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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.
- West Germanic Languages
The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the...
- List of Germanic Languages
The Germanic languages include some 58 (SIL estimate)...
- East Germanic Languages
The East Germanic languages, also called the Oder-Vistula...
- Limburgish
A Limburgish speaker, recorded in Slovakia. Limburgish...
- List of Languages by Total Number of Speakers
Principal language families of the world (and in some cases...
- German Language
German ( Standard High German: Deutsch, pronounced [dɔʏ̯t͡ʃ]...
- Languages of Germany
Languages of Germany. The official language of Germany is...
- West Germanic Languages
The Germanic languages include some 58 (SIL estimate) languages and dialects that originated in Europe; this language family is part of the Indo-European language family. Each subfamily in this list contains subgroups and individual languages. The standard division of Germanic is into three branches: East Germanic languages; North Germanic ...
Today, the Germanic languages are spoken by around 515 million people as a first language. 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.
- 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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Languages & Alphabets
The special characteristics of the Germanic languages that distinguish them from other Indo-European languages result from numerous phonological and grammatical changes.
German ( Standard High German: Deutsch, pronounced [dɔʏ̯t͡ʃ] ⓘ) [10] is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol.
German (German: Deutsch) is a West Germanic language. It is spoken in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg; natively by around 100 million people. It is the most widely spoken mother tongue in the first language. There are some people who speak German in Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Northern Italy.
Languages of Germany. The official language of Germany is German, [2] with over 95 percent of the country speaking Standard German or a dialect of German as their first language. [3] . This figure includes speakers of Northern Low Saxon, a recognized minority or regional language that is not considered separately from Standard German in statistics.
