The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic family of

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

s (the others being the North Germanic and the extinct East Germanic languages). The West Germanic branch is classically subdivided into three branches: Ingvaeonic, which includes

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

and Frisian,

Istvaeonic Weser-Rhine Germanic is a proposed group of prehistoric West Germanic dialects which would have been both directly ancestral to Dutch, as well as being a notable substratum influencing West Central German dialects. The term was introduced by the G ...

, which includes Dutch and its close relatives, and

Irminonic Elbe Germanic, also called Irminonic or Erminonic, is a term introduced by the German linguist Friedrich Maurer (1898–1984) in his book, ''Nordgermanen und Alemanen'', to describe the unattested proto-language, or dialectal grouping, ancestra ...

, which includes

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

and its close relatives and variants.

is by far the most-spoken West Germanic language, with more than 1 billion speakers worldwide. Within Europe, the three most prevalent West Germanic languages are English,

, and Dutch. Frisian, spoken by about 450,000 people, constitutes a fourth distinct variety of West Germanic. The language family also includes

Afrikaans Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans gr ...

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...

Luxembourgish Luxembourgish ( ; also ''Luxemburgish'', ''Luxembourgian'', ''Letzebu(e)rgesch''; Luxembourgish: ) is a West Germanic language that is spoken mainly in Luxembourg. About 400,000 people speak Luxembourgish worldwide. As a standard form of th ...

, and Scots, which are closely related to Dutch, German and English respectively. Additionally, several creoles,

patois ''Patois'' (, pl. same or ) is speech or language that is considered nonstandard, although the term is not formally defined in linguistics. As such, ''patois'' can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects or vernaculars, but not commonly to jargon o ...

, and

pidgin A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from s ...

s are based on Dutch, English, or German.

History

Origins and characteristics

The Germanic languages are traditionally divided into three groups: West, East and

North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north ...

Germanic. In some cases, their exact relation was difficult to determine from the sparse evidence of runic inscriptions, so that some individual varieties have been difficult to classify. This is especially true for the unattested Jutish language; today, most scholars classify Jutish as a West Germanic variety with several features of North Germanic. Until the late 20th century, some scholars claimed that all Germanic languages remained mutually intelligible throughout the

Migration Period The Migration Period was a period in European history marked by large-scale migrations that saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire and subsequent settlement of its former territories by various tribes, and the establishment of the post-Roma ...

, others hold that speakers of West Germanic dialects like

Old Frankish Frankish ( reconstructed endonym: *), also known as Old Franconian or Old Frankish, was the West Germanic language spoken by the Franks from the 5th to 9th century. After the Salian Franks settled in Roman Gaul, its speakers in Picardy ...

and speakers of

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

were already unable to communicate fluently by around the 3rd century AD. As a result of the substantial progress in the study of Proto-West Germanic in the early 21st century, there is a growing consensus that East and West Germanic indeed have been mutually unintelligible at that time, whereas West and North Germanic remained partially intelligible. Dialects with the features assigned to the western group formed from

Proto-Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic br ...

in the late Jastorf culture (ca. 1st century BC). The West Germanic group is characterized by a number of phonological, morphological and lexical innovations or archaisms not found in North and East Germanic. Examples of West Germanic phonological particularities are: * The delabialization of all labiovelar consonants except word-initially. * Change of ''*-zw-'' and ''*- đw-'' to ''*-ww-'' e.g. ''*izwiz'' > ''*iwwiz'' ‘you’ dat.pl.; ''*feđwōr'' > ''*fewwōr'' ‘four’. * , the fricative allophone of , becomes in all positions. (The two other fricatives and are retained.). This must have occurred after ''*-zw-'' and ''*- đw-'' have become ''*-ww-''.P. Stiles (2013): p. 15 * Replacement of the second-person singular preterite ending ''-t'' with ''-ī''. Some scholars, including Karl-Heinz Mottausch and Wolfram Euler now explain this ending as a relict of the Indo-European aorist tense. * Loss of word-final . Only Old High German preserves it at all (as ) and only in single-syllable words. Following the later loss of word-final and , this made the nominative and accusative of many nouns identical. * Loss of final ''*-a'' (including from PGmc. ''*-an#'') in polysyllables: e.g. acc. sg. OHG ''horn'' vs. ORu. ''horna'' ‘horn’; this change must have occurred after the loss of word-final . *

West Germanic gemination West Germanic gemination was a sound change that took place in all West Germanic languages around the 3rd or 4th century AD. It affected consonants directly followed by , which were generally lengthened or geminated in that position. Because of Si ...

