Langobardic (Langobards, Lombards)

Vandalic (Vandals)

Gothic (Goths, Ostrogoths, Visigoths)

Ancient Germanic Languages

Germanic Languages that came from Indo-European (IE) Languages

Features of Comparative historical Method

Lecture 3

1. Germanic Languages that came from Indo-European (IE) Languages

2.Ancient Germanic Languages

3. East Germanic, North Germanic and West Germanic languages and their

development

4.Old Germanic Languages and their expansion

5.History of expansion of English

The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European (IE) language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic (also known as Common Germanic), which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe. Proto-Germanic, along with all of its descendants, is characterized by a number of unique linguistic features, most famously the consonant change known as Grimm's law. Early varieties of Germanic enter history with the Germanic peoples moving south from northern Europe in the 2nd century BC, to settle in north-central Europe.

The most widely spoken Germanic languages are English and German, with approximately 300–400 million and over 100 million native speakers respectively. The group includes other major languages, such as Dutch with 23 million and Afrikaans with over 6 million native speakers; and the North Germanic languages including Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese with a combined total of about 20 million speakers. The SIL Ethnologue lists 53 different Germanic languages.

Through MS such as the Codex Argenteus (Uppsala University Library) Gothic is reasonably well documented. Also Crimean Gothic is represented with a list of words by diplomat Busbecq in the sixteenth century.

Documented. Not only personal names. The Vandals are mentioned in Tacitus' Germania 43.6. Possible origin in Vendsyssel in northernmost of present Denmark. One source is Wrede's Sprache der Wandalen (1886). See also above mentioned list.

Documented. Not only personal names. According to Langobard historian Paulus Diaconus the Langobards originated in Scandinavia. His source material seems to have indicated that the Langobards originally emigrated from the island of Scandinavia (Scadan, Scadanan). There are possibly around 400 langobardic words remaining in the Italian language (see for instance P.Scardigli, " All'origine dei langobardismi in italiano " in Festschrift Betz, Tubingen, 1977, pp. 335 – 354).

There is only one more extensive source on the Langobardic language existing (Wilhelm Bruckner, Die Sprache der Langobarden, Strassburg 1895, new edition Berlin 1969). A great number of the remaining "ruins" are legal terms. New finds documented after Bruckner have come to light (Beck, p. 195). Around 2,000 personal names have been documented. Word lists can be found in Jorgen Jarnut, Prosopographische und sozialgeschichtliche Studien zum Langobardenreich in Italien (568 – 774), Bonn 1972.

Possible words in Italian of Langobardic origin are for instance panca (bench) and guardare (look upon oneself). The origin is possibly from Germanic wartan. Compare modern German betreuen, warten. In all over 400 Langobardic loan-words have so far been identified in the Italian language (Christie, pp. 229 – 230) and its dialects. The Langobard heritage is strongest in Friuli. Many Italian surnames derive from Langobardic personal names: Catemari, Cataldo, Greppi, Prandi and Zilli.

It has been pointed out that it would be necessary to divide the sources in two groups the first covering the time between 568 and 774 and a second group from 775 to 962. It is important to differentiate between Langobardic and Frankish source material

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