Germanic languages. Germanic languages: history, groups Germanic family of languages
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GERMANIC LANGUAGES, a group of closely related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family, currently spoken by more than 600 million people. Modern Germanic languages include: English, Afrikaans, Dutch (or Dutch-Flemish), Danish, Yiddish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Faroese, Frisian and Swedish. Of these languages, English and Dutch have the largest distribution area; the largest number of people speak English and German. English is spoken as a first language by more than 300 million people, mainly in Australia, the British Isles, Canada, New Zealand, the United States and South Africa; in addition, millions of people around the world use it as a second or foreign language. German is spoken as a native language by approx. 98 million people in Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland and parts of France; in addition, for many Central Europeans it is a second language. Dutch (called Dutch in the Netherlands and Flemish in Belgium or French Flanders) is the mother tongue of approximately 20 million people in the Netherlands, Belgium, the Virgin Islands, Suriname and Curaçao, and is still spoken in Indonesia. (Pennsylvania Dutch - "Pennsylvania Dutch" - is not Dutch, but a German dialect spoken by the decreasing number of descendants of the early German settlers who settled in Pennsylvania and came mainly from the Palatinate; the name "Dutch" comes from an older form of the word Deutsch"German".) Afrikaans, a language closely related to Dutch, is spoken in the Republic of South Africa. Frisian is the native language of several hundred thousand people in the province of Friesland in the Netherlands. Swedish is spoken by 9 million people in Sweden and parts of Norway and Finland, Danish by 5 million in Denmark and northern Schleswig, as well as in Greenland, Norwegian by about 5 million in Norway, and Icelandic by almost 300 thousand in Iceland. Yiddish, or Jewish German, is essentially a German dialect with an admixture of Hebrew, Polish and Russian elements. It is spoken by Jews who emigrated from Central Europe, as well as their descendants. The number of Yiddish speakers is declining; it is gradually being replaced by the languages of the new countries where Jews live (for example, in Israel - Hebrew).
Classification.
All Germanic languages go back to one ancestor language, which is called Proto-Germanic and which is not attested in written monuments, but its structure can be revealed by comparing the earliest dialects reflected in the oldest texts. Ancient Germanic dialects are traditionally divided geographically into three groups: northern, eastern and western. Thus, texts in the Germanic dialects of the Scandinavian north (including Greenland and Iceland) are called North Germanic; anything related to the language of the tribes who settled in the early period in the Baltic region east of the Oder River (such as the Burgundians, Goths and Vandals) is called East Germanic; yet those written in the dialects of the tribes who lived between the Oder and the Elbe, as well as immediately south and west of this territory, are called West Germanic. Languages that are descendants of these groups of dialects are also classified. For example, English, German, Dutch (and Afrikaans, although this is a newer language), are, from a genetic point of view, West Germanic languages. This classification does not take into account the features of the early stage of differentiation of Germanic dialects. The fact is that the East German dialects had common features with North German and other common features with West German; on the other hand, the North Germanic group, although dialectally homogeneous in the early or Runic period from 300 to 800 AD, shows no noticeable differences from either the East Germanic or West Germanic groups until the 7th century; it is extremely doubtful that there ever really was a single, homogeneous West Germanic dialect.
Two hypotheses are worth considering. One of them comes from the ethnographic division of the Germanic tribes according to Tacitus ( Germania, 2: ingveons, erminons, isveons); accordingly, instead of a single West Germanic group, three are distinguished, which are called as follows: Germanic coastal regions (Küstendeutsch = Ingveonian), Central Germanic (Binnendeutsch = Istveonian) and Alpine-South Germanic (Alpendeutsch-Süddeutsch = Erminonian). According to another hypothesis, five groups of Germanic peoples are distinguished: the northern, eastern, Polabian Germans, the Germans of the North Sea coast and the Germans who lived between the Weser and the Rhine. These classifications reflect the situation before the era of the great migration of peoples in the 2nd or 3rd century. BC. While differing in detail, both hypotheses reject the idea of a West Germanic linguistic unity and agree that the concept of "West Germanic" - if we mean more than just a convenient geographical division - is applicable only to a certain set of late innovations.
Phonetic and morphological changes.
The Germanic languages differ from all other groups of the Indo-European family by a number of changes in sounds and forms that took place only in the Germanic languages or occurred in them in a special sequence. One such change is the first Germanic consonant shift (also called Grimm's law). Precise dating of this process is difficult, but it may have begun ca. 1000 BC and gradually continue until its completion in the first centuries of our era. The reasons for it are unknown. The results of the first Germanic movement of consonants are visible in the early written monuments of all Germanic languages: Indo-European voiced aspirated stop consonants bh, dh, gh, which remained unchanged in Sanskrit (for example, bharati"he carries"), turned into voiced fricatives in early Germanic languages, which very early (especially when doubled, after nasal consonants, and also - at least in the case of [b] and [g] - in initial position) turned into corresponding stop consonants b, d, g(cf. Old English, Old High German and Old Saxon beran"carry"); Indo-European voiced unaspirated stop consonants b, d, g turned into corresponding deaf people - p, t, k(cf.: Latin duo"two" – but Old English twa); and Indo-European voiceless unaspirated stop consonants p, t, k and relatively rare and of later origin corresponding aspirates ph, th, kh Dali Germanic voiceless fricatives f, þ , h(cf.: Greek, Sanskrit trayas, Latin tres, but English three; Latin cano"I sing", but it is related to English hen"rooster").
Some irregularities in the regularity of this change are associated with the place in the word of the original Indo-European stress during the period when the first movement of consonants took place. Since this stress was positionally free, the Germanic fricatives f, þ ,h that arose during this process, and the voiceless sibilant s, inherited unchanged from the Indo-European proto-language, could be in both pre-stressed and post-stressed positions. When Indo-European mobile stress fell on the vowel immediately preceding these sounds f, þ , h, s, or when they appeared at the beginning of a word, they did not undergo further changes in the Germanic languages; but if the stress fell on any other syllable, then in the intervocalic position or between a vowel and a voiced consonant they were voiced, turning into b, d, g, z. Thus, f in the Old English word fisc is directly a reflex of Indo-European p(cf. Latin piscis"fish"), and h in the Gothic word faíhu is a reflex of Indo-European k(cf. Latin pecus"cattle"), but b in the Gothic word sibun– the result of voicing Germanic f p(cf. Greek "seven"), z in the Gothic word maiza– the result of voicing of the original Indo-European s(cf. Osk mais"more"), and r in the Old English word coren(past participle of ceosan"choose") and r more(cf. Gothic maiza) are examples of further changes in r(rotacism) Germanic z, dating back to Indo-European s. These results of the influence of Indo-European stress, creating deviations from the regularity of the first movement of consonants (Grimm's law), are themselves regular and are called Werner's law. The existence of Werner’s law also allows, on the contrary, by the presence or absence of voicing of fricatives f, þ , h, s establish the place of Indo-European stress.