: lengthening of all consonants except before .; this change must have occurred after the loss of final *-a. * Change of Proto-Germanic ''*e'' to ''i'' before ''i'' and ''j''. A relative chronology of about 20 sound changes from Proto-Northwest Germanic to Proto-West Germanic (some of them only regional) has been published by Don Ringe in 2014. A phonological archaism of West Germanic is the preservation of '' grammatischer Wechsel'' in most verbs, particularly in Old High German. This implies the same for West Germanic, whereas in East and North Germanic many of these alternations (in Gothic almost all of them) had been levelled out analogically by the time of the earliest texts. A common morphological innovation of the West Germanic languages is the development of a

gerund In linguistics, a gerund ( abbreviated ) is any of various nonfinite verb forms in various languages; most often, but not exclusively, one that functions as a noun. In English, it has the properties of both verb and noun, such as being modifiab ...

. Common morphological archaisms of West Germanic include: * The preservation of an

instrumental case In grammar, the instrumental case ( abbreviated or ) is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the ''instrument'' or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action. The noun may be either a physical object or a ...

, * the preservation of the athematic verbs (e.g.

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...

''dō(m)'',

Old Saxon Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Europe). I ...

''dōm'', OHG. ''tōm'' "I do"), * the preservation of some traces of the

aorist Aorist (; abbreviated ) verb forms usually express perfective aspect and refer to past events, similar to a preterite. Ancient Greek grammar had the aorist form, and the grammars of other Indo-European languages and languages influenced by th ...

(in Old English and Old High German, but neither in Gothic nor in North Germanic). Furthermore, the West Germanic languages share many

lexeme A lexeme () is a unit of lexical meaning that underlies a set of words that are related through inflection. It is a basic abstract unit of meaning, a unit of morphological analysis in linguistics that roughly corresponds to a set of forms take ...

s not existing in North Germanic and/or East Germanic – archaisms as well as common neologisms.

Existence of West Germanic proto-language

Up until the 1990s, some scholars doubted that there was once a Proto-West-Germanic

proto-language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattes ...

which was ancestral only to later West Germanic languages. Today, there is a growing consensus on what Don Ringe stated in 2012, that "these honological and morphologicalchanges amount to a massive evidence for a valid West Germanic clade". After East Germanic broke off (an event usually dated to the 2nd or 1st century BC), the remaining Germanic languages, the Northwest Germanic languages, divided into four main dialects: North Germanic, and the three groups conventionally called "West Germanic", namely #

North Sea Germanic North Sea Germanic, also known as Ingvaeonic , is a postulated grouping of the northern West Germanic languages that consists of Old Frisian, Old English, and Old Saxon, and their descendants. Ingvaeonic is named after the Ingaevones, a West G ...

, ancestral to Anglo-Frisian and

# Weser-Rhine Germanic, ancestral to

Old Dutch In linguistics, Old Dutch (Dutch: Oudnederlands) or Old Low Franconian (Dutch: Oudnederfrankisch) is the set of Franconian dialects (i.e. dialects that evolved from Frankish) spoken in the Low Countries during the Early Middle Ages, from aro ...

and present as a substrate or superstrate in some of the

Central Franconian Central Franconian (german: mittelfränkische Dialekte, mittelfränkische Mundarten, mittelfränkische Mundart, Mittelfränkisch) refers to the following continuum of West Central German dialects: * Ripuarian (spoken in the German state of Nort ...

and Rhine Franconian dialects of

Old High German Old High German (OHG; german: Althochdeutsch (Ahd.)) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally covering the period from around 750 to 1050. There is no standardised or supra-regional form of German at this period, and Old Hig ...

