Which Group of the Germanic Family Is Extinct?
This is the fourth in a series of articles on the Indo-European language family and some of its subgroups, click on the links below to read the articles:
- The Indo-European linguistic communication family
- The Latin sub-family unit of the Indo-European language family.
- The Slavic sub-family unit of the Indo-European language family.
Today nosotros will be looking at the Germanic sub-family of the Indo-European language family.
Divisions
The Germanic linguistic communication family is divided in to three master sub-divisions which are.
- Due east Germanic
- West Germanic
- N Germanic
Each of these notwithstanding can be divided in to dissimilar sub-groups and not all of these divisions should exist held to exist totally absolute or nifty and precise, for instance Swedish and Danish would be placed nether 'east Scandinavian' whilst Norwegian is placed under the 'west Scandinavian category' only some say some variants of Norwegian and Danish are closer to each other than to Swedish.
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East Germanic
Eastward Germanic, like the dodo bird, is now unfortunately extinct. The near famous eastward Germanic language is 'Gothic' which was spoken by Germanic tribes in what are now various parts of Europe.
Other east Germanic languages include Vandalic and Burgundian.
'Vandalic' is the language of the due east Germanic ethnic group that conquered Iberia including both parts of what is now Spain and Portugal and we have examples of diverse forms of Vandalic writing.
The name 'Andalusia' is said to be derived from 'Vandalusia' (land of the Vandals), and this nation even conquered north Africa and established a kingdom there.
The Goths and their diverse sub-groups such as the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals are definitely an interesting group because though not unified in total these related tribes conquered places as diverse every bit areas which now autumn in modern Ukraine, Serbia, Tunisia, Portugal, Spain so forth.
Nonetheless we know little most their language.
2. West Germanic
The west Germanic languages.
a) Anglo-Western frisian.
To know more about the development and evolution of modern English, please read these articles:
1. The history of the English language, function 1.
2. The history of the English language, office two.
iii. The history of the English language, part 3.
The closest language to modern English is 'Western frisian' which itself is divided in to different variants including West Frisian (spoken in the Netherlands), South Western frisian spoken in northern Federal republic of germany close to Denmark and Saterland Western frisian spoken in another office of northern Frg.
'Quondam Frisian' which is different to modern Frisian in the way that old English language is very dissimilar to mod English, however both 'Erstwhile Western frisian' and 'Old English' are very similar.
A report on this field of study has been carried out past Dutch professor Arjent Versloot, the PDF of which is available on this link.
'Why Old Frisian is nonetheless quite One-time'
Professor Versloot in his study informs us that the oldest manuscript in old Frisian was in 1200 CE. Now apparently this class of Frisian would naturally have been different to the version spoken centuries before when the Frisians and other Germanic tribes from the north sea region crossed the sea, and the language of the proto-English language (Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians) and their cousins across the north sea would originally have been one and the aforementioned and and so changed more and more with the passage of fourth dimension, until the modern era where Frisian and English are mutually unintelligible due to various factors including the influence of Dutch on Frisian and the influence of French on English besides as the removal of inflectional endings in English language (some fence this is due to the old English trying to communicate with Norsemen in the north of England and dropping different inflectional endings on verbs to facilitate advice).
Here is a video on the lexical similarity betwixt sometime English and old Frisian.
To hear what onetime Frisian sounded similar, y'all can watch this reconstruction.
What is interesting to annotation is how guttural old Frisian may accept been and thus how guttural its close cousin/sibling old English may have been.
The English language spoken by people in Scotland still has that guttural chemical element phonetically much more the heavily French-influenced English of London. Parts of Scotland are closer geographically to Scandinavia than they are to London, for example the distance between Aberdeen in Scotland and Stavanger in Norway.
Hither is a video on 'Doric' as spoken by someone in Aberdeen, northern Scotland. Comport in mind that fifty-fifty a few generations ago the Doric spoken in Scotland would probably accept been even 'stronger' (i.e. different to 'standard English language' and less influenced past its phonology).
This brings u.s.a. to the 'Anglo' in the term 'Anglo-Western frisian'.
English language is of course the biggest Germanic linguistic communication of them all and the biggest (in terms of influence and global usage) in the world ever.
So a lot has been written about it, including 3 separate articles on its history and evolution the links to which are available above.
It changed from beingness close to one-time Frisian by:
a) Simplication of its grammar including the loss of inflectional endings and also cases.
b) A massive influx of French and Latin vocabulary in to English language often for more official or formal purposes.
To clarify what 'simplification of grammar means'. For case we say:
I get, We go, You get, He/She/It goes, They go.
All of them are the same except for 'He', 'She' and 'Information technology' where we add an 's'. This 'southward' indicates we are talking virtually a 3rd person singular. However old English language rather than having an extra sound just for he/she/information technology, had countless different suffixes varying from gender, number and tense.
This is an issue of lots of discussion but the general consensus is that it was due to the Celto-Germanic peoples of the s of England trying to speak to the Nordic settlers in the northward i.e. Old English and Old Norse beingness spoken by the two groups, that they removed some inflectional endings. And so for example a hypothetical example.
The old English always say: He goes, She goesouth, It goes.
