Coordinates	34°03′″N118°15′″N
Name	Old High German
Region	southern Germany (south of the Benrath line), parts of Austria and Switzerland, Southern Bohemia, Sporadic communities in Eastern Gaul
Extinct	developed into Middle High German from the 11th century
Familycolor	Indo-European
Fam2	Germanic
Fam3	West Germanic
Iso2	goh
Iso3	goh
Notice	IPA }}

The term Old High German (OHG, German: '''', German abbr. ''Ahd.'') refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of Old High German proper to 750 for this reason. There are, however, a number of Elder Futhark inscriptions dating to the 6th century (notably the Pforzen buckle), as well as single words and many names found in Latin texts predating the 8th century.

Characteristics

The main difference between Old High German and the West Germanic dialects from which it developed is that it underwent the Second Sound Shift or High German consonant shift. This is generally dated very approximately to the late 5th and early 6th centuries—hence dating its start to around 500. The result of this sound change is that the consonantal system of German remains different from all other West Germanic languages, including English and Low German. Grammatically, however, Old High German remained very similar to Old English, Old Dutch, and Old Saxon.

By the mid 11th century the many different vowels found in unstressed syllables had all been reduced to "e". Since these vowels were part of the grammatical endings in the nouns and verbs, their loss led to radical simplification of the inflectional grammar of German. For these reasons, 1050 is seen as the start of the Middle High German period, though in fact there are almost no texts in German for the next hundred years.

Examples of vowel reduction in unstressed syllables: {| cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" |     Old High German ||     Middle High German ||     English |----- |     '''' ||     '''' ||     ''to make, to do'' |----- |     '''' ||     '''' ||     ''days'' |----- |     '''' ||     '''' ||     ''to the'' |} (The Modern German forms of these words are broadly the same as in Middle High German.)

Dialects

There was no standard or supra-regional variety of Old High German—every text is written in a particular dialect, or in some cases a mixture of dialects. Broadly speaking, the main dialect divisions of Old High German seem to have been similar to those of later periods—they are based on established territorial groupings and the effects of the Second Sound Shift, which have remained influential until the present day. But because the direct evidence for Old High German consists solely of manuscripts produced in a few major ecclesiastical centres, there is no isogloss information of the sort on which modern dialect maps are based. For this reason the dialects may be termed monastery dialects.

The main dialects, with their bishoprics and monasteries:

Central German

* Middle Franconian: Trier, Echternach, Cologne

* Rhine Franconian: Lorsch, Speyer, Worms, Mainz, Frankfurt

* South Rhine Franconian: Weissenburg im Elsaß

* East Franconian: Fulda, Bamberg, Würzburg

* Thuringian: (no texts)

* West Franconian: conjectural dialect of the Franks in Northern Gaul

Upper German

* Alemannic: Murbach, Reichenau, Sankt Gallen. Strasbourg

* Bavarian: Freising, Passau, Regensburg, Augsburg, Ebersberg, Wessobrunn, Tegernsee, Salzburg, Mondsee

* Langobardic: (fragmentary, classification as OHG uncertain)

There are some important differences between the geographical spread of the Old High German dialects and that of Modern German:

no German dialects were spoken east of the Rivers Elbe and Saale—in the Old High German period this area was occupied by Slavic peoples since the Völkerwanderung and was not settled by German speakers until the late 10th and the early 11th century

the Langobardic dialect of the Lombards who invaded Northern Italy in the 6th century is assumed to have been an Upper German dialect, though little evidence of it remains apart from names and individual words in Latin texts, and a few inscriptions

the Old Frankish language is a special case among the old West Germanic languages. The Frankish tribes built their empire at the same time as the High German consonant shift took place. This meant that the dialects of Frankish in the north of their empire, the Low Countries, did not shift, while the dialects in the south did. The dialects in the south are part of Old High German; the ones in the north are part of Old Dutch (Low Franconian).

