Characteristics of the Germanic group of languages. Classification of modern Germanic languages Main features of the Germanic group of languages

HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

MODERN GERMANIC LANGUAGES, THEIR CLASSIFICATION AND DISTRIBUTION

Performed:

Introduction……………………………………………………………..2

Chapter 1: Classification of languages……………………………………………………………...4

1.1. Approaches to the classification of world languages. The concept of “proto-language”…………………………………………………………………...…..4

1.2. Classification of languages of the Germanic group……………………………..6

Chapter 2: Distribution of languages of the Germanic group………………………10

2.1. Territories of distribution of languages of the Germanic group………………10

2.2. The place of English in the Germanic group of languages: its variants and distribution…………………………………………………………………………………11

Bibliography……………………………………………………………...…15

INTRODUCTION

According to rough estimates, there are over two and a half thousand languages on the globe. The difficulty in determining the number of languages is due, first of all, to the fact that in many cases, due to insufficient knowledge, it is not clear whether this language is independent or a dialect of any language. The question of the number of speakers of a given language cannot play a role, since there are dialects whose speakers number in the hundreds of thousands or more. There are languages that may only have a few thousand speakers or less. There are languages that serve a narrow circle of speakers, other languages represent nationalities and nations, others are international languages in which materials of international associations are published: the UN, the Peace Committee, etc. There are also languages that, in comparison with modern languages, should be considered dead, but under certain conditions they are still used today. This is, first of all, Latin - the language of the Catholic Church, science, nomenclature and international terminology. This also includes, to one degree or another, ancient Greek and classical Arabic.

Knowledge about languages and their history is extremely uneven. There are languages whose history, thanks to the presence of written monuments and even theoretical descriptions, has been known for twenty and thirty centuries. There are languages that had very ancient writing, but science received information about them only in the 20th century. And, for example, the history of Germanic, Armenian, Georgian, Turkic, Slavic languages has been known since the 4th, 5th, 8th, 10th centuries.

Meanwhile, despite all the differences between languages, they all have a lot in common in the most important and significant ways (and often in details). Every language is the property of some community. Each expresses the thoughts of the speaker through sounds, vowels and consonants, which are present in any language. Each language is articulated, that is, divided into some elements: sounds, syllables, morphemes, words, set phrases, etc., repeated in other combinations with each other as part of other statements. In the vocabulary of any language there are synonyms, homonyms and antonyms. People speak all languages in sentences. Text in any language can be recorded on paper using written characters.

Some languages are so similar that, for example, a Norwegian can understand a Dane or a Swede, an Italian can understand a Spanish or Portuguese. This similarity between languages is explained by their origin from one common ancestor language. Such languages are called related languages. This essay is devoted to the analysis of one of the groups of related languages – Germanic. The work examines approaches to the classification of languages that exist in linguistics, and in particular the genealogical approach, which forms the basis for the classification of related languages. The concept of “proto-language” is defined. The areas of distribution of languages that are part of the Germanic group are considered, and, in particular, the distribution of the English language and its variants. The work is descriptive in nature.

CHAPTER 1: Classification of languages

1.1. Approaches to the classification of world languages.

The concept of "proto-language"

In linguistics, there are two approaches to the classification of languages: genealogical And typological , or otherwise morphological . Genealogical classification implies the grouping of languages according to the commonality of linguistic material (roots, affixes, words), and thereby according to the commonality of origin. Typological classification is based on the grouping of languages according to their common structure and type, primarily grammatical, regardless of origin. It is associated with a structural and systematic understanding of language and is based mainly on grammar.

In the framework of this work, we will be interested in the principle of genealogical classification, since it is this that forms the basis for the grouping of languages given below. The genealogical classification of languages is directly related to the historical fate of languages and peoples who speak these languages. It covers, first of all, lexical and phonetic comparisons, and then grammatical ones. Within the framework of genealogical classification, two types of historical connections between languages are distinguished. On the one hand, there is contact caused by geographic, territorial proximity, contact of civilizations, bilateral or unilateral cultural influences, etc. On the other hand, there is the original kinship of languages that developed in the process of divergence from one more or less unified language that existed previously. Contacts of languages lead to the borrowing of words, individual expressions, as well as root and some affixal (usually derivational) morphemes. However, some categories of linguistic elements, as a rule, are not borrowed. These are, first of all, morphological affixes - indicators of the corresponding grammatical categories, usually also function words. There are also categories of significant words for which borrowing is less typical, for example: terms of closest kinship, names of body parts, numerals - designations of a relatively small number (especially in the range from 1 to 10), verbs - names of the most elementary actions, substitute words for various kind and some others. If in any languages there is a more or less systematic material similarity in the field of formative affixes and in the categories of words listed above, such similarity indicates the original relationship of these languages, that these languages are different historical continuations of the same language that existed before.

French linguist Antoine Meillet formulated the definition of linguistic kinship this way: “Two languages are called related when they are both the result of two different evolutions of the same language that was in use before.”

Such a language - the common ancestor of related languages - is called their proto-language , or the base language, and the entire set of related languages is its language family. So the Germanic group (like the Slavic, Baltic, Iranian, Indian, etc.) is the result of the collapse of the common Indo-European base language. This language is not recorded in written monuments, since it ceased to exist as a relatively unified language long before the first written monuments. The words and forms of this language are only tentatively reconstructed by scientists based on a comparison of related languages that emerged from it.

Typically, a language family is a set of languages, within which there are groups united by closer kinship, the so-called branches. The Indo-European family includes Slavic, Germanic, Romanesque, Indian and other branches. The languages of each branch go back to their base language - Proto-Slavic, Proto-Germanic, etc., which in turn is a branch of the parent language of the whole family, in this case common Indo-European. Within the branches, subsets are distinguished, united by even closer kinship.

The relationship between branches and groups within one language family is schematically depicted in the form of a “family tree.” However, the actual relationships between related languages are much more complex, since the disintegration of the base language does not occur in one step (some branches separate earlier, others later), individual innovations, arising in different places and at different times, unevenly cover branches and groups. Branches are often associated with various other traits.

So, the genealogical classification of languages is closely related to the concept of linguistic kinship. The relationship of languages is manifested in their systematic material similarity, that is, in the similarity of the material from which morphemes and words that are identical or similar in meaning are built in these languages.

1.2. Classification of languages of the Germanic group

All Germanic languages go back to one ancestor language, which is called Proto-Germanic and which is not attested in written monuments. Its structure can be revealed by comparing the earliest dialects reflected in the oldest texts. Traditionally, the division of ancient dialects occurs on a geographical basis and includes three groups: northern, eastern, western. That is, texts in the Germanic dialects of the Scandinavian north, including Greenland and Iceland, are called North Germanic. Anything related to the language of the tribes who settled the early Baltic region east of the Oder River (such as the Burgundians, Goths, and Vandals) is called East Germanic. And what is written in the dialects of the tribes who lived between the Oder and the Elbe and immediately to the south and west of this territory is called West Germanic. Languages that are descendants of these dialect groups are classified in the same way. Such a classification does not take into account the features of the early stage of differentiation of Germanic dialects. This is due to the fact that the East German dialects had common features with North German and some other common features with West German. But on the other hand, the North Germanic group, although dialectally homogeneous in the early, runic period, from 300 to 800 AD. e., does not show noticeable differences from either the East Germanic or West Germanic groups until the 7th century. It remains doubtful that there ever existed a single, homogeneous West Germanic dialect.

