Classification of the Germanic Languages

There are different classifications of the languages but as far as we deal with the history of the language we will consider genealogical classification. It is based on the conception that all the languages

can be classified according to their origin.

There are different points of view on the problem of language origin. Some scholars try to prove that there existed one universal language from which all the other languages stem.

The theory of William Allman (1990):

Proto-Germanic Language (one of the 12 groups of languages belonging to Indo-European family that stemmed from the common Indo-European Language)
Indo-European Language	8 000 years ago	Turkey
Nostratic Language	14 000 years ago	The Near East
Proto-World Language	200 000 years ago	Africa

Modern classification of the Germanic Languages:

North Germanic Languages	West Germanic Languages	East Germanic Languages
1. Swedish (spoken in Sweden and Finland by 9 mill. people)	1. English(spoken by 300 mill. people as a mother tongue + millions speak it as a second language	1. Gothic (dead)
2. Norwegian (spoken in Norway by 5 mill. people)	2. German(spoken by 100 mill. people in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Lichtenstein)
3. Danish (spoken in Denmark by 5 mill. people)	3. Dutch/Netherlandish (spoken by 20 mill. people in the Netherlands and some parts of Belgium)
4. Icelandic(spoken in Iceland by 250 thou. people)	4. Frisian(spoken by 400 thou. people in some parts of the Netherlands and Germany and some islands in the North Sea)
5. Faroese(spoken in the Faroe Islands (north-east Atlantic) by 40 thou. people)	5. Luxemburgish(spoken by 350 thou. people in Luxemburg and some parts of Germany and France)
	6. Yiddish(spoken by Jews in different countries in Europe and America, is actually a mixture of the Southern Germanic Dialects, Hebrew and Slavonic elements)
	7. Afrikaans(spoken by 3 mill. people in the South African Republic, combines English, Dutch and African elements)

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