Phonology

The charts show the vowel and consonant systems of the East Franconian dialect in the 9th century. This is the dialect of the monastery of Fulda, and specifically of the Old High German ''Tatian''. Dictionaries and grammars of OHG often use the spellings of the Tatian as a substitute for genuine standardised spellings, and these have the advantage of being recognizably close to the Middle High German forms of words, particularly with respect to the consonants.

Vowels

Short and long vowels

Old High German had five phonemic long vowels and six phonemic short vowels. Both occurred in stressed and unstressed syllables.

	! colspan="2"	! colspan="2"	! colspan="2"
Short vowel>short	Long vowel>long	! short	! long	! short	! long
Close vowel>close	''''	''''		''''	''''
Mid vowel>mid	'''', ''''	''''		''''	''''
Open vowel>open		''''	''''

Notes: # All back vowels likely had front-vowel allophones as a result of Umlaut. The front-vowel allophones likely became full phonemes in Middle High German. In the Old High German period, there existed (possibly a mid-close vowel) from the Umlaut of and but it probably wasn't phonemicized until the end of the period. Manuscripts occasionally distinguish two sounds. Generally, modern grammars and dictionaries use ‹ë› for the mid vowel and ‹e› for the mid-close vowel. # The short high and mid vowels may have been articulated lower than their long counterparts as in Modern German. This cannot be established from written sources. # Short vowels followed later by long vowels tended to be reduced to ‹e› in unstressed syllables. The ‹e› may have represented or schwa . # Vowel length was indicated in the manuscripts inconsistently (though not in modern handbooks). A macron was generally used to indicate a long vowel.

Old High German diphthongs are indicated by the digraphs ‹ei›, ‹ie›, ‹io›, ‹iu›, ‹ou›, ‹uo›.

Consonants

	bilabial consonant>Bilabial	labiodental consonant>Labiodental	dental consonant>Dental	alveolar consonant>Alveolar	postalveolar consonant>Postalveolar	!palatal consonant	Glottal
	'''' ''''			'''' ''''		'''' ''''
	''''			''''
	''''			''''		''''
		'''' ,	''''	'''' ,		''''	''''
Approximant	''''				''''
				'''', ''''

# There is wide variation in the consonant systems of the Old High German dialects arising mainly from the differing extent to which they are affected by the High German Sound Shift. Precise information about the articulation of consonants is impossible to establish. #In the plosive and fricative series, where there are two consonants in a cell, the first is fortis the second lenis. The voicing of lenis consonants varied between dialects. #Old High German distinguished long and short consonants. Double-consonant spellings don't indicate a preceding short vowel as in Modern German but true consonant gemination. Double consonants found in Old High German include ''pp, bb, tt, dd, ck'' (for ), ''gg, ff, ss, hh, zz, mm, nn, ll, rr.'' # changes to in all dialects during the 9th century. The status in the Old High German ''Tatian'' (c. 830), reflected in modern Old High German dictionaries and glossaries, is that ''th'' is found in initial position, ''d'' in other positions. # It is not clear whether Old High German had already acquired a palatized allophone following front vowels as in Modern German. #A curly-tailed ''z'' (''ȥ'') is sometimes used in modern grammars and dictionaries to indicate the dental fricative which arose from Common Germanic ''t'' in the High German consonant shift, to distinguish it from the dental affricate, represented as ''z''. This distinction has no counterpart in the original manuscripts, except in the OHG ''Isidor'', which uses ''tz'' for the affricate. # The original Germanic fricative ''s'' was in writing usually clearly distinguished from the younger fricative ''z'' that evolved from the High German consonant shift - the sounds of these two graphs seem not to have merged before the 13th century. Now seeing that ''s'' later came to be pronounced /ʃ/ before other consonants (as in ''Stein'' /ʃtaɪn/, ''Speer'' /ʃpeːɐ/, ''Schmerz'' /ʃmɛrts/ (original ''smerz'') or the southwestern pronunciation of words like ''Ast'' /aʃt/) it seems safe to assume that the actual pronunciation of Germanic ''s'' was somewhere between [s] and [ʃ], most likely about [ɕ], in all Old High German up to late Middle High German. A word like ''swaz'', "whatever", would thus never have been [swas] but rather [ɕwas], later (13th century) [ʃwas], [ʃvas].