The Former Norse (a fictitious example) say: He goel, She goel, It goel.
The 'southward' in old English language and the 'l' in old Norse (in this imaginary example) would complicate matters so both of the would drop the 's' and the 'l' and it would sound like:
He become, She go, It go.
This in a nutshell is what some suspect happened.
The Anglic languages include:
English
Scots
and other forms of the language, some now extinct.
b) German language and its dialects
In improver mod standard German or 'Hochdeutsch', in that location are various forms of German both in terms of mod dialects and older historic forms of the language.
Later on English it'south the second most important Germanic language.
"Low German" or Platt Deutsch is the group of dialects spoken in the north of Germany which are increasingly fading away due to modernistic education and urbanization and the rise of standard German language. Dutch itself is a derivative form of 'low German'. The Scandinavian languages were also heavily influenced by Low German in a manner that could be said to have steered the Nordic languages (Swedish, Danish etc) away from their original grade and changed the language significantly especially in terms of lexis.
'Platt Deutsch' (flat/low German) was named such because in dissimilarity to the areas where 'high German' originated from and were literally on higher country or altitude e.m the Alps mountains, the German spoken in north was spoken in the low-lying lands of northern German and extending in to the even more depression-lying Netherlands
Modernistic standard German
Equally mentioned above standard German language originates from the dialects of the south and the cementing of a national standard form of the language was part of the procedure of German unification culminating in 1871. Information technology is often said that the 'all-time' pronunciation of the linguistic communication originates from Hanover. Hanover can be said to the German language what Tours and Paris are to French, or north Castile is to Spanish i.due east. places said to have the 'best' phonology of their national languages.
However while modernistic standard High german may have originated from southern dialects, this does non mean that there are not strong regional dialects in Federal republic of germany such every bit Bavarian. This is even more pronounced in Switzerland where the Swiss Germans fiercely proud of their divide identity take pride in their various regional dialects as a marker of their 'distinctness' and 'Swiss-ness'.
However though Swiss Germans are still said to speak 'German' albeit a different form. The Dutch of the Netherlands at present speak a different language.
c) The Netherlandic languages
The Netherlandic languages include Dutch and its various dialects such as Limburgian which itself is divided in to different dialects some specific to a town and which are mutually intelligible with the dialects of Platt Deutsch a few miles to the east in the villages across the border in Frg.
Other Netherlandic languages include Flemish, with the human relationship between Dutch and Flemish being similar to that of:
Catalan – Valencian.
Moldavan -Romanaian
Bulgarian – Macedonian.
That is to say ofttimes people from the bigger nation (Catalonia, Romania, Bulgaria) argue that the other language is merely the same language with a different branding. Flemish and Dutch are mutually intelligble.
Afrikaans however is non, though has a loftier level of intelligibility with Dutch of which it is either depending on your viewpoint a variant, relative or derivative e.g. Afrikaans has some words of 'African' words.
3. North Germanic
The Scandinavian languages all (except for Finnish which is not Indo-European) all fall under the category of 'North Germanic' and were mutually intelligible even a few centuries dorsum. Naturally they started to diverge a process which is inevitable and why the English colloquial spoken in Sydney is different to that spoken in New York, you won't be hearing a Sydneysider saying "Y'all gotta problem punk? You wanna accept it there?" (translation in standard English language, "You have a trouble idiot? Do you desire a fight?) or a New Yorker saying: "I only wanna fair suck!" (translation: I want a fair opportunity gamble).
These differences started to accumulate amongst these languages until they are now considered 'split up' languages.
Swedish: Language of Sweden, and the biggest due north Germanic language. It has various dialects and certain Swedes often comment on the 'strange' accent of people in the Skane region of southern Sweden commenting on how 'Danish' they sound, only natural given that Malmo is closer to Copenhagen (twenty minutes at nigh) than to Stockholm.
Danish: Linguistic communication of Denmark which at times ruled Kingdom of norway and parts of Sweden and of course England too! It has diverse dialects such as Jysk. Some forms of English in the due north are influenced lexically and phonetically even today by the Danes who used to rule England eastward.yard. the 'Geordie' dialect of English has words which are essentially the same as Danish e.g. 'bairn' for kid.
Both Swedish and Danish are said to be members of the east Scandinavian sub-grouping and were influenced by low German a few centuries agone.
Icelandic: The closest linguistic communication to the one-time Norse and unlike Swedish and Danish non affected by the low German spoken during the period of the Hanseatic league, however it'due south also the smallest.
Norwegian: Norwegian has a literary form and a spoken grade called Bokmal and Nynorsk respectively.
And so this is a very brief overview of the Germanic language family unit which originated from Proto-Indo-European and then over fourth dimension fragmented in to different languages, some lost to history forever such equally Gothic and some thriving and growing every second such as English language. A tale of two great contrasts. The various Germanic peoples of the past exist they the Vikings, the Normans, the Visigoths, Vandals, the colonial English fought, plundered, settled, built in lands every bit diverse as Greenland, Sicily, Crimea, Tunisia, northward America, South Africa, Indonesia and many other places.
Let us know what you retrieve or if y'all have whatever questions in the comments section below!
Source: https://englishmadesimple.org/the-germanic-language-family/
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