There are many hypotheses about this discrepancy. Two of them deserve consideration. One of them comes from the ethnographic division of the Germanic tribes according to Tacitus - Germania: ingveons, erminons, isveons. Thus, instead of a single West Germanic group, three are distinguished, which are called as follows: Germanic coastal regions (Küstendeutsch = Ingveonian), Central Germanic (Binnendeutsch = Eastweonian) and Alpine-South Germanic (Alpendeutsch-Süddeutsch = Erminonian). According to another hypothesis, five groups of Germanic peoples are distinguished: northern, eastern, Polabian Germans, Germans of the North Sea coast and Germans living between the Weser and the Rhine. These classifications reflect the situation before the era of the Great Migration of Peoples in the 2nd or 3rd centuries. BC e. Both hypotheses, although differing in detail, reject the idea of a West Germanic linguistic unity and are similar in that the concept of “West Germanic” - if we mean more than just a convenient geographical division - applies only to a certain set of late innovations.

So, the modern classification of languages of the Germanic group is as follows:

I. North Germanic (Scandinavian) subgroup

1) Danish language. Writing based on the Latin alphabet. It served as a literary language for Norway until the end of the 19th century.

2) Swedish language. Writing based on the Latin alphabet;

3) Norwegian language. Writing based on the Latin alphabet, originally Danish, since the literary language of the Norwegians until the end of the 19th century. was Danish. In modern Norway there are two forms of literary language: riksmol (bokmål)– bookish, closer to Danish, and Lansmol (Nynorsk), closer to the Norwegian dialects.

4) Icelandic language. Writing based on the Latin alphabet, written monuments from the 13th century. (“sagas”)

5) Faroese.

II. West German subgroup

1) English language. Literary English developed in the 16th century. n. e. based on the London dialect. V-XI centuries – Old English (or Anglo-Saxon period), XI-XVI centuries. - Middle English and from the 16th century. - New England. Writing based on the Latin alphabet (unchanged). Written monuments from the 7th century. A language of international importance.

2) Dutch (Dutch) with Flemish. Writing on a Latin basis. In the Republic of South Africa live Boers, immigrants from Holland, who speak a variety of Dutch, the Boer language (otherwise: Afrikaans).

3) Frisian language. Monuments from the 14th century.

4) German language. Two dialects: Low German (northern, Niederdeutsch or Plattdeutsch) and High German (southern, Hochdeutsch). The literary language was formed on the basis of southern German dialects, but with many northern features (especially in pronunciation), but still does not represent unity. In the VIII-XI centuries. - Old High German, in the XII-XV centuries. – Middle High German, from the 16th century. - New High German, developed in the Saxon offices and translations of Luther and his associates. Writing based on the Latin alphabet in two varieties: Gothic and Antiqua. One of the largest languages in the world.

5) Yiddish (or Yiddish, New Hebrew) - various High German dialects mixed with elements of Hebrew, Slavic and other languages.

III. East German subgroup

Dead languages:

1) Gothic language, which existed in two dialects. Visigothic - served the medieval Gothic state in Spain and Northern Italy. It had a writing system based on the Gothic alphabet, compiled by Bishop Wulfila in the 4th century. n. e. for the translation of the Gospel, which is the most ancient monument of the Germanic languages. Ostrogothic is the language of the eastern Goths, who lived in the early Middle Ages on the Black Sea coast and in the southern Dnieper region. Existed until the 16th century. in Crimea, thanks to which a small dictionary compiled by the Dutch traveler Busbeck has been preserved.

2) Burgundian, Vandal, Gepid, Herulian languages - the languages of the ancient Germanic tribes in the territory of East Germany.

CHAPTER 2: Distribution of Germanic languages

2.1. Territories of distribution of languages of the Germanic group

Currently, languages belonging to the Germanic group are spoken by more than 600 million people. Of these languages, English and Dutch have the largest distribution area, while German and English are spoken by the largest number of people. German is spoken as a first language by about 98 million people in Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland and parts of France. For many Central Europeans it is a second language.

Dutch - called Dutch in the Netherlands and Flemish in Belgium or French Flanders - is the native language of approximately 20 million people in the Netherlands, Belgium, the Virgin Islands, Suriname and Curacao. This language is still used in Indonesia. Pennsylvania Dutch is not Dutch, but a German dialect spoken by a growing number of descendants of the early German settlers who settled in Pennsylvania, mostly from the Palatinate. And the name “Dutch” comes from the old form of the word Deutsch “German”.

Afrikaans, a language closely related to Dutch, is spoken in the Republic of South Africa. Frisian is the mother tongue of several hundred thousand people in the province of Friesland in the Netherlands. Swedish is spoken by 9 million people in Sweden and parts of Norway and Finland. Danish is spoken by 5 million in Denmark and the northern part of Schleswig, as well as in Greenland, Norwegian by about 5 million in Norway, and Icelandic by almost 300 thousand in Iceland.

Yiddish, or Judeo-German, is essentially a German dialect with a mixture of Hebrew, Polish and Russian elements. It is spoken by Jews who emigrated from Central Europe, as well as their descendants. The number of Yiddish speakers is declining; it is gradually being replaced by the languages of the new countries where Jews live, for example, in Israel - Hebrew.

2.2. The place of English in the Germanic group of languages: its variants and distribution

English is part of the Germanic group of languages and its West Germanic subgroup. This language is spoken as a mother tongue by more than 300 million people living mainly in the British Isles, the United States of America, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. In addition, millions of people around the world use it as a second or foreign language.

Within the British Empire, Great Britain is the main territory of distribution of the English language, which is spoken by the vast majority of the population. Celtic languages - Gaelic in the Highlands of Scotland, Cymric (Welsh) in Wales - are preserved only in the North and West. In addition to the UK and the USA, the most important areas for the spread of the English language include Ireland, Canada, the Union of South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. There are also a significant number of English speakers in some other countries where they have their own native language, which is spoken by the bulk of the population (for example, India).

In the United States, English is spoken everywhere, except in certain settlements where Indians and later colonists continue to use their native language.

The English language is heterogeneous in different places of its distribution. Old territorial dialects, very numerous and varied, are still partly preserved in Great Britain. These small dialects are usually combined into the following dialects:

1) Scottish - north of the Tweed River;

2) Northern (or northern English) - in northern England between the Tweed and the Humber;

3) Western;

4) Central;

5) Eastern;

6) Southern - south of the Thames;

The Central and Eastern dialects form the Midland dialect, or Midland dialect group, in central England.

The Scottish dialect, which is close in many ways to Northern English, but differs significantly from the dialects of the rest of England, occupies a special position. This is due to the fact that until the 16th century. Scotland used its own written literary model, based on the local dialect, which was used in literature at a later time, when the English literary model dominated in Scotland. Thus, the Scottish dialect is an independent language that once began to form, reduced to the position of a dialect as a result of the spread of the relatively close English language on its territory as a national language and a literary model.

