The
West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three traditional branches of the
Germanic family of
languages and include languages such as
English,
Dutch and
Afrikaans,
German, the
Frisian languages, and
Yiddish. The other two of these three traditional branches of the Germanic languages are the
North and
East Germanic languages.
History
Origins and characteristics
The Germanic languages are traditionally 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 varieties are difficult to classify. The Western group presumably formed as a variety of
Proto-Germanic in the late
Jastorf culture (ca. 1st century BC). The West Germanic group is characterized by a number of
phonological and
morphological innovations not found in North and East Germanic, such as:
- Replacement of the 2nd person singular preterit ending -t with -i
- Short forms of the verbs for "stand" and "go"[clarification needed]
Nevertheless, many scholars doubt whether the West Germanic languages descend from a common ancestor later than Proto-Germanic, that is, they doubt whether a "Proto-West Germanic" ever existed.
Rather, some have argued that after East Germanic broke off from the group, the remaining Germanic languages, the
Northwest Germanic languages, divided into four main dialects:
North Germanic, and the three groups conventionally called "West Germanic", namely
Evidence for this view comes from a number of linguistic innovations found in both North Germanic and West Germanic,
including:
- The retraction of Proto-Germanic to ā
- The development of the demonstrative pronoun ancestral to English this
Under this view, the properties that the West Germanic languages have in common separate from the North Germanic languages are not inherited from a "Proto-West-Germanic" language, but rather spread by
language contact among the Germanic languages spoken in central Europe, not reaching those spoken in Scandinavia. Nevertheless, it has been argued that, judging by their nearly identical syntax, the West Germanic languages of the Old period were close enough to have been mutually intelligible.
Middle Ages
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
High German consonant shift distinguished the
High German languages from the other West Germanic languages. 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
Northern Low Saxon in the North. Although both extremes are considered
German, they are not mutually intelligible. The southernmost varieties have completed the second sound shift, while the northern dialects remained unaffected by the consonant shift.
Of modern German varieties,
Low German is the one that most resembles modern English. The district of
Angeln (or Anglia), from which the name
English derives, is in the extreme northern part of Germany between the Danish border and the Baltic coast. The area of the Saxons (parts of today's
Schleswig-Holstein and
Lower Saxony) lay south of Anglia. The
Anglo-Saxons, two
Germanic tribes, were a combination of a number of peoples from northern
Germany and the
Jutland Peninsula.
Family tree
West Germanic languages
North Germanic languages
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.
