Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Some may only appear in the older languages but are no longer apparent in the modern languages. The three most prevalent West Germanic languages are Most scholars doubt that there was a Proto-West-Germanic Although there is quite a bit of knowledge about North Sea Germanic or Anglo-Frisian (due to characteristic features of its daughter languages, Anglo-Saxon/Evidence that East Germanic split off before the split between North and West Germanic comes from a number of linguistic innovations common to North and West Germanic,Under this view, the properties that the West Germanic languages have in common separate from the North Germanic languages are not necessarily inherited from a "Proto-West-Germanic" language, but may have spread by The debate on the existence of a Proto-West-Germanic clade was recently summarized: Get 30% your subscription today. West Germanic, the ancestor of Old High German, Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Old Low Franconian and others which in turn gave rise to modern German, Dutch, Flemish, Low German, Frisian, Yiddish and, ultimately, English. On the other hand, the internal subgrouping of both North Germanic and West Germanic is very messy, and it seems clear that each of those subfamilies diversified into a network of dialects that remained in contact for a considerable period of time (in some cases right up to the present).Several scholars have published reconstructions of Proto-West-Germanic morphological paradigmsIf indeed Proto-West-Germanic existed, it must have been between the 2nd and 4th centuries.
Germanic languages Derivation of Germanic languages from Proto-Germanic. After that, the split into West and North Germanic occurred.
For example, the plural of the word for "sheep" was originally unchanged in all four languages and still is in some Dutch dialects and a great deal of German dialects. The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic family of languages (the others being the North Germanic and the extinct East Germanic languages).. Although for some language families there are written records of the parent language (e.g., for the Such reconstructions are, in part, merely formulas of relationship.
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(1) Proto-Indo-European *
By the 4th and 5th centuries the great migration set in which probably helped diversify the West Germanic family even more.
All these language groups are subsequent developments of a still earlier parent language for which there are, again, no written records but which can be reconstructed as The special characteristics of the Germanic languages that distinguish them from other Indo-European languages result from numerous phonological and grammatical changes.In addition to these general changes, there were two special ones. Germanic languages are English’s distant cousins, so to speak. What makes English like the other languages in its subfamily? The Note that some of the shown similarities of Frisian and English vis-à-vis Dutch and German are secondary and not due to a closer relationship between them. Occasionally scholars are fortunate enough to find external confirmation of these deductions.
Professor of Germanic Linguistics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 1949–60. Author of The Sounds of English and German.
ii that all the West Germanic languages share several highly unusual innovations that virtually force us to posit a West Germanic clade. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica.Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox.
Thus, we can say that English belongs to the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages.
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. Professor of Linguistics, Princeton University, 1960–79.