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The continental West Germanic dialect continuum roughly encompasses the territory of modern-day Germany, Austria, the German-speaking part of Switzerland, the Netherlands, the northern half of Belgium (Flanders), Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and South Tyrol, in northern Italy. The dialectal varieties in this region differ and are classified on the ...
Germanic languages and main dialect groups. All living Germanic languages belong either to the West Germanic or to the North Germanic branch. The West Germanic group is the larger by far, further subdivided into Anglo-Frisian on one hand and Continental West Germanic on the other.
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There are three branches of West Germanic languages: North Sea Germanic / Ingvaeonic languages. Anglo-Frisian languages. English Languages/Anglic. Scots. Yola (extinct) Fingalian (extinct) Frisian languages. West Frisian. East Frisian. North Frisian. Low German / Low Saxon. Northern Low Saxon. Schleswig dialects. Holstein dialects. Westphalian.
- Overview
- German
- History
- Characteristics of modern Standard German
German is spoken throughout a large area in central Europe, where it is the national language of Germany and of Austria and one of the three official languages of Switzerland (the others are French and Italian, and Romansh has a special status). From this homeland it has been carried by emigration to many other parts of the world; there are German-speaking communities in North and South America, South Africa, and Australia.
As a written language German is quite uniform, differing in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland no more than written English does in the United States and the British Commonwealth. As a spoken language, however, German exists in far more varieties than English. At one extreme is Standard German (Hochsprache), based on the written form of the language and used in radio, television, public lectures, the theatre, schools, and universities. It is relatively uniform, although speakers often reveal regional accents. At the other extreme are the local dialects, which differ from village to village. Between these two extremes there is a continuous scale of speech forms; in cities these forms are often close to the standard language and are called Colloquial German (Umgangssprache).
German is spoken throughout a large area in central Europe, where it is the national language of Germany and of Austria and one of the three official languages of Switzerland (the others are French and Italian, and Romansh has a special status). From this homeland it has been carried by emigration to many other parts of the world; there are German-speaking communities in North and South America, South Africa, and Australia.
As a written language German is quite uniform, differing in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland no more than written English does in the United States and the British Commonwealth. As a spoken language, however, German exists in far more varieties than English. At one extreme is Standard German (Hochsprache), based on the written form of the language and used in radio, television, public lectures, the theatre, schools, and universities. It is relatively uniform, although speakers often reveal regional accents. At the other extreme are the local dialects, which differ from village to village. Between these two extremes there is a continuous scale of speech forms; in cities these forms are often close to the standard language and are called Colloquial German (Umgangssprache).
From the point of view of the modern local dialects, the territory within which German and Dutch are spoken is a single speech area. It is possible to travel from Austria, northern Italy, and much of Switzerland into Germany, eastern France (Alsace and part of Lorraine), Luxembourg, northern Belgium, and the Netherlands without encountering a village where the local speech is suddenly different. The only sharp breaks occur when one enters the French-speaking parts of France and Belgium or the Frisian-speaking parts of the Netherlands and Germany.
The most striking dialect differences within this large area are those that divide Dutch–Low German in the lowlands of the north from High German in the highlands of the south. When the Germanic tribes migrated into southern Germany during the early centuries ad, their speech had the voiceless stops p, t, and k in much the same distribution as in modern English. Then, probably during the 6th century, there occurred a change customarily called the High German consonant shift. At the beginning of words and when doubled, p, t, and k came to be pronounced as affricates; after a vowel they came to be pronounced as long fricatives. See table for a comparison of modern results with related English words.
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These changes occurred in the south of the German speech area and then spread north, some extending farther than others. The situation at the end of the 19th century was as indicated in the figure. Line 2, maken/machen, is generally chosen as the boundary between Low German and High German, because it is typical for the shift of p, t, and k after vowels to ff, ss, and ch, respectively (hopen/hoffen, bīten/beissen, maken/machen), and of t and tt to z and tz, respectively (ten/zehn, sitten/sitzen). The shift of ik ‘I’ to ich is indicated by line 1, which shows that the shift of k to ch after a vowel in this particular word spread unusually far. Line 3, which indicates the shift of Dorp ‘village’ to Dorf (compare archaic English thorp), shows that shifted p after r and l did not spread as far north as the shifted p, t, and k after a vowel. And line 4, indicating the shift of dat ‘that’ to das, shows that the shift of t to s after a vowel spread still less far north in this word (and in a few others: it/es ‘it,’ wat/was ‘what’). The striking way in which these lines fan out in the west (in the area along the Rhine River) has led to their being referred to as the Rhenish fan.
The shift of p when doubled or at the beginning of a word occurred in a much smaller area. Line 5, showing the shift of Appel ‘apple’ to Apfel, lies wholly within the High German speech area and is customarily used to subdivide it into Middle German (Appel) and Upper German (Apfel) areas. Line 6, which indicates the shift of Pund ‘pound’ to Pfund, follows much the same course as does line 5 in the west, but it then runs north to join the maken/machen line; it is customarily used to distinguish West Middle German (Appel, Pund) from East Middle German (Appel, Fund—the latter being more common than Upper German Pfund).
