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The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people [nb 1] mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, English, is also the world's most widely spoken language with an estimated 2 billion speakers.
- 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.
Frisian. Dutch. Afrikaans. Yiddish. North Germanic languages. The largest North Germanic languages are Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. These North Germanic languages are often called the “Nordic” or “Scandinavian” languages, because they are spoken as a native language throughout Scandinavia by around 20 million people.
Feb 21, 2020 · The Western Germanic languages include German, English, Dutch, Frisian, Pennsylvania Dutch, Luxembourgish, Yiddish and Afrikaans, along with a variety of disparate languages that often get lumped together as German or Dutch dialects. Unfortunately, all of the Eastern Germanic languages went extinct starting in the 4th century, and the last ...
- Sabine Hartwig
Apr 5, 2023 · The Germanic languages are a language family that all derive from the hypothetical protolanguage of Proto-Germanic. Protolanguages are reconstructions of an ancestor language, from which all ...
- The most spoken Germanic languages are all part of the West Germanic branch. They include English (1.452 billion speakers), German (134.6 million s...
- German is part of the Germanic family of languages, specifically in the West Germanic branch. The Germanic family is a large family of languages wi...
- There are an estimated 47 Germanic languages in total, divided between North and West Germanic. These numbers are not certain, however, as the dist...
- Yes, English is a Germanic language. English belongs to the West Germanic group of Germanic languages alongside languages like German, Dutch, and Y...
Sep 21, 2023 · Origin of Germanic languages. The Germanic languages are a subgroup of the Indo-European family tree. Proto-Indo-European, spoken more than 5,000 years ago, is considered to be the ancestor of all these languages. Source: About 4,000 years ago, Proto-Indo-European dialects evolved into a variety of daughter languages.
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The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. 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 ...