The changes in the vowel system that occurred during this period were no less regular than the changes in the consonant system, but clearly more complex, since different Germanic languages already show some discrepancies in the early written monuments (for example, in the vowel e in the Latin word semen"seed" matches e in the Gothic word seþs, but in Old English and a in Old High German sad"seed"). Therefore, we can state only a few changes in vowels that occurred in the Germanic languages in comparison with Indo-European: 1) stressed Indo-European and coincided in (Latin octo = Old High German ahto"eight", Latin ad= Old High German at"To"); 2) Indo-European ō And ā coincided in ō (Latin māter= Old English mōdor"mother"; Latin flōs= Old English blō-stma"blooming, flower"; 3) Indo-European, as in most other Indo-European languages, gave , and thus, at an early stage in the Germanic languages there was a phoneme that had a threefold origin - from Indo-European, and; 4) before Indo-European m, n, r, l in cases where they were syllabic (like a consonant n in modern English word button) a vowel appeared in Germanic languages u, while in other Indo-European languages a different vowel appeared, or (as in the case of Sanskrit) no vowel appeared, or these syllabic consonants changed in a special way (for example, in Greek from the Indo-European syllabary n a negative prefix arose, in Latin it corresponds to in-, in Germanic languages – un-); 5) Indo-European diphthongs, both long and short, show a tendency towards monophthongization (for example, Indo-European ei gave i in Germanic languages with a slight degree of diphthongism: Greek "I go" = Gothic steigan, Old Norse stiga, Old English stigan, Old Saxon stigan, Old High German stîgan, – everything with the meaning “to rise” or “to climb”).
Another change from Indo-European that occurred in the Germanic languages and had important consequences was the fixation of the initially free, or mobile, stress on the first or root syllable of a word - in verbs on the root syllable, and in nouns and adjectives having a prefix, usually on the prefix. This shift of emphasis was probably completed by the 1st or 2nd century. AD The resulting strong fixed stress (similar to the stress in modern English or Czech) caused historical changes in vowels in unstressed syllables and, at the same time, alternations of vowels in cognate words (cf. modern Russian words: water , water , water). Further, when the final syllable was unstressed, inflectional suffixes, which at an early stage were typical of all Indo-European languages, weakened and in most cases disappeared, so that at present none of the Germanic languages exhibits the high degree of synthetism that is clearly visible in classical Latin . Thus, all modern Germanic languages (especially English) are now approaching the isolating-analytical structural type, of which Chinese is a typical example, and moving away from the synthetic or inflectional type, of which Latin is an example.
However, this loss of inflection is a very complex process, and the fixation of stress on one of the non-final syllables is only one of many causes. In the earliest written records of the Germanic languages there are only five formally and functionally distinct cases instead of the eight postulated for Proto-Indo-European; the complex system of verb tenses (or modes) and moods that existed in earlier periods (though probably never fully used) appears as a highly simplified system of three moods (indicative, subjunctive and imperative), two tenses (present and past ) and two numbers (singular and plural).
In the process of transition from the Indo-European state to the Germanic state (as well as during the development of other isolated language groups from the Indo-European proto-language), the verb underwent more significant changes than the name. The types of declension of names that are distinguished in Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Old Church Slavonic and other ancient Indo-European languages are found in the material of the earliest monuments also in the Germanic group; the only significant innovation is the so-called weak declension of adjectives (cf. ending -n in a word guten V dem guten Manne). In the verb, the simplification of the entire system was accompanied by some obvious structural changes. In particular, the alternation of vowels in the root, which was one of several indicators of the perfect (cf.: e in Greek in the present tense, but o in the perfect form), spread by analogy, resulting in the so-called ablaut series, and in strong verbs it became an indicator of the singular past tense form (for example, Old English ic ride, ic rad– modern English I ride, I rode). At the same time, the Indo-European thematic class of verbs, in which a vowel appears in the present tense between the root and the personal ending o or e(for example, Greek "we untie" - "you untie"), expanded to include almost all Germanic verbs (for example, Old Norse bind-o-m – bind-e-þ); a new way of forming the past tense also appeared, called the weak preterite (modern English walk – walked as opposed to ride-rode).
The most ancient written monuments.
The first written monument of the Germanic language is an inscription made in a certain Northern Italic, and possibly Etruscan alphabet, on one of several well-preserved helmets found in 1812 in Negau in the Austrian state of Styria. The inscription reads as harixastiteiva. The problem of deciphering it has not yet been solved, but the last five letters may be the name of a god, perhaps the Scandinavian Tyr or Tuisto, mentioned by Tacitus ( Germania, 2). It probably dates back to the 3rd or 2nd century. BC.; the helmet itself may be from an earlier period. The second oldest are short East Germanic runic inscriptions in Gothic, found in Kovel in Volhynia and Pietroassa in the Romanian region of Wallachia. A gold hryvnia (neck ring) with the inscription was found in Pietroassa gutaniowihailag; the last six letters could be a word meaning "holy". Next in time (or perhaps dating back to the same time) are the oldest of the thousands of inscriptions made in the runic alphabet ( fuþark), which was used by all Germanic tribes for a whole millennium.
East Germanic languages.
The oldest coherent text in the German language that has reached us is the translation of the Greek Bible into one of the East German languages - Visigothic (Visigothic), made by Bishop Wulfila in the 4th century. The largest surviving part of the translation has come down to us in the form of a list, the so-called Silver Code (Codex Argenteus), made in the late 5th or early 6th centuries. in Ostrogothic Italy.
In Gothic, changes described by Werner's law are much more rare than in other languages (cf. rhotacism in Old English coren– past participle of ceosan"select" when saving s in the Gothic parallel kusans; but, on the other hand, we see z in a word maiza– Osko mais– modern English more"more"); and since the language of this monument is very ancient, it still lacks umlaut, i.e. likening the articulation of vowels of neighboring syllables. In addition, Gothic retains the dual number in the verb, the remnants of the Indo-European media passive with the meaning of the passive, as well as in some forms reduplication as an indicator of the past tense (for example, Gothic letan– preterite from laylot"to leave", which corresponds to the Old English preterite form let). While clearly archaic in some respects, Gothic is nevertheless characterized by some phonetic and morphological innovations: as in the North Germanic languages, Gothic has intervocalic w And j after short vowels intensified, giving, accordingly, ggw And ddj(Wed, Goth. triggwa"union", Old Norwegian pl. h. tryggvar"trust", but other - upper German. triuwa, modern German Treue"loyalty"). Only in Gothic there was a change u V aú And i V ai[e] before h And r(For example, taúhans– past participle of tiuhan"drag", but budans– from biudan"suggest"; baúrgs"fortress", but burg in Old English); new words appeared with the meaning “father” and “mother” instead of the common Indo-European ones (to which the English ones go back father, mother), and also, apparently, a new word meaning "to do". Gothic is the only East Germanic language in which any significant texts have survived. Gothic is now a dead language, and there is no modern language that is a direct descendant of it.
North Germanic languages.
The North Germanic languages, also called Scandinavian, are divided into two groups: West Scandinavian, which includes Icelandic, Faroese and Norwegian, and East Scandinavian, which includes Swedish and Danish. The earliest Scandinavian written monuments are runic inscriptions of the 3rd or 2nd century. BC, but a clear identification of the Scandinavian subgroup of Germanic languages occurs only in the Viking Age (750–1050 AD).
The Scandinavian languages (as well as the West Germanic languages, although to a lesser extent) show the action of umlaut, which began in the 5th or 6th century. and which is therefore not attested in Gothic texts. For example, in the early Germanic form of the nominative singular uir-a-z(going back to the Indo-European form *uir-o-s, from which the Latin originated vir"man") root vowel i under the influence of a vowel a turned into e in the Old Norse word verr"man" (also in Old English and Old High German); vowel i, attested in the final syllable of a Gothic word catils"cauldron", caused change a V e in the Old Norse word ketill(which is reflected in modern English kettle); vowel u, attested in Gothic word magus"son", caused the change a in in the Old Norse word.
