1. The Germanic languages in the modern world, their classification, main features. The common ancestor of the Germanic languages.

GL is one of the major groups of 12 branches of IE family.

There are 11 Modern GL and they fall into 2 groups: North G(Swedish(Sweden, Finland), Danish(Denmark, Greenland), Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese(Faroe Islands)) and West G(English, German, Netherlandish, Africaans, Frisian(part of Denmark, Holland, Germany), Jiddish).

Common features: 1)Latin alphabet, 2)writing based on the phonematic principles(least phonem. is English), 3)word stress falls on the first root syllable(ex. English), 4) In phonetic: reduction took place – led to growing analytical structure; vowels are opposed in short and long forms; all GL poses ‘diflance’, 5)Morphology: tendency from inflected forms to analytical ones; weak and strong verbs; only English has no polite form for 2^nd person singular, 6)Syntax: all except Jiddish & Africaans are mononegative: fixed word order, 7) Vocabulary has 3 layers(common Indo-European, common Germanic, borrowings).

All modern GL have developed from old GE, North G(Old Scandinavian, Old Iclelandic, O.Norvegian, O.Danish, O.Swedish), West G(Anglian, Frisian, Yiddish, Saxon, Franconian, High German, OE, Old Dutch), East Germanic group of language has no living modern languages.

2. The Old Germanic languages, their classification and principal features.

The history of GL begins with the appearance of the Proto-Germanic lang. It’s the linguistic ancestor of the G language group. The ancient Germans(Teutons) setteled on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, this place is considered to be birthplace of the GL. It’s believed that PG was one language with different dialects. Towards beginning of our era PG languages split into 3 branches: East, West & North. Later these branches developed into separate G languages.

1)East G. Was formed at the beginning of our era by Goths. They first start their migration, they made attacks on the Eastern Roman Empire and moved to southern Gaul. Linguistically western Goths were absorbed by natives the Romanised Celts. The Gothic language is now dead, but preserved un the written records of the 4-6^th c. The other East GL have no records left.

2)North G. The Northern G tribes lived on the southern coast of the Scandinavian peninsula and they didn’t migrate and were relatively isolated. Some runic inscriptions come down from 3 -9th c.. Runes were used by North and West G tribes. The principal linguistic differentiation took place during political division into Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The earliest records of the three old languages dates from the 13th c. The teo more lang. Icelandic and Faroese developed mostly under influence of Scandinavian invasions. Dialects brought by Scandinavians were assimilated by natives. Modern Icelandic remained their archaic shape due to the isolation of the country.

3)West G. In the 4 and 5^th c. the West G tribes included several tribes as Franks, Angles & Frisians, the Jutes & the Saxons, High and Low Germans. In the early Middle Ages Franks became a powerful tribe. Their kingdom grew into one of the largest states in the Western Europe. They embaraced France and half of Italy. But in 9^th the state broke up into parts. Dutch lang. was brought to South Africa by colonists and thus grew new lang. Africaans. In the 5^th c. West Germanic tribes(Angles, Saxons, Frisians) starts the invasion of the British Isles. Their dialects developed into English. The first English records have come down from the 7^th c.

3. Old English dialects. The role of Wessex dialect in the English language evolution. The Old English alphabets and major written records.

The Germanic tribes who settled in Britain in the 5^th and 6^th spoke closely related tribal dialects belonging to the West Germanic subgroup. Their common origin and their evolution in Britain transformed them into a single tongue, English. Kentish, a dialect spoken in the area known as Kent and Surrey and in the Isle Of Wight. It had developed from the tongue of the Jutes and Frisians.

West Saxon, the dialect of the Saxon group , spoken in the rest of England south of the Thames and the Bristol Channel , except Wales and Cornwall , where Cetlic tongues were preserved. Other Saxon dialect in England have not survived in written form and are not known to modern scholars.

Mercian a dialect derived from the speech of southern Angles and spoken chiefly in the kingdom of Mercia, that is , in the central region , from the Thames to the Humber.

Northumbrian – another Anglican dialect, spoken from the Humber north to the river Forth.

In the 9^th the political and cultural center moved to Wessex. Culture and education made great progress there; it is no wonder that the West Saxon dialect developed into a bookish type of language, which probably served as the language of writing for all English- speaking people.

Alphabet: there were 2 kinds of letters – the runes and the Latin letters. Latin letters were used not as in Latin, they were modified. Initially letters were very big so that only some letters could find a place on a page. The peculiar feature of OE alphabet was use of some runic letters. The rune called ‘thorn’ __ was used to denote th, and ‘wynn’ __ denoted sound w. OE writing was based on the phonematic principle. The letters could be long and short. The length was shown by macron or by line abovethe letter.

First OE written records were made in special alphabet called runes, such an inscriptions believed to be magic and secret. Every symbol indicated separate sound. The number of runes varied in dif OG languages. The number in English runes was larger in comparison to the others.