# Elbe Germanic, ancestral to the

Upper German Upper German (german: Oberdeutsch ) is a family of High German dialects spoken primarily in the southern German-speaking area (). History In the Old High German time, only Alemannic and Bairisch are grouped as Upper German. In the Middle High ...

and most

Central German Central German or Middle German (german: mitteldeutsche Dialekte, mitteldeutsche Mundarten, Mitteldeutsch) is a group of High German dialects spoken from the Rhineland in the west to the former eastern territories of Germany. Central German d ...

dialects of

, and the extinct

Langobardic language Lombardic or Langobardic is an extinct West Germanic language that was spoken by the Lombards (), the Germanic people who settled in Italy in the sixth century. It was already declining by the seventh century because the invaders quickly adop ...

. Although there is quite a bit of knowledge about North Sea Germanic or Anglo-Frisian (because of the characteristic features of its daughter languages, Anglo-Saxon/

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...

and

Old Frisian Old Frisian was a West Germanic language spoken between the 8th and 16th centuries along the North Sea coast, roughly between the mouths of the Rhine and Weser rivers. The Frisian settlers on the coast of South Jutland (today's Northern Fries ...

), linguists know almost nothing about "Weser-Rhine Germanic" and "Elbe Germanic". In fact, both terms were coined in the 1940s to refer to groups of archaeological findings, rather than linguistic features. Only later were the terms applied to hypothetical dialectal differences within both regions. Even today, the very small number of

runic inscriptions A runic inscription is an inscription made in one of the various runic alphabets. They generally contained practical information or memorials instead of magic or mythic stories. The body of runic inscriptions falls into the three categories of ...

from the area, many of them illegible, unclear or consisting only of one word, often a name, is insufficient to identify linguistic features specific to the two supposed dialect groups. Evidence that East Germanic split off before the split between North and West Germanic comes from a number of linguistic innovations common to North and West Germanic, including: * The lowering of Proto-Germanic ''ē'' (, also written ''ǣ'') to ''ā''. * The development of umlaut. * The

rhotacism Rhotacism () or rhotacization is a sound change that converts one consonant (usually a voiced alveolar consonant: , , , or ) to a rhotic consonant in a certain environment. The most common may be of to . When a dialect or member of a language ...

of to . * The development of the

demonstrative Demonstratives ( abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular fram ...

pronoun ancestral to English ''this''. Under that view, the properties that the West Germanic languages have in common separate from the North Germanic languages are not necessarily inherited from a "Proto-West-Germanic" language but may have spread by

language contact Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for th ...

among the Germanic languages spoken in Central Europe, not reaching those spoken in Scandinavia or reaching them much later. Rhotacism, for example, was largely complete in West Germanic while North Germanic runic inscriptions still clearly distinguished the two phonemes. There is also evidence that the lowering of ''ē'' to ''ā'' occurred first in West Germanic and spread to North Germanic later since word-final ''ē'' was lowered before it was shortened in West Germanic, but in North Germanic the shortening occurred first, resulting in ''e'' that later merged with ''i''. However, there are also a number of common archaisms in West Germanic shared by neither Old Norse nor Gothic. Some authors who support the concept of a West Germanic proto-language claim that, not only shared innovations can require the existence of a linguistic

clade A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English ter ...

, but also that there are archaisms that cannot be explained simply as retentions later lost in the North or East, because this assumption can produce contradictions with attested features of the other branches. The debate on the existence of a Proto-West-Germanic clade was recently (2006) summarized:

That North Germanic is... a unitary subgroup
f Proto-Germanic F, or f, is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ef'' (pronounced ), and the plural is ''efs''. His ...
is completely obvious, as all of its dialects shared a long series of innovations, some of them very striking. That the same is true of West Germanic has been denied, but I will argue in vol. ii that all the West Germanic languages share several highly unusual innovations that virtually force us to posit a West Germanic clade. On the other hand, the internal subgrouping of both North Germanic and West Germanic is very messy, and it seems clear that each of those subfamilies diversified into a network of dialects that remained in contact for a considerable period of time (in some cases right up to the present).