In Old Norse, even in the era of runic inscriptions, demonstrative pronouns, including the definite article, occupy a position after the qualified noun. This postposition and the subsequent transformation of the article into an enclitic suffix in the case where there is no adjective before the noun is a characteristic feature of all modern North Germanic languages; so, for example, the postpositive article includes Norwegian words gutten"boy", bordet"table"; baturin"boat", bátarnir"boats" bátunum"to the boats"; Swedish gossen"boy", huset"house".
Old Norse also reveals the origins of the tone, or musical stress, characteristic of modern Swedish and Norwegian languages, and the historically associated Danish glottal stop, called stød, which in Danish occurs in long syllables after a long vowel or diphthong, or after a short vowel if followed by a voiced consonant; There is no single point of view on the question of the time of their occurrence. In modern Swedish and Norwegian there are two types of musical stress, or melodic contour of a word. The first is relatively simple and is characterized by a single increase in tone; the second is a complex sequence of descending and ascending tone movements. For example, modern Swedish words anden"duck" and anden"spirit" differ only in that the latter has the first type of musical stress, and the former has the second type. The same difference is between modern Norwegian words kokken"cook" and kokken"cook". Similarly, in Danish some words differ only in the presence or absence of a glottal stop, e.g. mand samnorsk).
West Germanic languages.
More than 90% of all speakers of Germanic languages are native speakers of West Germanic languages (primarily English).
The composition of the West German group is as follows: known in written records from the 7th century. Old English, of which modern English is now a descendant; Old Frisian, known since the 13th century, and its descendant - modern Frisian; Old Saxon, known since about 800 and the ancestor of Low German; Old Low Frankish, also known since about 800 and the ancestor of modern Dutch in particular; and known from about the middle of the 8th century. Old High German and its descendant, modern German.
English stands out among other Germanic languages in that, starting from a very early era (11th century), it was strongly influenced by Old French, as a result of which a very significant part of the vocabulary of modern English is vocabulary of Romance origin. In modern times, English actively expanded its vocabulary with borrowings, primarily from Latin and Greek, and also changed in other respects due to the fact that it was the native language of the population of different parts of the world. In the field of morphology, the English language is distinguished by a sharp reduction in inflectional forms: the disappearance of the categories of gender and case in the name system, the simplification of the system of personal endings in conjugation, as well as the disappearance of the 2nd person singular pronoun. h. and the corresponding verb form, etc. In general, the English language and the Afrikaans language, as those most affected by reduction, are currently the least typical representatives of the Germanic languages. On the contrary, the least reduced Icelandic and Faroese languages have the richest morphology of the modern Germanic languages.
Literature:
Steblin-Kamensky M.I. History of Scandinavian languages. M., 1953
Prokosh E. Comparative grammar of the Germanic languages. M., 1954
Zhirmunsky V.M. Introduction to the comparative historical study of Germanic languages. M. – L., 1964
Berkov V.P. Modern Germanic languages. St. Petersburg, 1996
HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
MODERN GERMANIC LANGUAGES, THEIR CLASSIFICATION AND DISTRIBUTION
Performed:
Introduction……………………………………………………………..2
Chapter 1: Classification of languages……………………………………………………………...4
1.1. Approaches to the classification of world languages. The concept of “proto-language”…………………………………………………………………...…..4
1.2. Classification of languages of the Germanic group………………………………..6
Chapter 2: Distribution of languages of the Germanic group………………………10
2.1. Territories of distribution of languages of the Germanic group………………10
2.2. The place of English in the Germanic group of languages: its variants and distribution…………………………………………………………………………………11
Bibliography……………………………………………………………...…15
INTRODUCTION
According to rough estimates, there are over two and a half thousand languages on the globe. The difficulty in determining the number of languages is due, first of all, to the fact that in many cases, due to insufficient knowledge, it is not clear whether this language is independent or a dialect of any language. The question of the number of speakers of a given language cannot play a role, since there are dialects whose speakers number in the hundreds of thousands or more. There are languages that may only have a few thousand speakers or less. There are languages that serve a narrow circle of speakers, other languages represent nationalities and nations, others are international languages in which materials of international associations are published: the UN, the Peace Committee, etc. There are also languages that, in comparison with modern languages, should be considered dead, but under certain conditions they are still used today. This is, first of all, Latin - the language of the Catholic Church, science, nomenclature and international terminology. This also includes, to one degree or another, ancient Greek and classical Arabic.
Knowledge about languages and their history is extremely uneven. There are languages whose history, thanks to the presence of written monuments and even theoretical descriptions, has been known for twenty and thirty centuries. There are languages that had very ancient writing, but science received information about them only in the 20th century. And, for example, the history of Germanic, Armenian, Georgian, Turkic, Slavic languages has been known since the 4th, 5th, 8th, 10th centuries.
Meanwhile, despite all the differences between languages, they all have a lot in common in the most important and significant ways (and often in details). Every language is the property of a community. Each expresses the thoughts of the speaker through sounds, vowels and consonants, which are present in any language. Each language is articulated, that is, it is divided into some elements: sounds, syllables, morphemes, words, set phrases, etc., which are repeated in other combinations with each other as part of other utterances. In the vocabulary of any language there are synonyms, homonyms and antonyms. People speak all languages in sentences. Text in any language can be recorded on paper using written characters.
Some languages are so similar that, for example, a Norwegian can understand a Dane or a Swede, an Italian can understand a Spanish or Portuguese. This similarity between languages is explained by their origin from one common ancestor language. Such languages are called related languages. This essay is devoted to the analysis of one of the groups of related languages – Germanic. The work examines approaches to the classification of languages that exist in linguistics, and in particular the genealogical approach, which forms the basis for the classification of related languages. The concept of “proto-language” is defined. The areas of distribution of languages that are part of the Germanic group are considered, and, in particular, the distribution of the English language and its variants. The work is descriptive in nature.
CHAPTER 1: Classification of languages
1.1. Approaches to the classification of world languages.
The concept of "proto-language"
In linguistics, there are two approaches to the classification of languages: genealogical And typological , or otherwise morphological . Genealogical classification implies the grouping of languages according to the commonality of linguistic material (roots, affixes, words), and thereby according to the commonality of origin. Typological classification is based on the grouping of languages according to their common structure and type, primarily grammatical, regardless of origin. It is associated with a structural and systematic understanding of language and is based mainly on grammar.
In the framework of this work, we will be interested in the principle of genealogical classification, since it is this that forms the basis for the grouping of languages given below. The genealogical classification of languages is directly related to the historical fate of languages and peoples who speak these languages. It covers, first of all, lexical and phonetic comparisons, and then grammatical ones. Within the framework of genealogical classification, two types of historical connections between languages are distinguished. On the one hand, contact caused by geographic, territorial proximity, contact of civilizations, bilateral or unilateral cultural influences, etc. On the other hand, the original kinship of languages that developed in the process of divergence from one more or less unified language that existed previously. Contacts of languages lead to the borrowing of words, individual expressions, as well as root and some affixal (usually derivational) morphemes. However, some categories of linguistic elements, as a rule, are not borrowed. These are, first of all, morphological affixes - indicators of the corresponding grammatical categories, usually also function words. There are also categories of significant words for which borrowing is less typical, for example: terms of closest kinship, names of body parts, numerals - designations of a relatively small number (especially in the range from 1 to 10), verbs - names of the most elementary actions, substitute words for various kind and some others. If in any languages there is a more or less systematic material similarity in the field of formative affixes and in the categories of words listed above, such similarity indicates the original relationship of these languages, that these languages are different historical continuations of the same language that existed before.
