Modern germanic languages

Modern Germanic languages are spoken in a great number of countries. The Germanic languages can be classified in the following way into two groups:

NORTHERN SUB-GROUP	WESTERN SUB-GROUP
Norwegian	English
Icelandic	German
Faroese	Dutch
Danish	Flemish
Swedish	Afrikaans
	Yiddish
	Frisian

The English language is the most widely spread among the Germanic languages. In some countries it is the national language, in others it is used as an official language. The English language is spoken in Great Britain, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, The South African Republic and in the former British colonies. British English and American English have begun to be considered by some scholars as separate languages.

The German language is spoken in Germany, Austria, Luxemburg, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland.

The Dutch and Flemish languages are very close. Dutch is spoken in the Netherlands, while Flemish is spoken in Belgium, where it is one of the three official languages.

Afrikaans is a contemporary language developed from Dutch of the seventeenth century and influenced by the Malay and some African languages. It is one of the 11 official languages of the Republic of South Africa.

Frisian is spoken in some small areas in the Netherlands and in Germany and is often regarded as a dialect. It is most closely related to English.

The Yiddish language is spoken in different countries of Eastern Europe by their Jewish population.

The Danish language is spoken in Denmark, while The Norwegian language is used in Norway, but these languages have intermixed.

Swedish is the national language of Sweden and it is also spoken in Finland.

Icelandic is spoken in Iceland.

The Faroese language is regarded as a dialect as it is spoken only on the Faroe Islands. They are 20 volcanic islands in the North-East of the Atlantic Ocean belonging to Denmark.

THE HISTORICAL ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

The development of the English language begins after the settlement of the Germanic tribes in Britain. After invading Britain they became separated from the continental tongues, and their dialects began to develop in their own way. What we call a language was, in fact, a group of dialects. First they were tribal dialects. After the settlement, when kingdoms appeared, the tribal dialects turned into regional dialects. Many centuries passed before one of the dialects prevailed and turned into a national language which we know now as the English language. The origin and development of the English language is divided into the following periods: The Old English period; The Middle English period; The New, or Modern English period.

But division into Old English (OE), Middle English (ME) and New, or Modern English (NE) is not the only perspective. For example, the English scholar Henry Sweet characterized these periods based on the morphological peculiarities of the language. He called OE “the period of full endings”, ME “the period of leveled endings” and NE – “the period of lost endings”. These names show how the English language transformed from an inflected language, one of complex morphological endings denoting grammatical function, into an analytical language, one in which grammatical relationships are conveyed through syntax. Chronologically he called these periods “early”, “classical” and “late”. Yet another chronological division is more detailed, breaking the development of English into 7 periods (T.A.Rastorguyeva, A History of English).

This text explores the historical, and subsequently, extralinguistic factors influencing the English language followed by the detailed phonetic, morphological and semantic details of language change in each specific period of its development.