The national literary pattern has practically supplanted the old dialects in England, but it takes on different dialectal colors in different parts of the country. Thus, the disappearing dialect fragmentation is reflected in regional variations in the spoken national language. These variations of the spoken language are contrasted with the so-called “standard English” - a literary example that does not have a local dialect coloring and is recognized as an exemplary type of English speech. The literary English sample achieves the greatest uniformity in written form, since the features of regional variations are manifested mainly in pronunciation and in the use of speech patterns that are generally uncommon in the written sample. In its origin, the national literary sample is a product of a mixture of various dialects, mainly East and Central Midlands.

The English language in Ireland is a distinct dialect that differs significantly from the dialects of Great Britain. The colloquial literary pattern in Ireland is for the most part of a markedly local character. In the same way, the English language of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Union of South Africa has everywhere different characteristic features of the same type as the features of regional variations of a literary model. In addition, in each of these countries there are separate features in the vocabulary, which are determined by specific local living conditions. These features partially penetrate into the written literary sample. However, in general, the literary model ("standard English") for the various parts of the British Empire is the same literary model as for Great Britain. The English language in the United States of America has a number of variations, the differences between which, however, are not nearly as significant as between the old dialects of Great Britain. These variations are distributed among three dialects:

1) The New England dialect is distributed in a small area northeast of New York, approximately coinciding with the territory of those states that are united under the name New England;

2) The southern dialect is distributed south of Pennsylvania and the Ohio River and further west in a wide strip along the Mississippi south of the confluence of this river with the Missouri, but not reaching the Mexican border in the southwest;

3) Central-western, or “all-American”, distributed throughout the rest of the United States. In the east, this dialect reaches the Atlantic Ocean (separating the New England dialect from the southern one) and includes the city of New York in its area;

Along with the features characteristic of individual dialects (mainly in pronunciation), American dialects also have features common to all of them (mainly in vocabulary and idiom), which distinguish them as a whole from the English language in Great Britain. A number of such features are also rooted in the literary pattern of the United States, with which American dialects form a comparatively uniform whole. The very pattern of English in the USA is different from that in Great Britain and its possessions. Thus, the literary pattern in the United States and the literary pattern in Great Britain (with its dominions and colonies) are opposed to each other as the two main varieties of the English language. American English and British English are variants of the same language.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1) Genealogical classification of the languages of the world. –http://revolution. /languages/_0.html.

2) Maslov in linguistics. – M., 1987.

3) Garbage science of language. Tutorial. / Second edition, expanded and corrected. – Novosibirsk, Novosibirsk book publishing house, 2004.

4) Reformed in linguistics / Ed. . – M.: Aspect Press, 1996.

5) Smirnitsky language. – Faculty of Philology, Moscow State University. , 1998.

6) Electronic encyclopedia “Around the World”. – http://www. .

Meillet A. Introduction to the comparative study of Indo-European languages. – M.; L., 1938. P. 50.

The classification is given according to the textbook: Reformed in linguistics / Edited by. – M.: Aspect Press, 1996. P. 416-418.

Encyclopedia OrbisLatini

Included in Indo-European family of languages. Germanic languages are spoken around 470 million people in many parts of the world, but mainly in Europe and the Western Hemisphere. All modern Germanic languages are closely related to each other, moreover, they are becoming closer grammatically and lexically if you look at the history of the development of these languages. This suggests that they all descended from an even earlier common ancestor language, which is traditionally called proto-Germanic and which are believed by linguistic scholars to have diverged from other Indo-European languages before 500 BC. Despite the absence of any written evidence proto-Germanic language, it has been substantially reconstructed using the earliest documents that exist in Germanic languages.

Linguistic groups

Conventionally, Germanic languages today are divided into three linguistic groups: East German, North German And West German. The division of the Germanic language into these groups began in the 4th century AD. The East Germanic group, which includes such dead languages as Burgundian, Gothic, and Vandalism, is considered extinct. However, the oldest surviving literary text common to any Germanic language is the Gothic language. The North Germanic languages, also called Scandinavian languages or Norwegian, include: Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish. They are spoken by about 20 million people, mainly in Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. All of these modern North Germanic languages are descendants of Old Norse and share several distinctive grammatical features. One of them is to add a definite article with a noun as a suffix. So "book" would look like this in Swedish boken, "this book" ( bok means "book" and en– definite article, as in English the). Also distinctive is the way the passive voice is formed by adding - s at the end of the verb or, in the case of the present tense, by changing the active ending -r to -s (-st place in Icelandic). This is evidenced by Swedish examples: “ jag caller"-"I'm calling"; " jag kallas"- "My name is"; " jag kallade"- “I called”; " Jag Callades" - "I was called".

West Germanic languages: English, Frisian, Dutch, Flemish, Afrikaans, German and Yiddish. They are spoken as primary languages by approximately 450 million people worldwide. Among the extinct West Germanic languages are Old Franconian, Old High German, and Old English (or Anglo-Saxon), from which the Dutch, German and English languages were formed, respectively.

General characteristics

The best proof of the unity of all modern Germanic languages is the phenomenon known as first Germanic sound shift or consonant shift (also called Grimm's law), which distinguishes the Germanic group of languages from other member groups of the Indo-European family. The sound shift, consisting of a regular shift of consonants in groups, had already occurred by the time in the 7th - 9th centuries. Documents began to be created in various Germanic languages. In accordance with Grimm's law Some consonant sounds found in ancient Indo-European languages (such as Latin, Greek and Sanskrit) underwent changes in Germanic languages. For example, former sounds p, d, t, And k later became sounds f, t, th, And h, respectively, as in the examples: Latin pater, in English father, Latin dent, in English tooth; and Latin cornu, in English horn.

Before the 8th century, some West Germanic dialects developed second consonant shift. For example, under certain circumstances, the sound d became t, A t became ss or z, English word bread and Dutch brood, in German it looks like Brot; English word foot, Dutch voet, in German looks like Fuss, and in English ten, Dutch tien, in German it will look like zehn. The second consonant shift occurred in the High German dialects, so called because they were spoken in more mountainous areas than the rest of the area. Standard modern German arose from these dialects. West Germanic dialects that were not influenced by the second shift are called Low German dialects, spoken in the Lowlands, from which Dutch and English were formed.

Another characteristic feature of Germanic languages is recessive accent, which usually places the stress on the first or root syllable of a word, especially in words of Germanic origin. Another distinctive feature that unites the Germanic languages is umlaut, which is one of the types of vowel changes in the root of a word. This can be seen in the following examples: foot(singular) feet(plural) in English; fot(singular) fötter(plural) in Swedish, and Kampf(singular) Kämpfe(plural) in German.

