34. Pg: concept, division.

The branch of Indo-European that English belongs to is called Germanic. Germanic languages are descended from one parent language, a dialect of Indo-European, called Proto-Germanic (PG). Round about the beginning of the Christian era, the speakers of Proto-Germanic still formed a relatively homogeneous cultural and linguistic group, living in the north of Europe. There are no records of the language of this period, but we know something about the people who spoke it, because they were described by Roman authors, who called them the Germani, which for convenience are translated as ‘Germans’. One of the best-known of these descriptions is that written by Tacitus in AD 98, called Germania.

The branches of Germanic

As a result of this expansion of the Germanic-speaking peoples, differences of dialect within Proto-Germanic became more marked, and we can distinguish three main branches or groups of dialects, namely North Germanic, East Germanic, and West Germanic.

Proto-Germanic

West Germanic North Germanic East Germanic

To North Germanic belong the modern Scandinavian languages – Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, Faroese and Gutnish (the language of the island of Gotland). The earliest recorded form of North Germanic (Old Norse) is found in runic inscriptions from about AD 300; and it is not until the Viking Age, from about AD 800 onwards, that it begins to break up into the dialects, which have developed into the modern Scandinavian languages. Here is the family tree for the North Germanic languages:

North Germanic (Old Norse)

West Scandinavian East Scandinavian

Icelandic Norwegian Faroese Danish Swedish Gutnish

The East Germanic dialects were spoken by the tribes that expanded East of the Oder around the shores of the Baltic. They included the Goths, and Gothic is the only East Germanic language of which we have any record. Round AD 200 the Goths migrated south-eastwards, and settled in the plains north of the Black Sea, where they divided into two branches, the Ostgoths east of the Dieper and the Visigoths west of it. The main record of Gothic is the fragmentary remains of a translation of the Bible into Visigothic, made by the Bishop Wulfila or Ulfilas in the middle of the forth century. The Goths were later overrun by the Huns, but a form of Gothic was being spoken in the Crimea as late as the 17^th century. It has since died out, however, and no East Germanic language has survived into our own times. Here is the family tree for the East Germanic languages:

East Germanic

Burgundian Vandal Gothic

Visigothic Ostrogothic

To West Germanic belong the High German dialects of southern Germany, the Low German dialects of northern Germany (which in their earliest recorded form are called Old Saxon), Dutch, Frisian, and English. The language most closely related to English is Frisian, which was once spoken along the coast of North sea, from Northern Holland to central Denmark, but which is now heard only in a few coastal regions and on some of the Dutch islands. Before the migration of the Anglo-Saxons to England, they must have been near neighbours of the Frisians. Here is a family tree for the West Germanic languages:

West Germanic