The reconstruction of Proto-West-Germanic

Several scholars have published reconstructions of Proto-West-Germanic morphological paradigms and many authors have reconstructed individual Proto-West-Germanic morphological forms or lexemes. The first comprehensive reconstruction of the Proto-West-Germanic language was published in 2013 by

Wolfram Euler Wolfram Euler (born 5 May 1950) is a German historical linguist and Indo-Europeanist. Scientific work Euler gained his doctorate (Ph.D.) in 1979 at the University of Giessen under Professor Rolf Hiersche. Euler's thesis was on parallels in nomi ...

, followed in 2014 by the study of

Donald Ringe Donald "Don" Ringe () is an American linguist and Indo-Europeanist. Ringe graduated from University of Kentucky and then received a Master of Philosophy in Linguistics as a Marshall Scholar from the University of Oxford. He received Ph.D in l ...

and Ann Taylor.

Dating Early West Germanic

If indeed Proto-West-Germanic existed, it must have been between the 2nd and 7th centuries. Until the late 2nd century AD, the language of runic inscriptions found in Scandinavia and in Northern Germany were so similar that Proto-North-Germanic and the Western dialects in the south were still part of one language ("Proto-Northwest-Germanic"). After that, the split into West and North Germanic occurred. By the 4th and 5th centuries the great migration set in. By the end of the 6th century, the area in which West Germanic languages were spoken, at least by the upper classes, had tripled compared to the year 400. This caused an increasing disintegration of the West Germanic language and finally the formation of the daughter languages. It has been argued that, judging by their nearly identical syntax, the West Germanic dialects were closely enough related to have been mutually intelligible up to the 7th century. Over the course of this period, the dialects diverged successively. The

High German consonant shift In historical linguistics, the High German consonant shift or second Germanic consonant shift is a phonological development ( sound change) that took place in the southern parts of the West Germanic dialect continuum in several phases. It probabl ...

that occurred mostly during the 7th century AD in what is now southern Germany, Austria, and Switzerland can be considered the end of the linguistic unity among the West Germanic dialects, although its effects on their own should not be overestimated. Bordering dialects very probably continued to be mutually intelligible even beyond the boundaries of the consonant shift.

Middle Ages

During the

Early Middle Ages The Early Middle Ages (or early medieval period), sometimes controversially referred to as the Dark Ages, is typically regarded by historians as lasting from the late 5th or early 6th century to the 10th century. They marked the start of the Mi ...

, the West Germanic languages were separated by the insular development of

Old Old or OLD may refer to: Places *Old, Baranya, Hungary *Old, Northamptonshire, England * Old Street station, a railway and tube station in London (station code OLD) *OLD, IATA code for Old Town Municipal Airport and Seaplane Base, Old Town, M ...

and

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old Englis ...

on one hand, and by the

on the continent on the other. The

distinguished the

High German languages The High German dialects (german: hochdeutsche Mundarten), or simply High German (); not to be confused with Standard High German which is commonly also called ''High German'', comprise the varieties of German spoken south of the Benrath and ...

from the other West Germanic languages. By early modern times, the span had extended into considerable differences, ranging from

Highest Alemannic Highest Alemannic is a branch of Alemannic German and is often considered to be part of the German language, even though mutual intelligibility with Standard German and other non-Alemannic German dialects is very limited. Highest Alemannic dialect ...

in the South (the

Walliser Walliser may refer to: * people from the Swiss canton of Valais (German: Wallis) * Pennine Alps (German: ''Walliser Alpen'') * Walliser German, an Alemannic dialect spoken in Valais and other regions of the Alps * Cole Walliser (born 1981), a Cana ...

dialect being the southernmost surviving German dialect) to Northern Low Saxon in the North. Although both extremes are considered

, they are not mutually intelligible. The southernmost varieties have completed the second sound shift, whereas the northern dialects remained unaffected by the consonant shift. Of modern German varieties,

Low German : : : : : (70,000) (30,000) (8,000) , familycolor = Indo-European , fam2 = Germanic , fam3 = West Germanic , fam4 = North Sea Germanic , ancestor = Old Saxon , ancestor2 = Middle ...