French linguist Antoine Meillet formulated the definition of linguistic relatedness this way: “Two languages are called related when they are both the result of two different evolutions of the same language that was in use before.”
Such a language - the common ancestor of related languages - is called their proto-language , or the base language, and the entire set of related languages is its language family. So the Germanic group (like the Slavic, Baltic, Iranian, Indian, etc.) is the result of the collapse of the common Indo-European base language. This language is not recorded in written monuments, since it ceased to exist as a relatively unified language long before the first written monuments. The words and forms of this language are only tentatively reconstructed by scientists based on a comparison of related languages that emerged from it.
Typically, a language family is a set of languages, within which there are groups united by closer kinship, the so-called branches. The Indo-European family includes Slavic, Germanic, Romanesque, Indian and other branches. The languages of each branch go back to their base language - Proto-Slavic, Proto-Germanic, etc., which in turn is a branch of the parent language of the whole family, in this case common Indo-European. Within the branches, subsets are distinguished, united by even closer kinship.
The relationship between branches and groups within one language family is schematically depicted in the form of a “family tree.” However, the actual relationships between related languages are much more complex, since the disintegration of the base language does not occur in one step (some branches separate earlier, others later), individual innovations, arising in different places and at different times, unevenly cover branches and groups. Branches are often associated with various other traits.
So, the genealogical classification of languages is closely related to the concept of linguistic kinship. The relationship of languages is manifested in their systematic material similarity, that is, in the similarity of the material from which morphemes and words that are identical or similar in meaning are built in these languages.
1.2. Classification of languages of the Germanic group
All Germanic languages go back to one ancestor language, which is called Proto-Germanic and which is not attested in written monuments. Its structure can be revealed by comparing the earliest dialects reflected in the oldest texts. Traditionally, the division of ancient dialects occurs on a geographical basis and includes three groups: northern, eastern, western. That is, texts in the Germanic dialects of the Scandinavian north, including Greenland and Iceland, are called North Germanic. Anything related to the language of the tribes who settled the early Baltic region east of the Oder River (such as the Burgundians, Goths, and Vandals) is called East Germanic. And what is written in the dialects of the tribes who lived between the Oder and the Elbe and immediately to the south and west of this territory is called West Germanic. Languages that are descendants of these dialect groups are classified in the same way. Such a classification does not take into account the features of the early stage of differentiation of Germanic dialects. This is due to the fact that the East German dialects had common features with North German and some other common features with West German. But on the other hand, the North Germanic group, although dialectally homogeneous in the early, runic period, from 300 to 800 AD. e., does not show noticeable differences from either the East Germanic or West Germanic groups until the 7th century. It remains doubtful that there ever existed a single, homogeneous West Germanic dialect.
There are many hypotheses about this discrepancy. Two of them deserve consideration. One of them comes from the ethnographic division of the Germanic tribes according to Tacitus - Germania: ingveons, erminons, isveons. Thus, instead of a single West Germanic group, three are distinguished, which are called as follows: Germanic coastal regions (Küstendeutsch = Ingveonian), Central Germanic (Binnendeutsch = Eastweonian) and Alpine-South Germanic (Alpendeutsch-Süddeutsch = Erminonian). According to another hypothesis, five groups of Germanic peoples are distinguished: the northern, eastern, Polabian Germans, the Germans of the North Sea coast and the Germans who lived between the Weser and the Rhine. These classifications reflect the situation before the era of the Great Migration of Peoples in the 2nd or 3rd century. BC e. Both hypotheses, although differing in detail, reject the idea of a West Germanic linguistic unity and are similar in that the concept of “West Germanic” - if we mean more than just a convenient geographical division - applies only to a certain set of late innovations.
So, the modern classification of languages of the Germanic group is as follows:
I. North Germanic (Scandinavian) subgroup
1) Danish language. Writing based on the Latin alphabet. It served as a literary language for Norway until the end of the 19th century.
2) Swedish language. Writing based on the Latin alphabet;
3) Norwegian language. Writing based on the Latin alphabet, originally Danish, since the literary language of the Norwegians until the end of the 19th century. was Danish. In modern Norway there are two forms of literary language: riksmol (bokmål)– bookish, closer to Danish, and Lansmol (Nynorsk), closer to the Norwegian dialects.
4) Icelandic language. Writing based on the Latin alphabet, written monuments from the 13th century. (“sagas”)
5) Faroese.
II. West German subgroup
1) English language. Literary English developed in the 16th century. n. e. based on the London dialect. V-XI centuries – Old English (or Anglo-Saxon period), XI-XVI centuries. - Middle English and from the 16th century. - New England. Writing based on the Latin alphabet (unchanged). Written monuments from the 7th century. A language of international importance.
2) Dutch (Dutch) with Flemish. Writing on a Latin basis. In the Republic of South Africa live Boers, immigrants from Holland, who speak a variety of Dutch, the Boer language (otherwise: Afrikaans).
3) Frisian language. Monuments from the 14th century.
4) German language. Two dialects: Low German (northern, Niederdeutsch or Plattdeutsch) and High German (southern, Hochdeutsch). The literary language was formed on the basis of southern German dialects, but with many northern features (especially in pronunciation), but still does not represent unity. In the VIII-XI centuries. – Old High German, in the XII-XV centuries. – Middle High German, from the 16th century. - New High German, developed in the Saxon offices and translations of Luther and his associates. Writing based on the Latin alphabet in two varieties: Gothic and Antiqua. One of the largest languages in the world.
5) Yiddish (or Yiddish, New Hebrew) - various High German dialects mixed with elements of Hebrew, Slavic and other languages.
III. East German subgroup
Dead languages:
1) Gothic language, which existed in two dialects. Visigothic - served the medieval Gothic state in Spain and Northern Italy. It had a writing system based on the Gothic alphabet, compiled by Bishop Wulfila in the 4th century. n. e. for the translation of the Gospel, which is the most ancient monument of the Germanic languages. Ostrogothic is the language of the eastern Goths, who lived in the early Middle Ages on the Black Sea coast and in the southern Dnieper region. Existed until the 16th century. in Crimea, thanks to which a small dictionary compiled by the Dutch traveler Busbeck has been preserved.
2) Burgundian, Vandal, Gepid, Herulian languages - the languages of the ancient Germanic tribes in the territory of East Germany.
CHAPTER 2: Distribution of Germanic languages
2.1. Territories of distribution of languages of the Germanic group
Currently, languages belonging to the Germanic group are spoken by more than 600 million people. Of these languages, English and Dutch have the largest distribution area, while German and English are spoken by the largest number of people. German is spoken as a first language by about 98 million people in Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland and parts of France. For many Central Europeans it is a second language.