All Germanic languages have strong and weak verbs, that is, the past tense and past participle are formed either by changing the root vowel in the case of strong verbs (as in English lie, lay, lie or ring, rang, rung, in German ringen, rang, gerungen) or by adding the ending -d(or -t) or- ed in the case of weak verbs (as in English care, cared, cared or look, looked, looked, in German fragen, fragte, gefragt). Also typical for Germanic languages is the formation of the genitive case by adding -s or - es, as in the examples: in English man, man's; in Swedish hund, hunds, in German Lehrer, Lehrers or Mann, Mannes. Moreover, the comparison of adjectives in Germanic languages follows the same type, as in English: rich, richer, richest, in German reich, reicher, reichst; and in Swedish rik, rikare, rikast. Finally, the vocabulary of these languages retains evidence of a common origin in that a number of the basic words in these languages are similar in form, but at the same time the similarity of words may indicate the same source of borrowing for a group of languages.

The content of the article

GERMANIC LANGUAGES, a group of closely related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family, currently spoken by more than 600 million people. Modern Germanic languages include: English, Afrikaans, Dutch (or Dutch-Flemish), Danish, Yiddish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Faroese, Frisian and Swedish. Of these languages, English and Dutch have the largest distribution area; the largest number of people speak English and German. English is spoken as a first language by more than 300 million people, mainly in Australia, the British Isles, Canada, New Zealand, the United States and South Africa; in addition, millions of people around the world use it as a second or foreign language. German is spoken as a native language by approx. 98 million people in Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland and parts of France; in addition, for many Central Europeans it is a second language. Dutch (called Dutch in the Netherlands and Flemish in Belgium or French Flanders) is the mother tongue of approximately 20 million people in the Netherlands, Belgium, the Virgin Islands, Suriname and Curaçao, and is still spoken in Indonesia. (Pennsylvania Dutch - "Pennsylvania Dutch" - is not Dutch, but a German dialect spoken by the decreasing number of descendants of the early German settlers who settled in Pennsylvania and came mainly from the Palatinate; the name "Dutch" comes from an older form of the word Deutsch"German".) Afrikaans, a language closely related to Dutch, is spoken in the Republic of South Africa. Frisian is the native language of several hundred thousand people in the province of Friesland in the Netherlands. Swedish is spoken by 9 million people in Sweden and parts of Norway and Finland, Danish by 5 million in Denmark and northern Schleswig, as well as in Greenland, Norwegian by about 5 million in Norway, and Icelandic by almost 300 thousand in Iceland. Yiddish, or Jewish German, is essentially a German dialect with an admixture of Hebrew, Polish and Russian elements. It is spoken by Jews who emigrated from Central Europe, as well as their descendants. The number of Yiddish speakers is declining; it is gradually being replaced by the languages of the new countries where Jews live (for example, in Israel - Hebrew).

Classification.

All Germanic languages go back to one ancestor language, which is called Proto-Germanic and which is not attested in written monuments, but its structure can be revealed by comparing the earliest dialects reflected in the oldest texts. Ancient Germanic dialects are traditionally divided geographically into three groups: northern, eastern and western. Thus, texts in the Germanic dialects of the Scandinavian north (including Greenland and Iceland) are called North Germanic; anything related to the language of the tribes who settled in the early period in the Baltic region east of the Oder River (such as the Burgundians, Goths and Vandals) is called East Germanic; yet those written in the dialects of the tribes who lived between the Oder and the Elbe, as well as immediately south and west of this territory, are called West Germanic. Languages that are descendants of these groups of dialects are also classified. For example, English, German, Dutch (and Afrikaans, although this is a newer language), are, from a genetic point of view, West Germanic languages. This classification does not take into account the features of the early stage of differentiation of Germanic dialects. The fact is that the East German dialects had common features with North German and other common features with West German; on the other hand, the North Germanic group, although dialectally homogeneous in the early or Runic period from 300 to 800 AD, shows no noticeable differences from either the East Germanic or West Germanic groups until the 7th century; it is extremely doubtful that there ever really was a single, homogeneous West Germanic dialect.

Two hypotheses are worth considering. One of them comes from the ethnographic division of the Germanic tribes according to Tacitus ( Germania, 2: ingveons, erminons, isveons); accordingly, instead of a single West Germanic group, three are distinguished, which are called as follows: Germanic coastal regions (Küstendeutsch = Ingveonian), Central Germanic (Binnendeutsch = Istveonian) and Alpine-South Germanic (Alpendeutsch-Süddeutsch = Erminonian). According to another hypothesis, five groups of Germanic peoples are distinguished: northern, eastern, Polabian Germans, Germans of the North Sea coast and Germans living between the Weser and the Rhine. These classifications reflect the situation before the era of the great migration of peoples in the 2nd or 3rd century. BC. While differing in detail, both hypotheses reject the idea of a West Germanic linguistic unity and agree that the concept of "West Germanic" - if we mean more than just a convenient geographical division - is applicable only to a certain set of late innovations.

Phonetic and morphological changes.

The Germanic languages differ from all other groups of the Indo-European family by a number of changes in sounds and forms that took place only in the Germanic languages or occurred in them in a special sequence. One such change is the first Germanic consonant shift (also called Grimm's law). Precise dating of this process is difficult, but it may have begun ca. 1000 BC and gradually continue until its completion in the first centuries of our era. The reasons for it are unknown. The results of the first Germanic movement of consonants are visible in the early written monuments of all Germanic languages: Indo-European voiced aspirated stop consonants bh, dh, gh, which remained unchanged in Sanskrit (for example, bharati"he carries"), turned into voiced fricatives in early Germanic languages, which very early (especially when doubled, after nasal consonants, and also - at least in the case of [b] and [g] - in initial position) turned into corresponding stop consonants b, d, g(cf. Old English, Old High German and Old Saxon beran"carry"); Indo-European voiced unaspirated stop consonants b, d, g turned into corresponding deaf people - p, t, k(cf.: Latin duo"two" – but Old English twa); and Indo-European voiceless unaspirated stop consonants p, t, k and comparatively rare and later-origin corresponding aspirates ph, th, kh Dali Germanic voiceless fricatives f, þ , h(cf.: Greek, Sanskrit trayas, Latin tres, but English three; Latin cano"I sing", but it is related to English hen"rooster").

Some irregularities in the regularity of this change are associated with the place in the word of the original Indo-European stress during the period when the first movement of consonants took place. Since this stress was positionally free, the Germanic fricatives f, þ ,h that arose during this process, and the voiceless sibilant s, inherited unchanged from the Indo-European proto-language, could be in both pre-stressed and post-stressed positions. When Indo-European mobile stress fell on the vowel immediately preceding these sounds f, þ , h, s, or when they appeared at the beginning of a word, they did not undergo further changes in the Germanic languages; but if the stress fell on any other syllable, then in the intervocalic position or between a vowel and a voiced consonant they were voiced, turning into b, d, g, z. Thus, f in the Old English word fisc is directly a reflex of Indo-European p(cf. Latin piscis"fish"), and h in the Gothic word faíhu is a reflex of Indo-European k(cf. Latin pecus"cattle"), but b in the Gothic word sibun– the result of voicing Germanic f p(cf. Greek "seven"), z in the Gothic word maiza– the result of voicing of the original Indo-European s(cf. Osk mais"more"), and r in the Old English word coren(past participle of ceosan"choose") and r more(cf. Gothic maiza) are examples of further changes in r(rhotacism) Germanic z, dating back to Indo-European s. These results of the influence of Indo-European stress, creating deviations from the regularity of the first movement of consonants (Grimm's law), are themselves regular and are called Werner's law. The existence of Werner’s law also allows, on the contrary, by the presence or absence of voicing of fricatives f, þ , h, s establish the place of Indo-European stress.