Morphology

Nouns

Verbs

The following is a sample paradigm of a strong verb, nëman "to take".

colspan="2"				! Optative	! Imperative
Present	! 1st sing	nimu	nëme	--
	2nd sing	nimis (-ist)	nëmēs (-ēst)	nim
	3rd sing	nimit	nëme	--
	1st plur	nëmemēs (-ēn)	nëmemēs (-ēn)	nëmamēs, -emēs (-ēn)
	2nd plur	nëmet	nëmēt	nëmet
	3rd plur	nëmant	nëmēn	--
rowspan="6">Past	! 1st sing	nam	nāmi	--
2nd sing	nāmi	nāmīs (-īst)	--
3rd sing	nam	nāmi	--
1st plur	nāmumēs (-un)	nāmīmēs (-īn)	--
2nd plur	nāmut	nāmīt	--
3rd plur	nāmun	nāmīn	--
Infinitive
Gerund: Genitive
Gerund: Dative
Present Participle
Past Participle

History

The Franks conquered Northern Gaul as far south as the Loire; the linguistic boundary later stabilised approximately along the course of the Maas and Moselle, with Frankish speakers further west being romanised.

With Charlemagne's conquest of the Lombards in 776, nearly all continental Germanic speaking peoples had been incorporated into the Frankish Empire, thus also bringing all continental West Germanic speakers under Frankish rule. However, since the language of both the administration and the Church was Latin, this unification did not lead to any development of a supra-regional variety of Frankish nor a standardized Old High German.

Old High German literacy is a product of the monasteries, notably at St. Gallen, Reichenau and Fulda. Its origins lie in the establishment of the German church by Boniface in the mid 8th century, and it was further encouraged during the Carolingian Renaissance in the 9th. The dedication to the preservation of Old High German epic poetry among the scholars of the Carolingian Renaissance was significantly greater than could be suspected from the meagre survivals we have today (less than 200 lines in total between the ''Lay of Hildebrand'' and the ''Muspilli''). Einhard tells how Charlemagne himself ordered that the epic lays should be collected for posterity. It was the neglect or religious zeal of later generations that led to the loss of these records. Thus, it was Charlemagne's weak successor, Louis the Pious, who destroyed his father's collection of epic poetry on account of its pagan content .

Hrabanus Maurus, a student of Alcuin's and abbot at Fulda from 822, was an important advocate of the cultivation of German literacy. Among his students were Walafrid Strabo and Otfrid of Weissenburg. Notker Labeo (d. 1022) towards the end of the Old High German period was among the greatest stylists in the language, and developed a systematic orthography.

Texts

The early part of the period saw considerable missionary activity, and by 800 the whole of the Frankish Empire had, in principle, been Christianized. All the manuscripts which contain Old High German texts were written in ecclesiastical scriptoria by scribes whose main task was writing in Latin rather than German. Consequently, the majority of Old High German texts are religious in nature and show strong influence of ecclesiastical Latin on the vocabulary. In fact, most surviving prose texts are translations of Latin originals. Even secular works such as the Hildebrandslied are often preserved only because they were written on spare sheets in religious codices.

The earliest Old High German text is generally taken to be the Abrogans, a Latin-Old High German glossary variously dated between 750 and 780, probably from Reichenau. The 8th century Merseburg Incantations are the only remnant of pre-Christian German literature. The earliest texts not dependent on Latin originals would seem to be the Hildebrandslied and the Wessobrunn Prayer, both recorded in manuscripts of the early 9th century, though the texts are assumed to derive from earlier copies.

The Bavarian ''Muspilli'' is the sole survivor of what must have been a vast oral tradition. Other important works are the ''Evangelienbuch'' (Gospel harmony) of Otfrid von Weissenburg, the short but splendid ''Ludwigslied'' and the 9th century ''Georgslied''. The boundary to Early Middle High German (from ca. 1050) is not clear-cut. The most impressive example of EMHG literature is the ''Annolied''.