Dutch - called Dutch in the Netherlands and Flemish in Belgium or French Flanders - is the native language of approximately 20 million people in the Netherlands, Belgium, the Virgin Islands, Suriname and Curacao. This language is still used in Indonesia. Pennsylvania Dutch is not Dutch but a German dialect spoken by a growing number of descendants of the early German settlers who settled in Pennsylvania, mostly from the Palatinate. And the name “Dutch” comes from the old form of the word Deutsch “German”.
Afrikaans, a language closely related to Dutch, is spoken in the Republic of South Africa. Frisian is the mother tongue of several hundred thousand people in the province of Friesland in the Netherlands. Swedish is spoken by 9 million people in Sweden and parts of Norway and Finland. Danish is spoken by 5 million in Denmark and the northern part of Schleswig, as well as in Greenland, Norwegian by about 5 million in Norway, and Icelandic by almost 300 thousand in Iceland.
Yiddish, or Judeo-German, is essentially a German dialect with a mixture of Hebrew, Polish and Russian elements. It is spoken by Jews who emigrated from Central Europe, as well as their descendants. The number of Yiddish speakers is declining; it is gradually being replaced by the languages of the new countries where Jews live, for example, in Israel - Hebrew.
2.2. The place of English in the Germanic group of languages: its variants and distribution
English is part of the Germanic group of languages and its West Germanic subgroup. This language is spoken as a mother tongue by more than 300 million people, living mainly in the British Isles, the United States of America, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. In addition, millions of people around the world use it as a second or foreign language.
Within the British Empire, Great Britain is the main territory of distribution of the English language, which is spoken by the vast majority of the population. Celtic languages - Gaelic in the Highlands of Scotland, Cymric (Welsh) in Wales - are preserved only in the North and West. In addition to the UK and the USA, the most important areas for the spread of the English language include Ireland, Canada, the Union of South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. There are also a significant number of English speakers in some other countries where they have their own native language, which is spoken by the bulk of the population (for example, India).
In the United States, English is spoken everywhere, except in certain settlements where Indians and later colonists continue to use their native language.
The English language is heterogeneous in different places of its distribution. Old territorial dialects, very numerous and varied, are still partly preserved in Great Britain. These small dialects are usually combined into the following dialects:
1) Scottish - north of the Tweed River;
2) Northern (or northern English) - in northern England between the Tweed and the Humber;
3) Western;
4) Central;
5) Eastern;
6) Southern - south of the Thames;
The Central and Eastern dialects form the Midland dialect, or Midland dialect group, in central England.
The Scottish dialect, which is close in many ways to Northern English, but differs significantly from the dialects of the rest of England, occupies a special position. This is due to the fact that until the 16th century. Scotland used its own written literary model, based on the local dialect, which was used in literature at a later time, when the English literary model dominated in Scotland. Thus, the Scottish dialect is an independent language that once began to form, reduced to the position of a dialect as a result of the spread of the relatively close English language on its territory as a national language and a literary model.
The national literary pattern has practically supplanted the old dialects in England, but it takes on different dialectal colors in different parts of the country. Thus, the disappearing dialect fragmentation is reflected in regional variations in the spoken national language. These variations of the spoken language are contrasted with the so-called “standard English” - a literary example that does not have a local dialect coloring and is recognized as an exemplary type of English speech. The literary English sample achieves the greatest uniformity in written form, since the features of regional variations are manifested mainly in pronunciation and in the use of speech patterns that are generally uncommon in the written sample. In its origin, the national literary sample is a product of a mixture of various dialects, mainly East and Central Midlands.
The English language in Ireland is a distinct dialect that differs significantly from the dialects of Great Britain. The colloquial literary pattern in Ireland is for the most part of a markedly local character. In the same way, the English language of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Union of South Africa has everywhere different characteristic features of the same type as the features of regional variations of a literary model. In addition, in each of these countries there are separate features in the vocabulary, which are determined by specific local living conditions. These features partially penetrate into the written literary sample. However, in general, the literary model ("standard English") for the various parts of the British Empire is the same literary model as for Great Britain. The English language in the United States of America has a number of variations, the differences between which, however, are not nearly as significant as between the old dialects of Great Britain. These variations are distributed among three dialects:
1) The New England dialect is distributed in a small area northeast of New York, approximately coinciding with the territory of those states that are united under the name New England;
2) The southern dialect is distributed south of Pennsylvania and the Ohio River and further west in a wide strip along the Mississippi south of the confluence of this river with the Missouri, but not reaching the Mexican border in the southwest;
3) Central-western, or “all-American”, distributed throughout the rest of the United States. In the east, this dialect extends to the Atlantic Ocean (separating the New England dialect from the southern one) and includes the city of New York in its area;
Along with the features characteristic of individual dialects (mainly in pronunciation), American dialects also have features common to all of them (mainly in vocabulary and idiom), which distinguish them as a whole from the English language in Great Britain. A number of such features are also rooted in the literary pattern of the United States, with which American dialects form a comparatively uniform whole. The very pattern of English in the USA is different from that in Great Britain and its possessions. Thus, the literary pattern in the United States and the literary pattern in Great Britain (with its dominions and colonies) are opposed to each other as the two main varieties of the English language. American English and British English are variants of the same language.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1) Genealogical classification of the languages of the world. –http://revolution. /languages/_0.html.
2) Maslov in linguistics. – M., 1987.
3) Garbage science of language. Tutorial. / Second edition, expanded and corrected. – Novosibirsk, Novosibirsk book publishing house, 2004.
4) Reformed in linguistics / Ed. . – M.: Aspect Press, 1996.
5) Smirnitsky language. – Faculty of Philology, Moscow State University. , 1998.
6) Electronic encyclopedia “Around the World”. – http://www. .
Meillet A. Introduction to the comparative study of Indo-European languages. – M.; L., 1938. P. 50.
The classification is given according to the textbook: Reformed in linguistics / Edited by. – M.: Aspect Press, 1996. P. 416-418.
I only regret the times when I was too kind. (c) Anton Sandor LaVey
I had a debate on the topic of Romano-Germanic groups of languages.
The essence of the discussion was the penetration of Latin into various languages, and specifically into English.
This topic seemed interesting to me, and I decided to rummage through articles on the Internet.
Romance and Germanic are different groups, but belong to the same language family - Indo-European.
Indo-European languages- the most widespread language family in the world. Its distribution area includes almost all of Europe, both Americas and continental Australia, as well as a significant part of Africa and Asia. More than 2.5 billion people – i.e. About half of the world's population speaks Indo-European languages. All major languages of Western civilization are Indo-European. All languages of modern Europe belong to this family of languages, with the exception of Basque, Hungarian, Sami, Finnish, Estonian and Turkish, as well as several Altai and Uralic languages of the European part of Russia. The name "Indo-European" is conditional. In Germany the term "Indo-Germanic" was formerly used, and in Italy "Ario-European" to indicate that ancient people and ancient language from which all later Indo-European languages are generally believed to have descended. The supposed ancestral home of this hypothetical people, whose existence is not supported by any historical evidence (except linguistic) is considered to be Eastern Europe or Western Asia.
picture taken from planetashkol.ru
The Indo-European family of languages includes at least twelve groups of languages. In order of geographical location, moving clockwise from northwestern Europe, these groups are: Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Tocharian, Indian, Iranian, Armenian, Hittite-Luvian, Greek, Albanian, Italic (including Latin and originating from not Romance languages, which are sometimes classified as a separate group). Of these, three groups (Italic, Hittite-Luwian and Tocharian) consist entirely of dead languages.