The changes in the vowel system that occurred during this period were no less regular than the changes in the consonant system, but clearly more complex, since different Germanic languages already show some discrepancies in the early written monuments (for example, in the vowel e in the Latin word semen"seed" matches e in the Gothic word seþs, but in Old English and a in Old High German sad"seed"). Therefore, we can state only a few vowel changes that occurred in the Germanic languages in comparison with Indo-European: 1) stressed Indo-European and coincided in (Latin octo = Old High German ahto"eight", Latin ad= Old High German at"To"); 2) Indo-European ō And ā coincided in ō (Latin māter= Old English mōdor"mother"; Latin flōs= Old English blō-stma"blooming, flower"; 3) Indo-European, as in most other Indo-European languages, gave , and thus, at an early stage in the Germanic languages there was a phoneme that had a threefold origin - from Indo-European, and; 4) before Indo-European m, n, r, l in cases where they were syllabic (like a consonant n in modern English word button) a vowel appeared in Germanic languages u, while in other Indo-European languages a different vowel appeared, or (as in the case of Sanskrit) no vowel appeared, or these syllabic consonants changed in a special way (for example, in Greek from the Indo-European syllabary n a negative prefix arose, in Latin it corresponds to in-, in Germanic languages – un-); 5) Indo-European diphthongs, both long and short, show a tendency towards monophthongization (for example, Indo-European ei gave i in Germanic languages with a slight degree of diphthongism: Greek "I go" = Gothic steigan, Old Norse stiga, Old English stigan, Old Saxon stigan, Old High German stîgan, – everything with the meaning “to rise” or “to climb”).

Another change from Indo-European that occurred in the Germanic languages and had important consequences was the fixation of the initially free, or mobile, stress on the first or root syllable of a word - in verbs on the root syllable, and in nouns and adjectives having a prefix, usually on the prefix. This shift of emphasis was probably completed by the 1st or 2nd century. AD The resulting strong fixed stress (similar to the stress in modern English or Czech) caused historical changes in vowels in unstressed syllables and, at the same time, alternations of vowels in cognate words (cf. modern Russian words: water , water , water). Further, when the final syllable was unstressed, inflectional suffixes, which at an early stage were typical of all Indo-European languages, weakened and in most cases disappeared, so that at present none of the Germanic languages exhibits the high degree of synthetism that is clearly visible in classical Latin . Thus, all modern Germanic languages (especially English) are now approaching the isolating-analytical structural type, of which Chinese is a typical example, and moving away from the synthetic or inflectional type, of which Latin is an example.

However, this loss of inflection is a very complex process, and the fixation of stress on one of the non-final syllables is only one of many causes. In the earliest written records of the Germanic languages there are only five formally and functionally distinct cases instead of the eight postulated for Proto-Indo-European; the complex system of verb tenses (or modes) and moods that existed in earlier periods (though probably never fully used) appears as a highly simplified system of three moods (indicative, subjunctive and imperative), two tenses (present and past ) and two numbers (singular and plural).

In the process of transition from the Indo-European state to the Germanic state (as well as during the development of other isolated language groups from the Indo-European proto-language), the verb underwent more significant changes than the name. The types of declension of names that are distinguished in Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Old Church Slavonic and other ancient Indo-European languages are found in the material of the earliest monuments also in the Germanic group; the only significant innovation is the so-called weak declension of adjectives (cf. ending -n in a word guten V dem guten Manne). In the verb, the simplification of the entire system was accompanied by some obvious structural changes. In particular, the alternation of vowels in the root, which was one of several indicators of the perfect (cf.: e in Greek in the present tense, but o in the perfect form), spread by analogy, resulting in the so-called ablaut series, and in strong verbs it became an indicator of the singular past tense form (for example, Old English ic ride, ic rad– modern English I ride, I rode). At the same time, the Indo-European thematic class of verbs, in which a vowel appears in the present tense between the root and the personal ending o or e(for example, Greek "we untie" - "you untie"), expanded to include almost all Germanic verbs (for example, Old Norse bind-o-m – bind-e-þ); a new way of forming the past tense also appeared, called the weak preterite (modern English walk – walked as opposed to ride-rode).

The most ancient written monuments.

The first written monument of the Germanic language is an inscription made in a certain Northern Italic, and possibly Etruscan alphabet, on one of several well-preserved helmets found in 1812 in Negau in the Austrian state of Styria. The inscription reads as harixastiteiva. The problem of deciphering it has not yet been solved, but the last five letters may be the name of a god, perhaps the Scandinavian Tyr or Tuisto, mentioned by Tacitus ( Germania, 2). It probably dates back to the 3rd or 2nd century. BC.; the helmet itself may be from an earlier period. The second oldest are short East Germanic runic inscriptions in Gothic, found in Kovel in Volyn and in Pietroassa in the Romanian region of Wallachia. A gold hryvnia (neck ring) with the inscription was found in Pietroassa gutaniowihailag; the last six letters could be a word meaning "holy". Next in time (or perhaps dating back to the same time) are the oldest of the thousands of inscriptions made in the runic alphabet ( fuþark), which was used by all Germanic tribes for a whole millennium.

East Germanic languages.

The oldest coherent text in the German language that has reached us is the translation of the Greek Bible into one of the East German languages - Visigothic (Visigothic), made by Bishop Wulfila in the 4th century. The largest surviving part of the translation has come down to us in the form of a list, the so-called Silver Code (Codex Argenteus), made in the late 5th or early 6th centuries. in Ostrogothic Italy.

In Gothic, changes described by Werner's law are much more rare than in other languages (cf. rhotacism in Old English coren– past participle of ceosan"select" when saving s in the Gothic parallel kusans; but, on the other hand, we see z in a word maiza– Osko mais– modern English more"more"); and since the language of this monument is very ancient, it still lacks umlaut, i.e. likening the articulation of vowels of neighboring syllables. In addition, Gothic retains the dual number in the verb, the remnants of the Indo-European media passive with the meaning of the passive, as well as in some forms reduplication as an indicator of the past tense (for example, Gothic letan– preterite from laylot"to leave", which corresponds to the Old English preterite form let). While clearly archaic in some respects, Gothic is nevertheless characterized by some phonetic and morphological innovations: as in the North Germanic languages, Gothic has intervocalic w And j after short vowels intensified, giving, accordingly, ggw And ddj(Wed, Goth. triggwa"union", Old Norwegian pl. h. tryggvar"trust", but other - upper German. triuwa, modern German Treue"loyalty"). Only in Gothic there was a change u V aú And i V ai[e] before h And r(For example, taúhans– past participle of tiuhan"drag", but budans– from biudan"suggest"; baúrgs"fortress", but burg in Old English); new words appeared with the meaning “father” and “mother” instead of the common Indo-European ones (to which the English ones go back father, mother), and also, apparently, a new word meaning "to do". Gothic is the only East Germanic language in which any significant texts survive. Gothic is now a dead language, and there is no modern language that is a direct descendant of it.