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 Schleswig-Holstein (; da, Slesvig-Holsten; nds, Sleswig-Holsteen; frr, Slaswik-Holstiinj) is the northernmost of the 16 states of Germany, comprising most of the historical duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of Sc ...

and

Lower Saxony Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...

) lay south of Anglia. The Angles and

Saxons The Saxons ( la, Saxones, german: Sachsen, ang, Seaxan, osx, Sahson, nds, Sassen, nl, Saksen) were a group of Germanic * * * * peoples whose name was given in the early Middle Ages to a large country (Old Saxony, la, Saxonia) near the Nor ...

, two Germanic tribes, in combination with a number of other peoples from northern

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

and the

Jutland Jutland ( da, Jylland ; german: Jütland ; ang, Ēota land ), known anciently as the Cimbric or Cimbrian Peninsula ( la, Cimbricus Chersonesus; da, den Kimbriske Halvø, links=no or ; german: Kimbrische Halbinsel, links=no), is a peninsula of ...

Peninsula, particularly the Jutes, settled in Britain following the end of Roman rule in the island. Once in Britain, these Germanic peoples eventually developed a shared cultural and linguistic identity as

Anglo-Saxons The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened ...

; the extent of the linguistic influence of the native Romano-British population on the incomers is debatable.

Family tree

Note that divisions between subfamilies of continental Germanic languages are rarely precisely defined; most form dialect continua, with adjacent

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is ...

s being mutually intelligible and more separated ones not. *

Ingvaeonic languages North Sea Germanic, also known as Ingvaeonic , is a postulated grouping of the northern West Germanic languages that consists of Old Frisian, Old English, and Old Saxon, and their descendants. Ingvaeonic is named after the Ingaevones, a Wes ...

Anglo-Frisian languages The Anglo-Frisian languages are the Anglic (English, Scots, and Yola) and Frisian varieties of the West Germanic languages. The Anglo-Frisian languages are distinct from other West Germanic languages due to several sound changes: besides th ...

*** English Languages/Anglic ****

**** Scots **** Yola **** Fingalian (extinct) *** Frisian languages **** West Frisian **** East Frisian ***** Saterland Frisian **** North Frisian ** Low German / Low Saxon *** Northern Low Saxon *** Westphalian *** Eastphalian ***

Brandenburg Brandenburg (; nds, Brannenborg; dsb, Bramborska ) is a state in the northeast of Germany bordering the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, as well as the country of Poland. With an area of 29,480 squ ...

dialects *** Central Pomeranian (moribund) *** East Pomeranian (moribund) *** Low Prussian (moribund) *** Dutch Low Saxon * Weser-Rhine Germanic / Istvaeonic languages / Netherlandic /

Low Frankish Low Franconian, Low Frankish, NetherlandicSarah Grey Thomason, Terrence Kaufman: ''Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics'', University of California Press, 1991, p. 321. (Calling it "Low Frankish (or Netherlandish)".)Scott Shay ...

** Dutch ***

*** West Flemish *** East Flemish *** Zeelandic *** Central Dutch **** Hollandic ****

Zuid-Gelders South Guelderish ( nl, Zuid-Gelders , german: Südgeldersch, ''Kleverländisch'') refers to the easternmost group of Dutch dialects spoken along the lower Rhine (Dutch Nederrijn and German Niederrhein). In its narrower sense, the term refers ...