Samples

The Lord's Prayer is given in four Old High German dialects below. Because these are translations of a liturgical text, they are best not regarded as examples of idiomatic language, but they do show dialect variation very clearly.

{| cellpadding="5" |----- ! Alemannic, 8th century ! South Rhine Franconian, 9th century ! East Franconian, c. 830 ! Bavarian, early 9th century |----- ! ''The St Gall Paternoster'' ! ''Weissenburg Catechism'' ! Old High German ''Tatian'' ! Freisinger Paternoster |----- | | | | |} Source: Braune/Ebbinghaus, ''Althochdeutsches Lesebuch'', 17th edn (Niemeyer, 1994)

See also

Middle High German

Medieval German Literature

Notes

References

''Althochdeutches Lesebuch'', ed. W.Braune, K.Helm, E.A.Ebbinghaus, 17th edn, Tübingen 1994. ISBN 3-484-10707-3

J. Knight Bostock, ''A Handbook on Old High German Literature'', 2nd edn, revised by K.C.King and D.R.McLintock, Oxford 1976. ISBN 0-19-815392-9

R.E.Keller, ''The German Language'', London 1978. ISBN 0-571-11159-9

''Lexikon der Germanistischen Linguistik'', ed. Hans Peter Althaus, Helmut Henne, Herbert Ernst Weigand, 2nd revised edition, Tübingen 1980. ISBN 3-484-10396-5

S.Sonderegger, ''Althochdeutsche Sprache und Literatur'', de Gruyter 1974 ISBN 3-11-004559-1

C.J.Wells, ''German. A Linguistic History to 1945'', Oxford 1987. ISBN 0-19-815809-2

External links

Joseph Wright, ''An Old High German Primer'' (1906)

Althochdeutsche Texte im Internet (8.–10. Jahrhundert) - links to a range of online texts

Modern English-Old High German dictionary

Category:German dialects Category:Languages of Germany

ar:الألمانية العليا القديمة als:Althochdeutsch ang:Eald Hēah Þēodisc bar:Oidhochdeitsch ca:Alt alemany antic da:Oldhøjtysk de:Althochdeutsch es:Alto alemán antiguo eo:Malnovaltgermana lingvo fr:Vieux haut-allemand fy:Aldheechdútsk gl:Antigo alto alemán hr:Starovisokonjemački jezik id:Bahasa Jerman Hulu Kuno it:Alto tedesco antico la:Lingua Theodisca alta antiqua hu:Ófelnémet nyelv mk:Стар високогермански јазик nl:Oudhoogduits ja:古高ドイツ語 no:Gammelhøytysk nds:Ooldhoochdüütsch pl:Język staro-wysoko-niemiecki pt:Alto alemão antigo ru:Древневерхненемецкий язык sr:Stari visokonemački jezik sh:Stari visokonemački jezik tr:Eski Yüksek Almanca zh:古高地德語

Coordinates	34°03′″N118°15′″N
Name	Germanic
Region	In northern, western and central Europe, Anglo-America, Oceania, southern Africa
Familycolor	Indo-European
Fam1	Indo-European
Protoname	Proto-Germanic
Child1	North Germanic
Child2	West Germanic
Child3	East Germanic (extinct)
Iso2	gem
Iso5	gem
Lingua	52- (phylozone)
Map	Germanic languages.svg
Mapcaption	}}

The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European (IE) language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is Proto-Germanic (also known as Common Germanic), which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe. Proto-Germanic, along with all of its descendants, is characterized by a number of unique linguistic features, most famously the consonant change known as Grimm's law. Early varieties of Germanic enter history with the Germanic peoples moving south from northern Europe in the 2nd century BC, to settle in north-central Europe.