North Germanic languages.

The North Germanic languages, also called Scandinavian, are divided into two groups: West Scandinavian, which includes Icelandic, Faroese and Norwegian, and East Scandinavian, which includes Swedish and Danish. The earliest Scandinavian written monuments are runic inscriptions of the 3rd or 2nd century. BC, but a clear identification of the Scandinavian subgroup of Germanic languages occurs only in the Viking Age (750–1050 AD).

The Scandinavian languages (as well as the West Germanic languages, although to a lesser extent) show the action of umlaut, which began in the 5th or 6th century. and which is therefore not attested in Gothic texts. For example, in the early Germanic form of the nominative singular uir-a-z(going back to the Indo-European form *uir-o-s, from which the Latin originated vir"man") root vowel i under the influence of a vowel a turned into e in the Old Norse word verr"man" (also in Old English and Old High German); vowel i, attested in the final syllable of a Gothic word catils"cauldron", caused change a V e in the Old Norse word ketill(which is reflected in modern English kettle); vowel u, attested in Gothic word magus"son", caused the change a in in the Old Norse word.

In Old Norse, even in the era of runic inscriptions, demonstrative pronouns, including the definite article, occupy a position after the qualified noun. This postposition and the subsequent transformation of the article into an enclitic suffix in the case where there is no adjective before the noun is a characteristic feature of all modern North Germanic languages; so, for example, the postpositive article includes Norwegian words gutten"boy", bordet"table"; báturin"boat", bátarnir"boats" bátunum"to the boats"; Swedish gossen"boy", huset"house".

Old Norse also reveals the origins of the tone, or musical stress, characteristic of modern Swedish and Norwegian languages, and the historically associated Danish glottal stop, called stød, which in Danish occurs in long syllables after a long vowel or diphthong, or after a short vowel if followed by a voiced consonant; There is no single point of view on the question of the time of their occurrence. In modern Swedish and Norwegian there are two types of musical stress, or melodic contour of a word. The first is relatively simple and is characterized by a single increase in tone; the second is a complex sequence of descending and ascending tone movements. For example, modern Swedish words anden"duck" and anden"spirit" differ only in that the latter has the first type of musical stress, and the former has the second type. The same difference is between modern Norwegian words kokken"cook" and kokken"cook". Similarly, in Danish some words differ only in the presence or absence of a glottal stop, e.g. mand samnorsk).

West Germanic languages.

More than 90% of all speakers of Germanic languages are native speakers of West Germanic languages (primarily English).

The composition of the West German group is as follows: known in written records from the 7th century. Old English, of which modern English is now a descendant; Old Frisian, known since the 13th century, and its descendant - modern Frisian; Old Saxon, known since about 800 and the ancestor of Low German; Old Low Frankish, also known since about 800 and the ancestor of modern Dutch in particular; and known from about the middle of the 8th century. Old High German and its descendant, modern German.

English stands out among other Germanic languages in that, starting from a very early era (11th century), it was strongly influenced by Old French, as a result of which a very significant part of the vocabulary of modern English is vocabulary of Romance origin. In modern times, English actively expanded its vocabulary with borrowings, primarily from Latin and Greek, and also changed in other respects due to the fact that it was the native language of the population of different parts of the world. In the field of morphology, the English language is distinguished by a sharp reduction in inflectional forms: the disappearance of the categories of gender and case in the name system, the simplification of the system of personal endings in conjugation, as well as the disappearance of the 2nd person singular pronoun. h. and the corresponding verb form, etc. In general, the English language and the Afrikaans language, as those most affected by reduction, are currently the least typical representatives of the Germanic languages. On the contrary, the least reduced Icelandic and Faroese languages have the richest morphology of the modern Germanic languages.

Literature:

Steblin-Kamensky M.I. History of Scandinavian languages. M., 1953
Prokosh E. Comparative grammar of the Germanic languages. M., 1954
Zhirmunsky V.M. Introduction to the comparative historical study of Germanic languages. M. – L., 1964
Berkov V.P. Modern Germanic languages. St. Petersburg, 1996

The total number of languages in the world is unknown exactly (~2000-6800). The reason for the discrepancies is the lack of criteria for differences in language and dialects. In this regard, it was proposed to distinguish "languages by distance" And "languages by position" .

The first are pairs of related languages, the differences between which are so great that they exclude or complicate mutual understanding (Russian - Czech, Norwegian - Afrikaans).

Languages by position are related languages that are so close to each other that mutual understanding is easy, but these languages are official or state languages of different groups (Tajik - Persian).

Related languages are language families . These families differ both in the number of speakers and in the number of languages. There are giant families spoken by 100 million people. There are also dwarf families. One of the major ones is Indo-European language family . It includes the following groups:

Indian;

Iranian;

Slavic;

Baltic;

German;

Romanskaya;

Celtic.

The following 3 languages form independent families:

Greek;

Albanian;

Armenian.

Dead languages:

Hittite (Anatolian);

Tocharian

I.e. languages - one of the largest language families in Eurasia, spreading over the last five centuries. also in North and South America, Australia and Africa.

The basis for isolating i.e. languages into a special family lie in the field of comparative historical linguistics. It is its principles that determine the nature of similarity and the degree of languages classified as i.e. languages.

Germanic languages

Group of languages of the Western area i.e. languages. The area of modern distribution of Germanic languages includes a number of countries: in Western Europe (GB, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein), in North America (USA, Canada), in South America (South Africa), in Asia (India), in Australia and New Zealand.

The total number of GY speakers is ~550 million people. GY are divided into 3 subgroups:

§ Western (English, Frisian, German, Dutch, Afrikaans);

§ Northern (Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Faroese);

§ Eastern (Gothic, Burgundian, Vandal).

I.e. languages

German subgroup

550 million people

3 subgroups

western, northern, eastern

Western subgroup.

English language(345 million people) - the official language in 12 countries: USA, Australia. Canada, South Africa, one of the state. languages in Asia, Africa, Central America.

In 32 countries - former British colonies (XVII-XVIII centuries) - English was introduced by force. Most countries today are independent, but retain the language not only due to traditions, but also due to political characteristics (tribes) => the use of English helps prevent ethnic conflicts.

FL is studied in most countries of the world (about every 7th speaks it). This is a language of international level, serving spheres of life (culture, science, sports).

The initial distribution of the language is England. In the XV-XVI centuries. England becomes a strong state and gradually annexes other states: Wales. Ireland, Scotland. By the 17th century AYA is distributed throughout the British Isles. Since the 17th century Great Britain takes part in the development of North America and Canada. XVIII-XIX centuries - English ships reach India and Australia. At the beginning of the twentieth century. AYA was widespread over vast territories, but in Europe it still played a minor role. At the beginning of the twentieth century. French and German languages were widespread in Europe after World War II, when the United States became a world leader and the UN was created, which included many English-speaking countries. SL comes to the forefront as a language of interethnic communication.

