West Germanic languages

Infobox Language family
name=West Germanic
region=Originally between the Rhine, Alps, Elbe, and North Sea; today worldwide
familycolor=Indo-European
fam1=Indo-European
fam2=Germanic
child1=Anglo-Frisian
child2=Low Franconian languages
child3=Low German
child4=High GermanThe West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three traditional branches of the Germanic family of languages and include languages such as English, Dutch and Afrikaans, German, the Frisian languages, as well as Yiddish. The other two of these three traditional branches of the Germanic languages are the North and East Germanic languages.

History

Origins and characteristics

The Germanic languages are traditionally divided into three groups: West, East and North Germanic.cite book|last=Hawkins|first=John A.|chapter=Germanic languages|pages=68–76|editor=Bernard Comrie|title=The World's Major Languages|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1987|id=ISBN 0-19-520521-9] 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:cite book|last=Robinson|first=Orrin W.|title=Old English and Its Closest Relatives|id=ISBN 0-8047-2221-8|publisher=Stanford University Press|year=1992]
*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 gerundNevertheless, 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. 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:cite journal|last=Kuhn|first=Hans|title=Zur Gliederung der germanischen Sprachen|journal=Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur|volume=66|year=1955–56|pages=1–47] North Germanic, and the three groups conventionally called "West Germanic", namely
#North Sea Germanic (Ingvaeonic, ancestral to Anglo-Frisian and Low German)
#Elbe Germanic (Irminonic, ancestral to High German)
#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, including:
*The retraction of Proto-Germanic Unicode|"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. Nevertheless, it has been argued that, judging by their nearly identical syntax, the West Germanic languages of the Old period were close enough to have been mutually intelligible. [Graeme Davis (2006:154) notes "the languages of the Germanic group in the Old period are much closer than has previously been noted. Indeed it would not be inappropriate to regard them as dialects of one language. They are undoubtedly far closer one to another than are the various dialects of modern Chinese, for example. A reasonable modern analogy might be Arabic, where considerable dialectical diversity exists but within the concept of a single Arabic language." In: cite book
last=Davis
first=Graeme
title=Comparative Syntax of Old English and Old Icelandic: Linguistic, Literary and Historical Implications
publisher=Peter Lang
date=2006
location=Bern
isbn=3-03910-270-2]

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 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, Low German 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. 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.

240px|thumb|right|The Germanic languages in Europe are divided into North (blue) and West Germanic (green and orange) Languages

Family tree

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 languages
* 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