The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic family of languages (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 and Frisian, Istvaeonic, 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 **Ger ...

and its close relatives and variants. English 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,

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 ver ...

Low Saxon Low Saxon, also known as West Low German ( nds, Nedersassisch, Nedersaksies; nl, Nedersaksisch) are a group of Low German dialects spoken in parts of the Netherlands, northwestern Germany and southern Denmark (in North Schleswig by parts of th ...

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

, while 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 an ...

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 would 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 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'' ( indicative and

Subjunctive mood The subjunctive (also known as conjunctive in some languages) is a grammatical mood, a feature of the utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude towards it. Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unreality ...

). Since more than 150 years there is a scientific debate on the best explanation of these difficult forms. Today, most linguists, beginning with J. v. Fierlinger in 1885 and followed by R. Löwe (1907), O. Behaghel (1922),

Jakob Sverdrup Jakob Sverdrup may refer to: *Jakob Sverdrup (politician) (1845–1899), Norwegian bishop and politician *Jakob Sverdrup (philologist) (1881–1938), Norwegian philologist *Jakob Sverdrup (historian) Jakob Sverdrup (30 November 1919 – 5 December ...

(1927), Hermann Hirt (1932), E. Polomé (1964), W. Meid (1971), E. Hill (2004), K.-H. Mottausch and W. Euler (1992ff.) explain(ed) this ending as a relict of the Indo-European aorist tense. Under this assumption, the ending ''-t'' would have replaced older ''-ī(z)''. Sceptical about this explanation - and mostly explaining these forms as influenced by optative forms - were/are W. Scherer (1868), W. L. van Helten (before 1917),

Edward Schröder Edward Schröder (18 May 1858 – 9 February 1942) was a Germanist and mediaevalist who was a professor at the University of Göttingen and published editions of numerous texts. Life and career Born in Witzenhausen and educated in Kassel, Sch ...

(1921), Bammesberger (1986) and

Don Ringe Don Ringe (; born c. 1946 – October 11, 2016) was an American political media consultant, Emmy Award winning journalist, documentary filmmaker and online innovator in both the US and overseas. He was a graduate of the Columbia University Gradua ...

(2014). * 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 Sie ...

: 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 historical linguistics, the German term ' ("grammatical alternation") refers to the effects of Verner's law Verner's law describes a historical sound change in the Proto-Germanic language whereby consonants that would usually have been the vo ...

'' 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. 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 an ...

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

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, 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- ...

''dō(m)'', Old Saxon ''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 the I ...

(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 taken ...

s not existing in North Germanic and/or East Germanic – archaisms as well as common neologisms. Some lexems have specific meanings in West Germanic and there are specific innovations in word formation and derivational morphology, for example neologisms ending with modern English ''-ship'' (< wgerm. ''-*skapi'', cf. German ''-schaft'') like ''friendship'' (< wg. ''*friund(a)skapi'', cf. German ''Freundschaft'') are specific to the West Germanic languages and are thus seen as a Proto West Germanic innovation.

Existence of West Germanic proto-language

Since at least the early 20th century, a number of morphological, phonological, and lexical archaisms and innovations have been identified as specifically West Germanic. Since then, individual Proto-West Germanic lexemes have also been reconstructed. Yet, there was a long dispute if these West Germanic characteristics had to be explained with the existence of a West Germanic proto-language or rather with

Sprachbund A sprachbund (, lit. "language federation"), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. The lang ...

effects. Hans F. Nielsen's 1981 study ''Old English and the Continental Germanic Languages'' made the conviction grow that a West Germanic proto-language did exist. But up until the 1990s, some scholars doubted that there was once a Proto-West-Germanic proto-language which was ancestral only to later West Germanic languages. In 2002, Gert Klingenschmitt presented a series of pioneering reconstructions of Proto-West Germanic morphological paradigmas and new views on some early West Germanic phonological changes, and in 2013 the first monographic analysis and description of Proto-West Germanic was published (second edition 2022). Today, there is a scientific 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, ancestral to Anglo-Frisian and Old Saxon #

Weser-Rhine Germanic 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 ...

, ancestral to Old Dutch 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 # 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 G ...

