Germanic Language

The Germanic languages are Indo-European Langues. They were initially spoken by the Germanic Peuples, which initially lived at the north-eastern borders of the Roman Empire. These languages divide several single features, among which important consonant shifts described by the laws of Grimm and Verner (to which one can add the Second consonant shift for the Vieux high German), as well as important a radical Lexique composed of nonIndo-European.

List and classification

classification does not achieve however the unanimity among the linguists. With the XIXe century, some - J. Adeling, [[Rasmus Rask|R. Rask], J. Grimm, A. Schleicher - considered another distribution. Consolidated by archeology - R. Hachmann -, Witold Mańczak replaces the division of the Germanic languages in a septentrional group, a Western group and an Eastern group by a division in a septentrional group, a central group (German, Dutch, clippings and English) and a southernmost group (gotic). That involves a revision of the law of Verner. cf . Bibliography.]

To see the complete listing of the languages by families from which this list is drawn.

Writing

The certain Germanic languages oldest used a Runic alphabet adapted to their needs. The use of the runes, however, remained limited enough. The Eastern Germanic languages, as for them, made use of the alphabet Gotique of Wulfila, mainly in the translations of the Bible in Gotique.

It is later that the priests and the Christian monks of Germanic origin, who used the Latin in addition to their Native tongue, started to use the Latin alphabet to note their own language.

It was necessary, with this intention, to extend the capacities, altogether reduced, of the Latin alphabet, by developing the diacritic use of S (the German Umlaut in : ä , ö , U , the Round as a chief in Swedish, Danish and Norwegian: å , etc), of binding S ( æ in Old English, Icelandic, Danish and Norwegian, Eszett ß in German, etc) of Digraph S ( CH in English, German, etc, HS in English, sch in German, etc) and of additional letters ( thorn þ and edh 2D as old English and Icelandic, yogh ȝ and wynn ƿ as old English, etc).

To also consult Transcription of the Germanic languages .

Vocabulary

See too

Internal bonds

External bonds

  • geographical map cliquable of the Germanic languages
  • Cartography of the " dialects germano-néerlandais" (and of the speeches clippings)

Be-X-old: Германскіямовы Simple: Germanic languages Zh-min-nan: Teak-gí-hē

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