AYA has been known since the 7th century. AD (the first written monuments). In the 16th-17th centuries, a literary standard was developed, the only language that was used in government institutions and which was taught. Before this, ASL existed in the form of territorial dialects. Territorial dialects have survived to this day. In addition to dialects, it also has territorial variants - American, Canadian, British, pidgin: a hybrid of SL and local k.-l. a language with distorted phonetics and simplified grammar; exists in oral form, appeared as a result of communication between sailors and loaders.

Frisian closest to AY. The carriers are Frisians living in Germany, the Netherlands, and the Frisian Islands (370 thousand people). FY is not a state language in any country, but has the status of a local language in areas where Frisians are densely populated.

For a long time it existed as a language of everyday communication in the form of oral speech. After World War II, the Frisians received the right of local self-government and made their language the language of local administration, the press, radio, TV and began to teach it in schools.

Currently, all Frisians understand their native language, but 70% actively use it, mainly in home use.

German distributed in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, USA (Pelsinvania state), in the south of France. > 100 million people are native speakers.

The literary norm emerged only in the 19th century. Before this, Germany was a fragmented country. After the unification, a literary norm was created. There are still quite a lot of differences between the dialects. The norm was formed on the basis of northern dialects. It is still promoted by the media, especially theaters. Therefore, the norm of the German language is called “stage German”.

German language problems:

Dialectical fragmentation:

The growing influence of AEs on AEs.

Dutch (Dutch) language distributed in the Netherlands and the northern provinces of Belgium (19 million people). The first written monuments are known from the 19th century. The literary norm developed in the 16th century.

The language has practically no dialects. In Belgium, Niedya is the second official language, the first is French. Native speakers in Belgium believe that the status of their language is lower than French => the emergence of unrest due to the strengthening of the status of Nild.

Afrikaans Derived from NidYa, it is the second official language of South Africa. This is the youngest language from the GY. It was formed in the 17th century. based on NIDYa, because immigrants from the Netherlands were the first to establish colonies in southern Africa. Their language began to change and became Afrikaans. In the vocabulary, ~90% of the words are the same, but it has its own grammar, there are no genders, no cases, all verbs are regular. Afrikaans is an analytical language.

For a long time it existed as a language of oral communication. At the end of the 19th century. a literary norm has developed. Since 1925 it received the status of the 2nd state language.

Yiddish (modern Jewish language) as an independent language formed in Europe. Jews who settled in Eastern and Central Europe formed a new language based on Hebrew Germanic and Slavic dialects. Of these 3 components, Germanic dialects predominate. The speakers lived in seclusion => the dates of the formation of the language are not exact, X (XIV)-XIII (XVII) centuries.

Originally functioned as an oral language. Since the 14th century a religious norm appears. In the 19th century - fiction and secular literature and performances begin to be staged.

Yiddish did not have the status of a state language in any country. In Israel, Yiddish is not recognized, there it is Hebrew.

Thus, the difference between the languages of the Western subgroup is quite pronounced.

Northern subgroup.

Icelandic(215 thousand people). The first written sources are known from the 12th century. Before this, it existed for a long time in oral form. Rich poetry, legends, and heroic songs were created. In the 12th century. it was all recorded.

The language developed on the island => 3 characteristic features:

There are practically no dialects;

The language is archaic, it has retained many ancient words, the modern language is practically no different, the example of the literary norm is the 12th century;

There are practically no borrowings, the purest linguistically is the Germanic language (the island is located away from Europe), rejection of foreign words has become a policy; foreign words are expressed in Icelandic words (party = group, flock).

Norwegian(4 million people). XI century - the first written monuments. The richest literature. In the XIV century. Norway was conquered by Denmark => the official language is Danish. Literature on NorYa from the 14th to the 18th centuries. was not created. Only in the 19th century, when Norway regained its independence, did the revival of NorYa begin; it had to be created anew. Modern NorYa literature is artificially created.

At the beginning of the 19th century. the literary language “Riksmål” was created based on urban dialects with a strong influence of Danish, i.e. contained many Danish elements, especially in grammar. This option was not adopted in rural areas in Seme.

In the middle of the 19th century. Another written NorYa is being created - “lannsmol” (folk language) based on rural dialects, but it could not supplant “riksmol”. They have different grammar.

Attempts to develop a third language failed. There are still 2 written languages in Norway: Riksmål and Lannsmål. “Riksmol” is more common - schools, press, culture - 90%.

Swedish language(8 million people - Sweden, 400 thousand - Finland, where it is a second language). ShvL is the most widespread among the languages of the northern subgroup.

The first written monuments from the 9th century. – records of ancient legends, tales, first linguistic studies.

Danish(5 million people – Denmark). Written sources from the 9th century. Denmark was a powerful kingdom that subjugated many countries. DatYa influenced NorYa and AYa (IX-XI centuries), a little ShvYa.

DatYa itself was influenced by European languages - Latin, German. The literary norm developed in the 18th century. Currently of great interest to linguists (sections of phonetics, 3rd movement of consonants).

Faroese language(35 thousand people) - the main language of the Faroe Islands (between the Icelandic and British islands - 24 islands). Each island has its own dialect. It developed on the basis of the Old Norse language and came under the influence of Denmark. The language has a unique phonetic system, and rich folklore has been preserved. For a long time it existed as a historical language, although the norm developed in the 19th century.

It received the status of the state language in 1948. The connections between the languages of the northern subgroup are closer than in the western subgroup (a Swede can understand Norwegian, a Dane can understand both).

Eastern subgroup (dead languages).

Peoples disappeared in the early or late Middle Ages. Only the monuments have survived.

Gothic language– the most ancient (IV century). The Goths were once the most developed Germanic tribe, the closest neighbors of the Slavs. The very first created states and adopted Christianity. But their states did not last long. The latter are mentioned in the 18th century. GothYa plays an exceptional role in Germanic philology as the most ancient Germanic language. It preserves the most ancient phonetic and grammatical phenomena. This is a kind of starting point for the Germanic languages. All languages are compared with GotYa to identify ways of development of the modern language.

Burgundian language preserved in fragmentary records.

Vandal language– only a few words have reached us.

According to statistics, the inhabitants of the Earth speak 2.5 thousand languages. This includes both practically international and little-known ones. Many are dialects of more common languages, although this theory is always difficult to confirm or disprove. Some languages are considered dead, although certain types are still used today. The most striking example confirming this is Latin.

Ancestor of modern languages

The first language that arose on our planet is what historians call proto-world. It is the hypothetical ancestor of all languages spoken by modern populations and several language groups today considered dead.

Modern scientists are confident that the proto-world language was used by ancient people and existed for more than one century. But there are other hypotheses. It is quite possible that different types of languages arose independently of each other, in different groups of people. Alas, modern methods of linguistic research do not allow us to confirm or refute any of these hypotheses.