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 di ...

dialects of Old High German, 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 adopted ...

. 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 settlement of Britain, Anglo ...

and Old Frisian), 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 El ...

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 fa ...

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 frame ...

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 term, ...

, 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''. Hist ...
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 nomin ...

, 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 lin ...

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 probably ...

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 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, Mai ...

and Middle English 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 Canadi ...

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 L ...

is the one that most resembles modern English. The district of Angeln (or Anglia), from which the name ''English'' derives, is in the extreme northern part of Germany between the Danish border and the Baltic coast. The area of the Saxons (parts of today's Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony) lay south of Anglia. The Angles and Saxons, two Germanic tribes, in combination with a number of other peoples from northern Germany and the Jutland 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 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 dialects being mutually intelligible and more separated ones not. * North Sea Germanic /

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 West Ge ...

** Anglo-Frisian languages *** English Languages/Anglic **** English **** Scots **** Yola ****

Fingalian Fingallian or the Fingal dialect is an extinct Anglic language formerly spoken in Fingal, Ireland. It is thought to have been an offshoot of Middle English, which was brought to Ireland during the Norman invasion, and was extinct by the mid-19t ...

(extinct) *** Frisian languages **** West Frisian **** East Frisian ***** Saterland Frisian **** North Frisian ** Low German / Low Saxon *** Northern Low Saxon *** Westphalian *** Eastphalian *** Brandenburg dialects *** Central Pomeranian (moribund) *** East Pomeranian (moribund) *** Low Prussian (moribund) *** Dutch Low Saxon *

Istvaeonic languages 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 ...

/ 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 *** Afrikaans *** 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 str ...

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

*** Central German **** 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-spea ...

, 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 mostl ...

*** High German ****

Alemannic Alemannic (''Alamannic'') or Alamanni may refer to: * Alemannic German, a dialect family in the Upper German branch of the German languages and its speakers * Alemanni, a confederation of Suebian Germanic tribes in the Roman period * Alamanni (surna ...

, 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 **** 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 ...

**** 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 l ...

and Mocheno are in fact Langobardic remnants.) ** Luxembourgish ** Pennsylvania Dutch language **

(a language based on Eastern-Central dialects of late Middle High German/

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.), introduce ...

)

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 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 ...

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

Phonology

The existence of a unified Proto-West-Germanic language is debated, features which are common to West Germanic languages may be attributed either to common inheritance or to areal effects. The phonological system of the West Germanic branching as reconstructed is mostly similar to that of Proto-Germanic, with some changes in the categorization and phonetic realization of some phonemes.

Consonants

In addition to the particular changes described above, some notable differences in the consonant system of West Germanic from Proto-Germanic are: * Fortition of /ð/ to /d/ in all positions * The transition of /z/ into a

rhotic consonant In phonetics, rhotic consonants, or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthography, orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek alphabet, Greek letter Rho (letter), rho, including R, , in the Latin ...

(often transcribed as ʀ), which eventually merged with /r/ * A process referred to as

, which is visible in the history of all West Germanic languages

Vowels

Some notable differences in the vowel system of West Germanic from Proto-Germanic are: * Reduction of overlong vowels to simple long vowels * Lowering of /ɛː/ to /æ:/ * The creation of a new short /o/ phoneme, from the lowering of /u/ in initial syllables before /a/, and the reduction of word-final /ɔː/

Morphology

Nouns

The noun paradigms of Proto-West Germanic have been reconstructed as follows:Euler (2022), pp. 78-107

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 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

* Adamus, Marian (1962). ''On the mutual relations between Nordic and other Germanic dialects.'' Germanica Wratislavensia 7. 115–158. * Bammesberger, Alfred (1984). ''Der indogermanische Aorist und das germanische Präteritum

he Indo-European aorist and the Germanic past tense He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...

', in: ''Languages and Cultures. Studies in Honor of

Edgar C. Polomé Edgar Ghislain Charles Polomé (July 31, 1920March 11, 2000) was a Belgian-born American philologist and religious studies scholar. He specialized in Germanic and Indo-European studies and was active at the University of Texas at Austin for mu ...

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* {{Authority control Germanic languages