West Germanic languages
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Categories: West Germanic languages
West Germanic is the largest branch of the Germanic family of languages, including such languages as German, English and Dutch.
The other families of Germanic are North Germanic and East Germanic.
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History
From the time of their earliest attestation, the Germanic dialects are divided into three groups, West, East and North Germanic. Their exact relation is difficult to determine from the sparse evidence of runic inscriptions, and they remained mutually intelligible throughout the Migration period, so that some individual dialects are difficult to classify. The Western group would have formed as a dialect of Proto-Germanic in the late Jastorf culture (ca. 1st century BC).
During the Middle Ages, the West Germanic languages were separated by the insular development of Middle English on one hand, and by the second Germanic sound shift on the continent on the other.
The linguistic contact of the Viking settlers of the Danelaw with the Anglo-Saxons left traces in the English language, and is suspected to have facilitated the collapse of Old English grammar that resulted in Middle English from the 12th century.
The second Germanic sound shift resulted in Upper German and Low German, with graded intermediate Central German dialects. By Early modern times, the span had extended into considerable differences, ranging from Highest Alemannic in the South (the Walliser dialect being the southernmost surviving German dialect) to Low Saxon and Frisian in the North, and although both extremes are considered German, they are hardly mutually intelligible. The southern dialects have completed the second sound shift, but remained closer to the Middle German vowel system, while the northern dialects remained unaffected by the consonant shift, but simplified the vowel system.
Family tree
Note that divisions between subfamilies of Germanic are rarely precisely defined; most form dialect continua, with adjacent dialects being mutually intelligible and more separated ones not.
- Anglo-Frisian
- Old English
- Modern English (with a significant influx of words from Old French)
- Scots
- Cayman Islands English (not a creole)
- Angloromani (with a significant influx of words from Romany)
- Frisian (descending from Old Frisian)
- West Frisian - Friesland, Netherlands
- East or Saterland Frisian - Germany
- North Frisian - Germany
- Old English
- Low German (descending from Old Saxon / Old Low Franconian)
- Low Franconian
- Dutch
- West Flemish
- Limburgish
- Afrikaans (with a significant influx of words from Malay and native African languages)
- Low Saxon
- Several dialects in northern Germany and the Netherlands
- Plautdietsch (Mennonite Low German)
- East Low German
- Low Franconian
- High Germanic languages
- Standard German
- Central German
- Upper German
- Alemannic German
- Austro-Bavarian
- Bavarian
- Cimbrian (with a heavy influx of words from Italian)
- Mócheno
- Hutterite German (spoken by Hutterites)
- Yiddish (with a significant influx of words from Hebrew and written in the Hebrew alphabet)
- Wymysojer
See also
ca:Llengües germàniques occidentals cs:Západogermánské jazyky de:Westgermanische Sprachen el:Δυτική Γερμανική fr:Langues germaniques occidentales id:Bahasa Jermanik Barat nl:West-Germaanse talen nds:Westgermaansche Spraken nn:Vestgermanske språk pl:Języki zachodniogermańskie sk:Západogermánske jazyky zh:西日耳曼语支