West Germanic languages

From Wikinfo

The West Germanic languages constitute the largest branch of the Germanic family of languages and include languages such as German, Yiddish, English and Frisian, as well as Dutch and Afrikaans. The other branches of the Germanic languages are the North and East Germanic languages.

History

The expansion of the Germanic tribes 750 BC – AD 1 (after the Penguin Atlas of World History 1988):       Settlements before 750BC       New settlements until 500BC       New settlements until 250BC       New settlements until AD 1

Origins and characteristics

The Germanic languages are traditionally divided into three groups, West, East and North Germanic.^[1] 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:^[2]

• The loss of w after ng
• Gemination of consonants (except r) before j
• Replacement of the 2nd person singular preterite ending -t with -i
• Short forms of the verbs for "stand" and "go"
• The development of a gerund

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.^[2] 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:^[3] North Germanic, and the three groups conventionally called "West Germanic", namely

1. North Sea Germanic (Ingvaeonic, ancestral to Anglo-Frisian and Low Saxon)
2. Elbe Germanic (Irminonic, ancestral to High German)
3. Weser-Rhine Germanic (Istvaeonic, ancestral to Old Frankish)

Evidence for this view comes from a number of linguistic innovations found in both North Germanic and West Germanic,^[2] including:

• The retraction of Proto-Germanic ǣ to ā
• The development of umlaut
• The rhotacism of z to r
• 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.

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 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 the Old English inflexional system that marked the onset of the Middle English period 12th century.

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.

Modern variants

Of modern German varieties the north German Low Saxon is the one that most resembles modern English. The district of 'Angeln' (or Anglia), from which the name "English" derives, is in the extreme north of Germany between the Danish border and the Baltic coast. Saxony lies further to the south. The Anglo-Saxons, two Germanic tribes, were a combination of a number of peoples from northern Germany and the Jutland Peninsula.

Family tree

Main article: List of West 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.

• Anglo-Frisian
  • English
  • Scots
  • Frisian
• Low Franconian
  • Dutch
  • Limburgish (in the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium)
  • Afrikaans (in South Africa and Namibia)
• Low German (sometimes called Low Saxon)
• High German
  • German
  • Luxembourgish
  • Alemannic German
  • Yiddish

References

Template:Germanic languages Template:Germanic Philology