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English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, whose speakers, called Anglophones, originated in early medieval England. [4] [5] [6] The namesake of the language is the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain.
Oct 10, 2022 · Hundreds of languages compose the Indo-European family, so linguists divide them into closely related subfamilies. The Germanic branch is one of the ten or so Indo-European subfamilies. Germanic languages are English’s distant cousins, so to speak. The Germanic family itself has subgroups; English is in the West Germanic branch along with ...
English is the most spoken Germanic language, with 360-400 million native speakers. The Germanic languages are the East Germanic languages (all extinct), the North Germanic languages, and the West Germanic languages. When Proto-Germanic split from Proto-Indo-European, one of the main changes in the sounds in the language was Grimm’s law.
History and characteristics. The West Germanic languages belong to the Indo-European languages, a large language family native to western and southern Eurasia. It comprises most of the European languages, while West Germanic languages developed in the region of the North Sea, Rhine-Weser and Elbe. It has been difficult for scholars to determine ...
Apr 5, 2023 · The Germanic language family tree begins with the hypothetical language of Proto-Germanic, some time between 750–100 BCE. ... West Germanic languages are among the most spoken languages in the ...
East Germanic languages; North Germanic languages; West Germanic languages; They all descend from Proto-Germanic, and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European. South Germanic languages, an attempt to classify some of the West Germanic languages into a separate group, is rejected by the overwhelming majority of scholars. † denotes extinct languages.
The West Germanic language branch is the largest of the three and also includes the three most widely spoken Germanic languages, which are English, German and Dutch. West Germanic languages are spoken by nearly 500 million people natively.