*** Brabantine *** Clevian/ Meuse-Rhenish ** Limburgian * Elbe Germanic / Irminonic languages / High German **

*** Alemannic, including

Swiss German Swiss German (Standard German: , gsw, Schwiizerdütsch, Schwyzerdütsch, Schwiizertüütsch, Schwizertitsch Mundart,Because of the many different dialects, and because there is no defined orthography for any of them, many different spelling ...

and Alsatian ***

Swabian Swabian or Schwabian, or ''variation'', may refer to: * the German region of Swabia (German: "''Schwaben''") * Swabian German, a dialect spoken in Baden-Württemberg in south-west Germany and adjoining areas (German:"''Schwäbisch''") * Danube S ...

*** Bavarian *** East Franconian ***

South Franconian South Franconian (german: Südfränkisch) or South Rhine Franconian (german: Südrheinfränkisch) is an Upper German dialect which is spoken in the northernmost part of Baden-Württemberg in Germany, around Karlsruhe, Mosbach and Heilbronn. Lik ...

*** Rhine Franconian, including the dialects of Hessen,

Pennsylvania German The Pennsylvania Dutch ( Pennsylvania Dutch: ), also known as Pennsylvania Germans, are a cultural group formed by German immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. They emigrated primarily from German-spe ...

, and most of those from Lorraine *** Ripuarian *** Thuringian ***

Upper Saxon German Upper Saxon (german: Obersächsisch, ; ) is an East Central German language spoken in much of the modern German state of Saxony and in adjacent parts of southeastern Saxony-Anhalt and eastern Thuringia. As of the early 21st century, it's mo ...

*** Silesian (moribund) *** High Prussian (moribund) *** Lombardic Langobardic (extinct, unless

Cimbrian Cimbrian ( cim, zimbar, links=no, ; german: Zimbrisch; it, cimbro) refers to any of several local Upper German varieties spoken in northeastern Italy. The speakers of the language are known as ''Zimbern'' in German. Cimbrian is a Germanic ...

and Mocheno are in fact Langobardic remnants.) **

** Pennsylvania German language **

(a language based on Eastern-Central dialects of late

Middle High German Middle High German (MHG; german: Mittelhochdeutsch (Mhd.)) is the term for the form of German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High German and into Early New High German. Hig ...

Early New High German Early New High German (ENHG) is a term for the period in the history of the German language generally defined, following Wilhelm Scherer, as the period 1350 to 1650. The term is the standard translation of the German (Fnhd., Frnhd.), introduc ...

)

Comparison of phonological and morphological features

The following table shows a list of various linguistic features and their extent among the West Germanic languages, organized roughly from northwest to southeast. Some may only appear in the older languages but are no longer apparent in the modern languages. The following table shows a comparison of vowel developments in the respective dialect/language continuum. The following table shows some comparisons of consonant development in the respective dialect/language (online examples though) continuum, showing the gradually growing partake in the

and the anglofrisian palatalization. The table uses

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...

, to avoid confusion via orthographical differences. The realisation of will be ignored. C = any consonant, A = back vowel, E = front vowel

Phonology

The original vowel system of West Germanic was similar to that of Proto-Germanic; note however the lowering of the long front vowels. The consonant system was also essentially the same as that of Proto-Germanic. Note, however, the particular changes described above, as well as

Morphology

Nouns

The noun paradigms of Proto-West Germanic have been reconstructed as follows:

West Germanic vocabulary

The following table compares a number of Frisian, English, Scotch, Yola, Dutch, Limburgish, German and Afrikaans words with common West Germanic (or older) origin. The

grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all noun ...

of each term is noted as masculine (''m.''), feminine (''f.''), or neuter (''n.'') where relevant. Other words, with a variety of origins: Note that some of the shown similarities of Frisian and English vis-à-vis Dutch and German are secondary and not due to a closer relationship between them. For example, the plural of the word for "sheep" was originally unchanged in all four languages and still is in some Dutch dialects and a great deal of German dialects. Many other similarities, however, are indeed old inheritances.

Notes

References

Bibliography

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External links

* {{Authority control Germanic languages