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Which Germanic language is most popular in the world?
How many people speak German?
What language does Germany speak?
What languages are spoken in West Germany?
The most widely spoken Germanic language, English, is also the world's most widely spoken language with an estimated 2 billion speakers. All Germanic languages are derived from Proto-Germanic, spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia and Germany.
- 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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The special characteristics of the Germanic languages that distinguish them from other Indo-European languages result from numerous phonological and grammatical changes.
Feb 15, 2018 · Most Popular Germanic Languages Spoken In The World . Of the above mentioned Germanic languages, the most popularly spoken in the world belong to the West Germanic branch and include: English, German, and Dutch. English . The English language is one of the most widely spoken languages.
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German is the second-most widely spoken Germanic and West Germanic language after English, both as a first and a second language. Today, German is one of the major languages of the world. It is the most spoken native language within the European Union.
Jun 13, 2018 · Standard German is the official language of Germany. It is a West Germanic language that is also the most commonly spoken first language in the European Union. Over 95% of the population of Germany speaks the language. This figure also encompasses speakers of Northern Low Saxon, a dialect of West Low German.
- Oishimaya Sen Nag
- Low German is one of the minority languages of Germany. The West Germanic language is spoken mainly in northern Germany. The language is quite dist...
- Immigrants to Germany speak their native languages. Turkish, Polish, Balkan languages, Kurdish, and Russian are the most spoken immigrant languages...
- English is the most important foreign language taught in schools in Germany. French and Latin are also taught as second or third languages in schoo...
May 21, 2024 · Altogether, German is the native language of more than 90 million speakers and thus ranks among the languages with the most native speakers worldwide. German is widely studied as a foreign language and is one of the main cultural languages of the Western world.
Feb 21, 2020 · Besides the obvious answer, German, there are at least 47 living Germanic languages around today. Most linguists talk about this language family in terms of three branches: the Northern, Eastern and Western Germanic languages. From these three branches, we can group all the Germanic languages we know today.