Romance languages are a group of languages and dialects that are part of the Indo-European language family and genetically go back to a common ancestor - Latin.
The Romance group includes French, Occitan (Provençal), Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese, Italian, Sardinian (Sardinian), Romansh, Romanian. Moldavian, Aromanian (or Aromanian, Macedonian-Romanian), Istro-Romanian, Meglenitic, or Megleno-Romanian, extinct at the end of the 19th century. Dalmatian; On the basis of the Romance languages, the Creole language arose (as a result of crossing with the language of the natives on the island of Haiti) and some artificial international languages such as Esperanto.
Romance languages originated in Europe in different parts of the Roman Empire. When Roman soldiers, merchants and colonizers arrived in these areas, they forced the indigenous population to speak their language.
In ancient Rome there was a classical Latin language. This is the language of writers, speakers, and official communication. But at the same time, there was everyday speech of ordinary people. Their language was called Vulgar Latin.
It originated in Rome and spread throughout the provinces. But local differences also existed, and separate nations began to emerge. And Vulgar Latin gave birth to many new languages.
Time passed. The various Romance languages began to differ even in pronunciation. Words from other languages began to appear in them. For example, French includes almost 4 hundred Teutonic words. During the Crusades, the French language was replenished with words of Greek and Arabic origin. The Spanish language has many words that come from Arabic.
At the same time, the Romance languages began to break up into dialects. People in one part of the country began to speak a slightly different language from the language in another part of the country. In Paris, for example, the French language is not quite the same as spoken in other parts of France.
Germanic languages(Germanic languages, English) - one of the branches of the Indo-European family of languages; come from the hypothetically postulated and reconstructed by means of comparative historical linguistics of the Proto-Germanic language (English).
Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European family. Distributed in a number of Western European countries (Great Britain, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland), Northern. America (USA, Canada), southern Africa (South Africa), Asia (India), Australia, New Zealand. The total number of native speakers is about 550 million people.
Initially the languages of the peoples of northwestern Europe, Germanic languages over time spread throughout the world - Europe, America, Africa (Afrikaans in South Africa), Australia. The majority of speakers of Germanic languages in the modern world are native English speakers (≈ 70%).
Within the West Germanic area in the 1st century AD. 3 groups of tribal dialects were distinguished: Ingveonian, Istveonian and Erminonian. The resettlement in the 5th-6th centuries of part of the Ingvaean tribes (Angles, Saxons, Jutes) to the British Isles predetermined the further development of the English language. The complex interaction of West Germanic dialects on the continent created the preconditions for the formation of the Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Old Low Frankish and Old High German languages.
Germanic languages are divided into 3 groups:
Languages of the Western group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family
-English language
-Dutch language (Dutch)
-German
-Flemish
-Frisian
-Yiddish
-Afrikaans (Boer language, South Africa)
Languages of the northern (Scandinavian) group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family
-Swedish language
-Danish
-Norwegian
-Icelandic
-Faroese language
Languages of the eastern group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family
-Gothic language
And now about Latin and its influence on the Romano-Germanic languages.
Latin language(lat. lingua latina), or Latin, is the language of the Latin-Faliscan subgroup of the Italic languages of the Indo-European language family. Today it is the only Italian language actively used (it is a dead language).
Latin is one of the most ancient written Indo-European languages.
Latin is the ancestor of the Romance languages: all Romance languages genetically descend from the so-called folk Latin, a common and everyday means of communication in the part of Western Europe subject to ancient Rome.
Today, Latin is the official language of the Holy See (Vatican City State), as well as the Roman Catholic Church and other Catholic churches.
A large number of words in European (and not only) languages are of Latin origin.
The Latin language penetrated the conquered territories over a number of centuries, during which it itself, as a base language, was somewhat modified and entered into complex interaction with local tribal languages and dialects.
All Romance languages retain Latin features in their vocabulary, as well as, although to a much lesser extent, in morphology.
Attempts by the Romans to subjugate the Germanic tribes, which were made repeatedly at the turn of the 1st century BC. e. and 1st century AD e., were not successful, but economic ties between the Romans and the Germans existed for a long time; They went mainly through the Roman garrison colonies located along the Rhine and Danube. The names of German cities remind us of this: Cologne (German Köln, from the Latin colonia - settlement), Koblenz (German Koblenz, from the Latin confluentes - lit. flocking, Koblenz is located at the confluence of the Moselle with the Rhine), Regensburg (German Regensburg , from Latin regina castra), Vienna (from Latin vindobona), etc.
The conquest of Britain in the 5th-6th centuries by the Germanic tribes of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes increased the number of Latin borrowings adopted by the British tribes, at the expense of words already adopted by the Germans from the Romans.
It should be noted, however, that in the Old Russian language itself there are several very early borrowings from Latin, partly directly, partly through Greek (“cesar” or “king”, “mare”, “bathhouse”, “chamber”, “legion”). In the field of grammar, the Slavic suffix -ar (Latin -arius), denoting a person performing some kind of permanent function (myt-ar, key-ar, gate-ar, etc.), is of Latin origin.
Latin vocabulary had a significant influence on the English language through French due to the conquest of England in the 11th century by the French Normans. Many borrowings were made by the English language during the Renaissance and directly from Latin.
Sources:
25. Germanic languages, their origin, place in the modern world.
Germanic languages are part of a large Indo-European macrofamily. Modern Germanic languages are divided into two subgroups -
Western (continental) And
northern (Scandinavian).
West Germans include 6:
English,
German,
Dutch (Dutch),
Afrikaans (Boer),
Frisian;
to North German - 5:
Icelandic and
Faroese.
Swedish,
Norwegian,
More than 600 million people now speak Germanic languages. Among the Germanic languages, it is the leader in terms of the number of speakers. English. It is spoken by approximately 300 million people. - not only in Britain and the USA, but also in many other countries - South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India, etc. German distributed not only in Germany, but also in Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, etc. It covers approximately 100 million people. Dutch- language of the Netherlands and Flanders. It is also used in the north of Belgium, the USA, etc.
It is spoken by approximately 15 million people. Afrikaans- one of the languages of South Africa. It is spoken by the descendants of the Dutch colonialists. There are approximately 3.5 million people. Yiddish- Jewish language that arose in the Middle Ages in Germany. It should not be confused with Hebrew, the language of Israel, which, like Arabic, is a Semitic language. On Frisian language spoken mainly by the few inhabitants of the Frisian Islands.
Swedish(about 7 million people), Norwegian(about 3 million people) and Danish(approximately 3.5 million people) - Scandinavian languages. On Icelandic approximately 300 thousand people speak. in Iceland, and in Faroese - in the Faroe Islands (approximately 35 thousand people).
History of the development of Germanic languages It is customary to divide it into 3 periods:
ancient(from the emergence of writing to 11th century) - the formation of individual languages;
average (XII-XV centuries) - the development of writing in Germanic languages and the expansion of their social functions;
new(With XVI V. to the present time) - the formation and normalization of national languages.
In the reconstructed Proto-Germanic language a number of researchers highlight layer of vocabulary that does not have Indo-European etymology - the so-calledpre-Germanic substrate . In particular, this is the majority strong verbs, the conjugation paradigm of which also cannot be explained from the Proto-Indo-European language. Consonant shift compared to Proto-Indo-European - the so-called « Grimm's law » - supporters of the hypothesis also explain the influence of the substrate.
