Old Germanic Languages and their expansion

West Germanic languages

North-Germanic languages

Development

East Germanic, North Germanic and West Germanic languages and their

From the middle of the 1st millennium BC, there is evidence of Germanic populations in southern Scandinavia and northern Germany. Their migrations from the 2nd century BC onwards are recorded in history. The linguistic and archaeological data seem to indicate that the last linguistic changes affecting all of the Germanic languages took place in an area which has been located approximately in Southern Sweden, Southern Norway, Denmark, and the lower Elbe. During their expansion, the Germanic tribes, who spoke an Indo-European language, mixed with other European tribes whose language is unknown. About 80 percent of Germanic word roots are of non-Indo-European origin.

The Germanic languages are organized into three groups, North Germanic, West Germanic and East Germanic. Gothic, an East Germanic language, is the oldest Germanic language of which much is known. The main text corpus is a Bible translation by the bishop Ulfila from the 4th century C.E. (Common Era, also known as AD). The East Germanic languages (Gothic, Vandalic, Burgundian, Lombardic, Rugian, Herulian, Bastarnae, and Scirian) do not have present-day descendants.

The North Germanic languages are modern Danish, Swedish, Norwegian (with two written variants, Bokmål or Dano-Norwegian and Nynorsk or New Norwegian), Icelandic, and Faroese, as well as the various dialects of these languages. Here you will find some discussion of Gutnish and Dalska. North Germanic is historically divided into an East Scandinavian (Danish and Swedish) and a West Scandinavian (Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese) group.

Out of the many West Germanic dialects, the following six present-day languages have distinctive written standards: Afrikaans, Dutch (Dutch-Flemish), English, Frisian, German, and Yiddish. Some discussion is also included here of Low German, Pennsylvanian German, Scots, and Black English Vernacular.

All the G.L. of past &am present have common linguistic features, some of these features are shared by other groups in the IE family, others are specifically Germanic.

The Germanic group of lang. acquired their specific distinctive features after the separation of the ancient Germanic tribes from other IE tribes and prior to their expansion and disintegration that is during the period of the Proto Germanic language (unattested). The aim is to provide the general idea of what the PGLang was like, to point out its linguistic ftatures. Theese PGfeatures, inherited by the descendant l-ges, represent the common features of the Germanic group.

1. Other common features developed later in the course of individual history of separate Germanic l-ges as a result of similar tendencies from PG causes. On the other hand many Germanic features have been disguised, transformed and even lost in later history.

Germanic languages possess several unique features, such as the following:

1. A large class of verbs that use a dental suffix (/d/ or /t/) instead of vowel alternation (Indo-European ablaut) to indicate past tense; these are called the Germanic weak verbs; the remaining verbs with vowel ablaut are the Germanic strong verbs

2. The shifting of stress accent onto the root of the stem and later to the first syllable of the word

3. Another characteristic of Germanic languages is the verb second or V2 word order. This feature is shared by all modern Germanic languages except modern English

4. Strict differentiation of short and long vowels

5. Tendency for assimilation and reduction

6. A great number of fricatives, small number of plosives

7. No palatal consonants at all.

English is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era, in the fifth century AD when Germanic tribes began to move from their homes in Northern Germany and Jutland in order to settle in what was then still a Celtic country — Britannia. Historically, English originated from several dialects, now collectively termed Old English, which were brought to the island of Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers beginning in the 5th century. English was further influenced by the Old Norse language of Viking invaders. At the time of the Norman conquest(1066), Old English developed into Middle English. As a result of influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century, Eng. has become the lingua franca in many parts of the world. Approximately 375 million people speak English as their first language.English today is probably the third largest language by number of native speakers, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. The countries with the highest populations of native English speakers are, in descending order: United States (215 million), United Kingdom (61 million), Canada (18.2 million),Australia (15.5 million), Nigeria (4 million),Ireland (3.8 million), South Africa (3.7 million), and New Zealand (3.6 million) 2006. Eng. is the dominant language or in some instances even the required international language of communications, science, business, aviation, entertainment, radio.

Questions:

1.What are the pecularities of Germanic Languages that came from Indo-European (IE) Languages?

2. Characteristic features of East Germanic, North Germanic and West Germanic languages.

3. Expansion Old Germanic Languages

Bibliography:

1. Смирницкий А.И.Древнеанглийский язык М., 1955

2.Ильиш Б.А. История английского языка Л.,1973

3.Аракин В.Д. Очерки по истории английского языка М., 1955

4. Расторгуева Т.А. История английского языка М.,2002

5.Wyld H.C. History of Modern Colloquial English. Oxford, 19667

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