Origin and development of the germanic languages

Germanic languages constitute one of the 12 groups of the Indo-European linguistic family. The distinguishing features of Germanic languages are based on historical and genealogical classification of languages and take into consideration their origin from a common linguistic ancestor.

All the Germanic languages are related through their common origin and joint development at the early stages of their history.

This common language is called by the linguists Proto-Germanic (PG) or Common, ‘Primitive Germanic’, Proto-Teutonic. It split from related Indo-European languages between the 15th and 10th centuries B.C. It belonged to the Western division of the Indo-European speech community. Germanic tribes mixed with other European tribes who spoke other unknown languages, and so some Germanic roots are not Indo-European.

Classification of the germanic languages

OLD GERMANIC LANGUAGES

The classifications of Old Germanic dialects and modern languages do not coincide. Some of the old languages are the origin of a number of modern languages, some intermixed and others disappeared.

Old Germanic dialects are classified into three groups according to the territories they occupied in Europe, and as such are divided into North Germanic, East Germanic and West Germanic sub-groups. The languages that belonged to the East Germanic group are dead now.

OLD GERMANIC DIALECTS
North Germanic	West Germanic	East Germanic
Swedish Danish Norwegian Icelandic Faroese	Anglian Frisian Jutish Saxon Franconian High German Bavarian	Gothic Vandalic Burgundian Lombardic

Dialects

Angles, Saxons and Jutes belonged to the West Germanic subgroup and their dialects were closely related. But having settled in England, they began to show growing dialectal divergence. The principal OE dialects were:

- Kentish: a Frisian dialect spoken on the territory of modern Kent, Surrey, and the Isle of Wight

- West Saxon: a Saxon dialect spoken south of the Thames

- Mercia: a Southern Anglian dialect spoken between the Thames and the Humber

- Northumbrian: an Anglian dialect spoken north of the Humber

- The Franconian dialect is the origin of the modern Dutch and Flemish languages.

(In Wales and Cornwall Celtic dialects were used.)

Linguistic features of germanic languages

PHONETICS.

Phonetic Peculiarities of the West Germanic languages.

When we speak about phonetic peculiarities, we mean those in the stress, in a system of vowels and a system of consonants.

WORD STRESS

In Indo European, stress was free, meaning it could fall upon any syllable within a word. With the separation into Germanic languages, force stress was the only kind of stress used, but the movement was still dynamic. By late Proto-Germanic, it became fixed on the first syllable – either the root or prefix. Due to the different force of articulation in the stressed and unstressed syllables, vowels in these syllables underwent changes. The unstressed final syllables and sometimes the internal syllables were weakened. The Indo-European (IE) final syllables were mostly inflexions expressing grammatical relations; when they weakened, the number of vowels used in the inflexions reduced and they began to lose their grammatically differentiating function. Gradually, many of them were lost completely and their loss affected the grammatical structure of the language, and so the process of simplification of substantives, or nouns, started. In simple forms the root-syllable was usually stressed. In compound forms (especially in nouns and adjectives) the stress fell on the prefix. In verbs the prefix was still a separate particle at that time and did not take the stress. So there were basically two stress types – nominal and verbal. In this way the stress could be used as one of the means of word building.

VOWELS

The system of vowels in the Germanic languages consisted of short and long monophthongs and diphthongs; the diphthongs are sometimes interpreted as sequences of monophthongs.

Short monophthongs	i, e, a, o, u
Long monophthongs	i:, e:, a:, o:, u:
Diphthongs	ei, ai, eu, au, iu

Vowels are more changeable than consonants. Across the history of the English language, their changes were quantitative (an alteration in the length of the vowel sound), qualitative ( an alteration in the perceived quality of a sound or the basic nature of the vowel sound), dependent (positional) and independent (spontaneous or regular). The result of vowel change is either merging or splitting: the IE short [o] and [a] merged into short [a] in the Germanic languages, while short [u] split into [u] and [o].

Differentiation of long and short vowels is a common and important characteristic of Germanic languages. They developed in different ways. Long vowels became closer and were diphthongized, while short vowels became more open.

CONSONANTS

  There are some changes of consonants that are typical of all West Germanic languages:

IE dh > d in all positions according to the Proto-Germanic Consonant Shift

Gothic dauþs – OE dēad – O Saxon dōd

Germanic [z] after unstressed syllables was lost even if the unstressed vowel had been lost before:

Gothic gasts – OE ʒiest – Old High German (OHG) gast

If [z] was replaced by [r], [r] remained after a stressed syllable:

Gothic dius – Old Icelandic (O Ic) dyr – OE deor – O Sax dior – OHG tior

Doubling, or gemination of consonants, took place after a short vowel; [r] wasn’t doubled. Consonants were regularly doubled before [j], and [p], [t], [k] were doubled before [r] and [l] but not regularly:

Gothic bidjan, O Ic biðia – OE biddan – O Sax biddian – OHG bitten