The development of Germanic languages from antiquity to the present day is associated with numerous migrations of their speakers. Germanic dialects of ancient times were divided into 2 main groups: Scandinavian (northern) and continental (southern). In II-I centuries BC e. some of the tribes from Scandinavia moved to the south coast Baltic Sea and formed an East German group opposing the West German (formerly southern) group. East German tribe ready, moving south, penetrated the territory Roman Empire up to Iberian Peninsula, where he mixed with the local population ( V-VIII centuries).
Within the West Germanic area in the 1st century AD. e. 3 groups of tribal dialects were distinguished: Ingveonian, Istveonian and Erminonian. Relocation in the V-VI centuries. parts of the Ingveonian tribes ( Angles, Saxons, utes) on British Isles predetermined the future development of the English language. The complex interaction of West Germanic dialects on the continent created the preconditions for the formation of Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Old Low Frankish and Old High German languages. Scandinavian dialects after their isolation in the 5th century. from the continental group they were divided into eastern and western subgroups; on the basis of the first, Swedish, Danish and Old Gutnic languages were later formed, on the basis of the second - Norwegian, as well as the island languages - Icelandic, Faroese and Norn.
The formation of national literary languages was completed in England in the 16th-17th centuries, in the Scandinavian countries in the 16th century, in Germany in the 18th century. The spread of English beyond England led to the creation of its variants in the USA, Canada, and Australia. The German language in Austria is represented by its Austrian variant.
Distinctive features of Germanic languages that distinguish them from other Indo-European languages:
dynamic emphasis on the first (root) syllable,
reduction unstressed syllables,
assimilative vowel variation,
common German movement of consonants,
wide use ablauta as a phonomorphological means,
education of the weak preterite by using dental suffix,
2 declination adjectives: strong and weak.
Already at the most ancient stage of development, Germanic languages exhibit, along with similarities, differences characteristic of each of the groups separately. In modern Germanic languages, general development trends are also manifested in the similarities and differences between them. The original system of common Germanic vocalism has undergone significant modification as a result of numerous phonetic processes (" great vowel shift"in English, changes in the set and distribution of long and short vowels in Icelandic, etc.). Germanic languages are characterized by the opposition of short and long vowels, and the differences between some phonemes are not only quantitative, but also qualitative. Diphthongs are represented in almost all Germanic languages, but their number and nature differ among languages. For consonantism The contrast between voiceless and voiced is typical (exceptions are Icelandic, Danish, and Faroese). The dynamic stress characteristic of Germanic languages in Norwegian and Swedish is combined with musical stress; in Danish it is genetically corresponded to the so-called. push.
The grammatical structure of Germanic languages is characterized by a tendency towards analyticism, implemented in individual languages with varying degrees of completeness (cf. analytical English and Afrikaans with inflectional Icelandic and Faroese). It is most clearly manifested in the nominal declension. Category case in most languages it is represented by the opposition of general and genitive(possessive) cases. Case relations are expressed predominantly word order And prepositional designs. The category of number is two-term (singular - plural), but only the plural is formally expressed. The three-gender classification of nouns (masculine, feminine, neuter) is preserved in 5 of the 11 Germanic languages. In some of them, only two genders are represented - common and neuter; in English and Afrikaans there is no gender category. The presence of two types of declension of adjectives, strong and weak, characteristic of Germanic languages, has been preserved in German and Scandinavian languages, while in Dutch and Afrikaans it is presented in the form of two forms of the adjective.
For system conjugations characteristic classification verbs according to the method of formation of preterite forms: the strong form them with the help ablauta, weak ones use the dental suffix. Germanic languages differ both in inventory and in the use of tense forms: in English there are 16 of them, in Danish and Afrikaans - only 6. Analytical verb forms are widely represented, consisting of auxiliary verbs and impersonal forms (future, perfect). The two-term category of voice (active - passive) is expressed by personal forms or constructions with participle II. The mood category is represented by opposition indicative/imperative/conjunctiva, the greatest differences across languages are noted in terms of content and expression of the subjunctive.
The structure of a simple sentence is characterized by a tendency to fix the order of words, especially the verb - predicate. Inversion is observed in interrogative, imperative and subordinate clauses.
Concerning current state of Germanic languages, then it must be said that English now has great prospects for the role of a world language, much greater than German or any other language, although Chinese is spoken today more than English. This is explained by the role that the United States plays in the modern world. Quite successfully they lead the modern stage of globalization - a policy aimed at world domination.
Associated with numerous migrations of their carriers. The area of initial settlement of the Germanic tribes covered the southern part of the Scandinavian Peninsula, the Jutland Peninsula and the territory of Schleswig-Holstein. Germanic dialects of ancient times were divided into 2 main groups: Scandinavian (northern) and continental (southern). In the 2nd-1st centuries. BC e. part of the tribes from Scandinavia moved to the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, to the lower reaches of the Vistula and Oder, and formed an East German group opposing the West German (formerly southern) group of tribes living between the Elbe and the Rhine. From the middle of the 2nd century. BC e., during the era of the “Great Migration,” the Goths, belonging to the East German tribes, moved south to the Black Sea steppes, from where they penetrated the territory of the Roman Empire and then through Gaul to the Iberian Peninsula. After the fall of the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy (5th-6th centuries) and the Visigothic kingdom in Spain (5th-8th centuries), speakers of the Gothic language mixed with the local population. Within the West Germanic area in the 1st century. n. e. 3 groups of tribal dialects were distinguished: Ingveonian (North Sea), Eastveonian (Rhine-Weser) and Erminonian (Elbian). Relocation in the 5th-6th centuries. parts of the Ingveonian tribes (Angles, Saxons, Jutes) to the British Isles predetermined the separate development of the Old English language in the future. On the continent, the Istveons (Franks) spread westward into Romanized northern Gaul, where at the end of the 5th century. The bilingual state of the Merovingians was formed. Under the rule of the Franks, within the framework of the state of the Merovingians and Carolingians (5-9 centuries), there was a unification of the West German tribes (Franks, Alemanni, Bayuvars, Turings, Chatti), as well as the Saxons, who moved in the 4-5 centuries. from the North Sea coast in the Weser and Rhine region, which created the preconditions for the later formation of the Old High German language as the language of the German people. Erminons (Alemanni, Bayuvars) from the 1st century. n. e. move from the Elbe basin to the south of Germany and subsequently become speakers of southern German dialects. The basis of the Low German dialects was Old Saxon, which was originally part of the Ingvaeon group and subsequently experienced the powerful influence of Frankish dialects. As a result of the interaction of Frankish dialects with Frisian and Saxon in the 9th-11th centuries. conditions are created for the emergence of the Dutch language. A group of Scandinavian dialects after their separation in the 5th century. from the continental group, due to the gradual migration of their speakers to the north and south, it is divided from the 7th century. into eastern and western subgroups. Swedish and Danish were later formed on the basis of the East Scandinavian dialects, and Norwegian was formed on the basis of the West Scandinavian dialects. Settlement in the 9th-10th centuries. Iceland and the Faroe Islands by immigrants from Norway led to the formation of the Icelandic and Faroese languages. Of the newest Germanic languages, Yiddish was formed in the 10th-14th centuries. Based on High German dialects with the inclusion of Semitic and later Slavic elements, Afrikaans arose in the 17th century. as a result of mixing Dutch dialects with German, English, French, as well as with some African languages and with the Creole Malay-Portuguese language.
