic languages.
7. The shifting of stress onto the root of the stem. Though English has an irregular stress, native words always have a fixed stress regardless of what's added to them. This is arguably the most important change.

Family tree

All Germanic languages are thought to be descended from a hypothetical Proto-Germanic. Note that divisions between subfamilies of Germanic are rarely precisely defined; most form continuous clines, with adjacent dialects being mutually intelligible and more separated ones not.

Mentioned here are only the principal or unusual dialects; individual articles linked to below contain larger family trees. For example, many Low Saxon dialects are discussed on Low Saxon besides just Standard Low Saxon and Plautdietsch.

• West Germanic
  • High German
    • German
      • Middle German
        • East Middle German
          • Standard German (Hochdeutsch)
        • Luxembourgish
        • West Middle German
          • Pennsylvania German (spoken by the Amish and other groups in southeastern Pennsylvania)
      • Upper German
        • Alemannic German
        • Austro-Bavarian German
        • Lombardic (extinct)
        • Hutterite German (aka "Tirolean")
    • Texas German
    • Yiddish (with a significant influx of vocabulary from Hebrew and other languages, and traditionally written in the Hebrew alphabet)
    • Wymysojer (with a significant influence from Low Saxon, Dutch, Polish and Scots)
  • Low German
    • Low Franconian
      • Dutch
      • Afrikaans (with a significant influx of vocabulary from other languages)
    • Low Saxon
      • Standard Low Saxon
      • Plautdietsch (Mennonite "Low German")
    • East Low German
  • Island German
    • Frisian
    • English. Huge influx of Latinate vocabulary and grammar, most via Norman French. Many dialects, including International English
      • British English
        • Received Pronunciation
        • Estuary English
        • Censored page
        • East Anglian
        • Scouse
        • Geordie
        • Yorkshire
        • Black Country
        • West Country
        • Hiberno-English
        • Scottish English
      • American English
        • Boston dialect
        • Southern American English
        • Standard Midwestern
        • General American
        • Canadian English
        • Newfoundland English
        • New York-New Jersey English
        • Liberian English
      • Commonwealth English
        • Caribbean English
        • Jamaican English
        • Australian English
        • New Zealand English
        • South African English
        • Indian English
        • Singlish (Singaporean English)
        • Manglish (Malaysian English)
    • Scots
      • Insular Scots
      • Northern Scots incl. Doric
      • Central Scots
      • Southern Scots
      • Ulster Scots
      • Urban Scots (City dialects)
    • Söl'ring
    • Yola
• East Germanic (descending from Gothic)
  • Crimean Gothic (extinct in the 1800s)
  • Vandalic (extinct)
  • Burgundian (extinct)
• North Germanic (descending from Old Norse):
  • West (Insular) Nordic
    • New Norwegian (Nynorsk) (disputed)
    • Icelandic
    • Faroese
    • Norn (Extinct)
  • East (Continental) Nordic
    • Danish
      • Standard Norwegian (Bokmål and Riksmål) (Dano-Norwegian)
      • Scanian
    • Swedish

from http://www.all-science-fair-projects...anic_languages

Re: Germanic languages
 

I heard that latin originally is a Germanic language too. Is that true? If it is, we could make the family tree much bigger :D

Re: Germanic languages
 

How is Latin Germanic? It is part of the Italic family. The Romance languages are descended from it.

Re: Germanic languages
 

Yes indeed, but before the Roman Empire existed, latin came from Germany too, that's what I heard, but I'm not sure of it. :)

Re: Germanic languages
 

Latin originated in today's Italy. It was the official language of Latium.

Re: Germanic languages
 

Ah thats bootiful, oy fink you got it royt :D.

Re: Germanic languages
 

Well everything comes from somewhere, and all indoeuropean languages are related ;)

(Also called indo-Germanic languages :D )

Re: Germanic languages
 

'Indo-Germanic' or even 'Aryan' was a term used by 19th century scholars when comparing the old languages of Europe and attempting to give the language family a name. The term "indogermanisch" is still used today in German, but I prefer to use "indoeuropäisch", as too many people take the usage of the former as a sort of imperialistic attitude. That however does not mean that Latin is a Germanic language.

Re: Germanic languages
 

I just found this:

Latin Language, language of ancient Rome and the neighboring territory of Latium. With the spread of Roman power Latin was carried to every part of the known ancient world and became the dominant tongue of western Europe. It was the language of scholarship and diplomacy until the 18th century and of the Roman Catholic liturgy until the late 20th century.
The Latin language was not native to Italy but was brought into the Italian Peninsula in prehistoric times by Italic peoples who migrated from the north. Latin is a member of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European languages; among non-Italic Indo-European languages, it is related especially closely to Sanskrit and Greek and to the Germanic and Celtic subfamilies. In Italy, Latin was originally the dialect of the region around Rome. Within the Italic languages Latin, Faliscan, and other dialects formed a Latinian group distinct from other Italic languages, such as Oscan and Umbrian. Early Latinian inscriptions survive from the 6th century bc; the oldest texts clearly in Roman Latin date mostly from the 3rd century bc. Latin was influenced by Celtic dialects in northern Italy, by the non-Indo-European Etruscan language in central Italy, and by Greek, which was spoken in southern Italy as early as the 8th century bc. Under the influence of the Greek language and its literature, which was first translated into Latin in the second half of the 3rd century bc, Latin gradually developed into a great literary tongue.


source: http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_..._Language.html

It says "The Latin language was not native to Italy but was brought into the Italian Peninsula in prehistoric times by Italic peoples who migrated from the north." so maybe it has something to do with Germanic langs.

By the way Bayerisches Mädchen I'm pleased to talk to you.:)

AW: Re: Germanic languages
 

For Miss "political correct" ;)

Indogermanisch oder indoeuropäisch?

Re: Germanic languages
 

No, it's utter nonsense.

http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ballc/oe/ie-tree.gif

Re: Germanic languages
 

Why is it nonsense?
Giving a family tree doesn't prove anything, someone had to write it!
Even the holly Bible was invented, it wasn't writen by god :D

Re: Germanic languages
 

I suppose you have serious issues with this, don't you?

Latin comes from the Italic branch, that is a branch of the Indo-European languages. Germanic is a branch of the Indo-European languages too -- as Italic. Thus, apart from being Indo-European, have no connection.

Re: Germanic languages
 

No connection.. sure.. so iranian has same in common with latin than germanic?
If those italics brought latin from the northern Europe, why can't there be some connection??????

Re: Germanic languages
 

Yes.

:rotfl It didn't came from Northern Europe.

http://forum.stirpes.net/showthread.php?t=476

This is really common knowledge, l don't see why you keep trying to say it is Germanic.

Re: Germanic languages
 

Lëtzebuergs is a very interesting language, though probably the least spoken Germanic language in the world (even not very widely spoken in Luxemburg itself).