German has the following consonants, given here in phonetic symbols because the spelling often varies: stops, p, b, t, d, k, g; fricatives, f, v, ç∼x; sibilants, s, z, š, ž; nasals, m, n, ŋ; liquids, l, r; glides, h, j. German ç∼x, spelled ch, is the voiceless velar fricative x after a, ā, o, ō, u, ū, and au but is the voiceless palatal fricative ç in other phonetic environments. The German sound ž occurs only in loanwords from other languages.
In the orthography, German w always indicates a v sound symbolized /v/; German v spells an f sound in native words but a v sound in loanwords. German sp and st spell the sounds sp and st in most positions, but they spell šp /shp/ and št /sht/ at the beginnings of words or word stems. In other positions the š (sh) sound is spelled sch—e.g., Schiff ‘ship.’ German z always indicates /ts/. The spelling tz marks a preceding vowel as short, and the spelling z marks it as long.
Voiced b, d, g, v, and z do not occur at the ends of words, at the ends of parts of compound words, before suffixes beginning with a consonant, or before endings in s or t. In these positions they are replaced in pronunciation (though not in spelling) by the corresponding voiceless consonants, namely /p/, /t/, /k/, /f/, and /s/. For example, the g in Tage ‘days’ is pronounced as English g, and the g in Tag ‘day’ is pronounced as English k.
The German vowel system is detailed phonetically in the table. Though the spelling does not always indicate the difference between short and long vowels, the following devices are used more or less consistently: (1) A vowel is always short if followed by a double consonant letter—e.g., still ‘still,’ wenn ‘if,’ Rasse ‘race,’ offen ‘open,’ Hütte ‘hut’—in contrast to the long vowels of Stil ‘style,’ wen ‘whom,’ Glas ‘glass,’ Ofen ‘oven,’ Hüte ‘hats.’ (2) A vowel is always long if followed by an (unpronounced) h—e.g., ihnen ‘to them,’ stehlen ‘to steal,’ Kahn ‘barge,’ wohnen ‘to dwell,’ Ruhm ‘fame’—in contrast to the short vowels of innen ‘inside,’ stellen ‘to place,’ kann ‘can,’ Wonne ‘bliss,’ dumm ‘dumb.’ (3) A vowel is always long if written double—e.g., Beet ‘(flower) bed,’ Staat ‘state,’ Boot ‘boat’—in contrast to the short vowels of Bett ‘bed (for sleeping),’ Stadt ‘city,’ Gott ‘god’; ie counts as the doubled spelling of i—e.g., long i (ī) in Miete ‘rent’ but short i (i) in Mitte ‘middle.’ (4) A vowel (except unstressed e) is always long when it stands at the end of a word.
The “plain” vowels—a, o, u, ā, ō, ū, au—often alternate with the “umlaut” vowels—e, ö, ü, ē, ȫ, ṻ, oi, respectively—as in the following examples with plain vowels in the singular but umlauted vowels in the plural: Gast ‘guest,’ Gäste; Gott ‘god,’ Götter; Mutter ‘mother,’ Mütter. As these examples show, the vowel sounds e, ē, and oi are spelled ä, ä, and äu when they are the umlaut of a, ā, and au sounds. Gast–Gäste, Vater–Väter, Braut–Bräute. Otherwise they are generally spelled e, eh, or ee (beten ‘to pray,’ geht ‘goes,’ Beet ‘[flower] bed’), and eu (Leute ‘people’).
The sound /ai/ is generally spelled ei: Seite ‘side,’ nein ‘no,’ though in a few words ai: Saite ‘string (of an instrument),’ Kaiser ‘emperor.’ The schwa sound, /ə/, pronounced as the unstressed a in English sofa, is spelled e: beginnen/bəgínən/ ‘to begin,’ geredet/gərēdət/ ‘spoken.’
The West Germanic group is characterized by a number of phonological and morphological innovations not found in North and East Germanic. The West Germanic varieties of the time are generally split into three dialect groups: Ingvaeonic (North Sea Germanic), Istvaeonic (Weser–Rhine Germanic) and Irminonic (Elbe Germanic).
Current French WordOld FranconianDutch Or Other Germanic CognatesLatin/romanceaffranchir "to free"* frank "freeborn; unsubjugated, ...Du frank "unforced, sincere, frank", ...L līberārealêne "awl" ( Sp alesna, It lesina )* alisnaMDu elsene, else, Du elsL sūbulaalise "whitebeam berry" ( OFr alis, alie ...* alísō "alder" [28]MDu elze, Du els "alder" (vs. G Erle ...non-native to the Mediterraneanbaron* baro "freeman", "bare of duties" ...MDu baren "to give birth", Du bar ...Germanic cultural import Late, Vulgar, ...Franconian or Frankish is a collective term traditionally used by linguists to refer to many West Germanic languages, some of which are spoken in what formed the historical core area of Francia during the Early Middle Ages.
Jul 15, 2017 · The West Germanic branch was originally divided into three dialect groups, Ingvaeonic, Istvaeonic and Irminonic, but due to geographical discontinuity and language interference from North Germanic and French in the case of English and mutual influence in the case of Dutch and German, the three languages no longer show a straightforward relation ...