Distinctive features of the Germanic languages that distinguish them from other Indo-European languages: dynamic stress on the first (root) syllable, reduction of unstressed syllables, assimilative variation of vowels, common Germanic movement of consonants, widespread use of ablaut as a phonomorphological means, formation of a weak preterite using a dental suffix, 2 declension of adjectives : strong and weak.
Already at the most ancient stage of development of the Germanic languages, along with the features that united certain groups of languages, features characteristic of each of them separately were distinguished. The following features are a reflection of the former Gothic-Scandinavian linguistic unity: guturalization (velarization) of common Germanic ‑u̯u̯- and ‑jj‑, the formation of forms of the 2nd liter. units including the preterite with the help of the perfect ending ‑t, the presence of the 4th class of weak verbs with the suffix ‑na‑, the formation of the first feminine participles with the help of the suffix ‑īn-, etc. Specific innovations of the Gothic language after its isolation include the expansion of short vowels i , u before r, h, ƕ (the so-called Gothic refraction), narrowing of mid-rise vowels e, o, narrowing of diphthongs ai, au. Although the genetic commonality of the West Germanic group of dialects is still questioned, their historical unity is indicated by the following phenomena: West Germanic lengthening of consonants, the transition of Common German ð > d (Old High German t), the loss of the labial element in combinations of the back lingual followed by u̯ (w), the formation of a special form inflected infinitive, the formation of the present of the verb 'to be' through contamination of Indo-European roots *es- and *bhu-, the development of new coordinating and subordinating conjunctions, etc. A special place in the West Germanic group belongs to the Ingvaeonic dialects, which are characterized by a number of specific ones. features (so-called ingveonisms): transition of Germanic ē 1 > ǣ, preservation of vowels i, u before m regardless of the nature of the subsequent vowel, loss of nasals before spirants, assimilation of k, g (replacement of plosives with affricates with a sibilant component) before front vowels and j , metathesis r, general ending in verb forms of the 1st-3rd liter. pl. h., unification of the forms of the nominative and accusative cases in the strong declension of masculine adjectives, forms of personal pronouns without the final ‑r, etc.
Evidence of contacts between West Germanic and northern dialects after the departure of East Germanic tribes from Scandinavia is provided by general innovations (1st-5th centuries AD): expansion of Germanic ē 1 > ā > ǣ, alternation i ~ e, u ~ o, transition of z to r (so-called rhotacism), loss of reduplication in verbs, dental preterite suffix, etc. After the 5th-6th centuries. in common Scandinavian there were changes that separated it from the West Germanic group: the disappearance of the initial j and the disappearance of w before labials, numerous assimilation of consonants, the emergence of ascending diphthongs, the appearance of a suffixed definite article, a reflexive passive form of the verb in ‑sk, ‑st. In the 7th-8th centuries. differentiation of the ancient Scandinavian languages according to a number of characteristics into Western and Eastern, which later gave way to their division into continental (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian) and island (Icelandic, Faroese).
In modern Germanic languages, general development trends are manifested in similarities and differences between them. The original system of common Germanic vocalism (i, u, e, a, ī, ū, ǣ, ō, eu, ai, au) has undergone significant modification as a result of numerous transpositions, refractions and other phonetic processes (for example, the “great vowel shift” in English language, changes in the set and distribution of long and short vowels in Icelandic, development of diphthongs in Faroese). Germanic languages are characterized by the opposition of short and long vowels, and the differences between some phonemes are not only quantitative, but also qualitative (cf. English [i]-, [ɔ]-[ɔ:]). Diphthongs are present in all languages except Swedish, the number and nature of diphthongs varies between languages (cf. 3 diphthongs in German with 26 diphthongs and 6 triphthongs in Frisian). Reduction of endings took place in all Germanic languages, except Icelandic, Swedish, and Faroese. At the end of words in most languages there is a reduced [ə], but in Icelandic the final ones are [ə], [i], [j], in Swedish - [a], [ə], [i], [u]. The alternation of vowels, due historically to palatal and velar shifts, is most characteristic of Icelandic and German paradigmatics; in other languages it is recorded in separate word forms. Ablaut is widespread in all Germanic languages (except Afrikaans), mainly in verbal derivation and inflection. For consonantism, the opposition of voiceless and voiced stops is typical (the exception is Icelandic, Danish, Faroese, where all stops are correlated by aspiration). Voiceless stops p, t, k in certain positions in all Germanic languages, except Dutch and Afrikaans, are pronounced aspirated. A number of languages are characterized by deafening of voiced consonants at the end of the morpheme (absent in English, Frisian, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian). Specific features of the phonetics of individual Germanic languages include: alveolar consonants in English, kakuminal, or postalveolar, consonants in Swedish, Norwegian, nasalized vowels and diphthongs in Afrikaans and Frisian, absence of a stop [g] in Dutch and Afrikaans, hard stop in German and Dutch etc. The dynamic stress characteristic of Germanic languages in Norwegian and Swedish is combined with a musical one, which has a semantic distinguishing function (cf. Swedish “axel 'shoulder' - 'axel 'axis'), in Danish it is genetically corresponded to the so-called push, a sharp closure of vocal sounds ligaments [cf. date anden (with a bow) ‘duck’ - anden (without a bow) ‘other’]. Unlike most Germanic languages, where stressed syllables can be short or long, in all Scandinavian languages except Danish, stressed syllables are always long (so-called syllabic equilibrium).
The grammatical structure of the Germanic languages is characterized by a tendency towards analyticism, which is realized in individual languages with varying degrees of completeness (cf. analytical English and Afrikaans with inflectional Icelandic and Faroese). It is most clearly manifested in the nominal declension. The category of case in most languages is represented by the opposition of the common and genitive (possessive) cases (in English, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, Frisian), the four-case system is preserved only in German, Icelandic, Faroese, and in Afrikaans there are no formal indicators of case. Case relations are expressed in most languages primarily by word order and prepositional constructions. The paradigm of declension of personal pronouns, where the nominative case (general/subjective) is opposed to indirect (objective) cases, includes from 2 to 4 case forms: cf. subject-object in Afrikaans, nominative, genitive, dative, accusative in Icelandic. The category of number is binomial (singular - plural), but only the plural is formally expressed, with the largest set of indicators noted in the German and Norwegian languages (5), the smallest in English (1). In Scandinavian languages, the plural form of nouns also determines the type of declension. The three-gender classification of nouns (masculine, feminine, neuter) is preserved in 5 of 11 Germanic languages (German, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, Yiddish), in Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Frisian there are 2 genders - common and neuter, in English and Afrikaans There is no genus category. All Germanic languages have definite and indefinite articles except Icelandic and Faroese, which do not have the indefinite article. An innovation of the Scandinavian languages is the prepositive free-standing definite article and its variant - the suffixed article. The presence of two types of adjective declension, characteristic of the Germanic languages - the strong, including pronominal endings, and the weak, which is a Germanic innovation, has been preserved in German and Scandinavian languages, while in Dutch and Afrikaans it is presented in the form of strong and weak forms of the adjective.
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