Indo-European language group

From the proto-world, several large language groups gradually formed, which became the ancestors of modern ones. One of them belongs to the Indo-European language, from which the Germanic and Romance languages originated. Indo-European is the most widespread group spoken by the majority of the world's population - about 2.5 billion people. It is believed that the people who owned it lived in Eastern Europe or Western Asia. However, their existence, apart from language, is not supported by a single fact.

One of the most numerous subgroups of Indo-European is the Romano-Germanic group of languages. This is exactly what we will talk about today.

The history of the emergence of the Germanic language group

The ancestor of Germanic, as scientists suggest, is Proto-Germanic. Inscriptions on it, alas, have not been discovered by archaeologists, but its presence is confirmed by various dialects reflected in ancient texts. Thanks to the comparison of these memos, scientists have put forward the hypothesis that there is a Germanic language, which laid the foundation for the entire language group. This theory has taken root in the scientific world.

The first inscriptions in Old Germanic were made in the 2nd century BC on tablets. These are very short runic texts, consisting of several words. The first long texts discovered by archaeologists date back to the 6th century BC. e. and written in Gothic. Later, historians discovered fragments of a translation of the Bible into Germanic, in particular Gothic.

Based on the above facts, we can conclude that Germanic writing has existed for more than 2,000 years.

Groups of Germanic languages

The Germanic group of languages is divided into 3 subgroups:

western;
northern (or Scandinavian);
eastern

Eastern languages include languages that became extinct in the first millennium. This is Burgundian, Vandal, Gothic. The latter is called classical, since it is the basis for the study of historical German studies. It was spoken by tribes living in what is today Germany.

The remaining Germanic languages (German is the first and most native among them) are modern. Let's take a closer look at each of them.

West Germanic language group

The following languages are included in this thread:

English (originally Old English), which is official in 54 countries;
German;
Dutch;
Flemish (is a dialect of the Dutch language);
Frisian (common in the Netherlands and northwestern Germany);
Yiddish (language of German Jews);
Afrikaans (South Africa).

Northern group of Germanic languages

This branch of Indo-European is also called Scandinavian. This includes:

Swedish;
Danish;
Norwegian;
Icelandic;
Faroese (common in the Faroe Islands and Denmark).

Germanic language group today

Now that we know the history of the Germanic languages, let's talk about modern times. Over time, changing more and more (probably due to the peculiarities of the pronunciation of Germanic words by different people), the language was enriched, its branches grew more and more.

Today, most people who use Germanic languages speak English. According to estimates, more than 3.1 billion people on the planet use it. English is spoken not only in the UK and the USA, but also in some Asian and African countries. In India, it became widespread during the British colonization and since then has been the official language of this state along with Hindi.

We teach standard English. But its dialects are represented in huge numbers, each of which is characteristic of a particular region. One of the most popular representatives of this dialect is London Cockney - a type of common speech.

But the German language - in fact, the most classic representative of the branch of “modern Germanic languages”, which linguists call the second native language in the world - is today undeservedly underestimated. This is because English is considered easier to learn and therefore more widely spoken. Today, experts believe that German risks turning into a dialect of English, which is due to the thoughtless linguistic behavior of politicians. Today, almost every moderately educated German knows English and easily switches to it. In addition, German is increasingly interspersed with English.

The group of Germanic languages is also used in Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, Belgium, Switzerland, ASA, and New Zealand. The total number of speakers reaches 0.5 million people.

Romance languages

Romance languages are genetically descended from dead Latin. The term romans translates as “Roman”, because it was in Ancient Rome that Latin was used. In the early Middle Ages, this term denoted simple folk speech, which differed significantly from both literary Latin and other dialects.

As Rome's power spread, the language was passed on to subject cities as the Romans forced the locals to speak Latin. It soon spread throughout the Roman Empire. However, at the same time, Ancient Rome spoke classical Latin, while the simple speech of the villagers was considered vulgar.

Today, the Romance group is used by about 60 countries, although there is still no consensus on the number of Romance languages.

Romance language groups

Among the groups of modern Romance languages, the following are distinguished.

1. Ibero-Roman:

Spanish;
Portuguese;
Catalan (spoken by about 11 million people in Spain, France, Italy);
Galician (Galicia is an autonomous Spanish community).

2. Gallo-Roman group:

French;
Provençal (popular in southeast France).

The Gauls were a tribe of Celts who inhabited France, Italy, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland in the 5th century. For a long time they fought with the Roman Empire. There is a hypothesis that part of the modern population of France are descendants of the Gauls.

3. Italo-Roman:

Italian;
Sardinian (island of Sardinia).

In addition, the Romance group includes Romansh, which is a group of archaic Romance languages and contains several names, as well as Romanian and Moldavian languages.

Creole, which developed in America, Asia and Africa, is based on Romance. Today, the Romance language branch includes more than a dozen languages, many of which are not used at all in modern speech. Others have become dialects of a number of languages, among which Italian predominates.

Romance language group in the modern world

Today, the Romance language plays the role of one of the most important in the world language system. It is spoken by about 700 million people. The extremely popular English also borrows many words from Latin, although it belongs to the “Germanic languages” branch. This is due to the fact that in the 17th and 18th centuries Latin was considered a perfect language, which was persistently mixed with traditional English in literature. Today, many English words are Latin, which makes it possible to classify English as a Romance-Germanic group.

The most common Romance language is Spanish. More than 380 million people use it. And due to the similarity of the Romance languages, they are easy to learn. If you speak one language from this group, learning others will not be difficult.

Latin and Romano-Germanic languages

According to you, Latin also belongs to the Indo-European branch. Presumably, it originated in the west of the Apennine Peninsula, in the Latin tribe. Later, the center of this area became Rome, whose inhabitants began to be called Romans.

Today Latin is the only Italian language still in active use. The rest are dead. Latin is the official language of the Vatican and the Roman Catholic churches.

The Romano-Germanic group of languages has its own history. Despite the fact that in fact such a classification does not exist, and it is found only as the names of departments in institutes, there is a close relationship between these two groups. Since the 1st century BC. e. The Romans more than once tried to subjugate the Germanic tribes, but their persistent attempts were unsuccessful. But the Romans and Germans collaborated for a long time. Their economic ties can be traced even in the names of cities with a Latin base, including those located on the banks of the Danube and Rhine rivers. The conquest of Britain by the Germans in the 5th century caused many Latin words to migrate into the Germanic languages.

Latin inclusions can also be traced in Russian, mostly through Greek. Especially in Old Russian. For example, the Russian suffix -ar was taken from Latin. It denotes a person performing some constant task. For example: gate-ar, myt-ar.

There is also a hypothesis that the Germanic languages are a mixture of Turkic and Slavic. This hypothesis, if we consider it in more detail, really has a right to exist. Thanks to a careful analysis of Russian and German words, the parallel between them is easily traced.

Conclusion

Today, researchers continue to study and interpret ancient languages. Most likely, all our languages originated from one ancestor, and then began to change due to differences in geographical location and cultural characteristics. This is explained by the fact that in almost all modern languages, even at first glance completely different, one can find similarities in words and signs. But scientists are still pondering the question of whether Neanderthals spoke. If they were capable of this degree of communication, it is likely that their language was different from those that arose later.