The most widely spoken Germanic languages are English and German, with approximately 300–400 million and over 100 million native speakers respectively. The group includes other major languages, such as Dutch with 23 million and Afrikaans with over 6 million native speakers; and the North Germanic languages including Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese with a combined total of about 20 million speakers. The SIL ''Ethnologue'' lists 53 different Germanic languages.

Characteristics

Germanic languages possess several unique features, such as the following: # The leveling of the Indo-European verbal system of tense and aspect into the present tense and the past tense (also called the preterite) # A large class of verbs that use a dental suffix (/d/ or /t/) instead of vowel alternation (Indo-European ablaut) to indicate past tense; these are called the Germanic weak verbs; the remaining verbs with vowel ablaut are the Germanic strong verbs # The use of so-called strong and weak adjectives: different sets of inflectional endings for adjectives depending on the definiteness of the noun phrase (modern English adjectives do not inflect at all, except for the comparative and superlative; this was not the case in Old English, where adjectives were inflected differently depending on the type of their preceding determiner) # The consonant shift known as Grimm's Law (which continued in German in a second shift known as the High German consonant shift) # Some words with etymologies that are difficult to link to other Indo-European families but with variants that appear in almost all Germanic languages; ''see Germanic substrate hypothesis'' # The sound change known as Verner's Law, which left a trace of Indo-European accent variations in voicing variations in fricatives # The shifting of word stress onto word stems and later onto the first syllable of the word (though English has an irregular stress, native words always have a fixed stress regardless of what is added to them)

Germanic languages differ from each other to a greater degree than do some other language families such as the Romance or Slavic languages. Roughly speaking, Germanic languages differ in how conservative or how progressive each language is with respect to an overall trend toward analyticity. Some, such as Icelandic, and to a lesser extent, German, have preserved much of the complex inflectional morphology inherited from the Proto-Indo-European language. Others, such as English, Swedish, and Afrikaans, have moved toward a largely analytic type.

Another characteristic of Germanic languages is ''verb second'' (V2) word order, which is quite uncommon cross-linguistically. This feature was not inherited from Proto-Germanic, but was probably already present in latent form, and may have begun with auxiliary verbs that were treated as sentence clitics, which were generally placed second. The later parallel innovation of V2 word order in the individual languages may have been a result of the loss of noun declension, which tended to 'fix' word order into its most common form. It is now shared by all modern Germanic languages except modern English which has more or less replaced the earlier V2 structure with fixed ''Subject–verb–object'' word order.

Writing

The earliest evidence of Germanic languages comes from names recorded in the 1st century by Tacitus (especially from his work ''Germania''), but the earliest Germanic writing occurs in a single instance in the 2nd century BC on the Negau helmet. From roughly the 2nd century AD, certain speakers of early Germanic varieties developed the Elder Futhark, an early form of the Runic alphabet. Early runic inscriptions also are largely limited to personal names, and difficult to interpret. The Gothic language was written in the Gothic alphabet developed by Bishop Ulfilas for his translation of the Bible in the 4th century. Later, Christian priests and monks who spoke and read Latin in addition to their native Germanic varieties began writing the Germanic languages with slightly modified Latin letters. However, throughout the Viking Age, Runic alphabets remained in common use in Scandinavia. In addition to the standard Latin alphabet, many Germanic languages use a variety of accent marks and extra letters, including umlauts, the ß (''Eszett''), IJ, Ø, Æ, Å, Ä, Ü, Ö, Ð, , and the Latinized runes Þ and . In print, German used to be prevalently set in blackletter typefaces (e.g. fraktur or schwabacher) up until the 1940s (though see Antiqua–Fraktur dispute), whereas ''Kurrent'' and since the early 20th century ''Sütterlin'' was used for German handwriting.

History

All Germanic languages are thought to be descended from a hypothetical Proto-Germanic, united by subjection to the sound shifts of Grimm's law and Verner's law. These probably took place during the Pre-Roman Iron Age of Northern Europe from ca. 500 BC, but other common innovations separating Germanic from Proto-Indo European suggest a common history of pre-Proto-Germanic speakers throughout the Nordic Bronze Age.

From the time of their earliest attestation, the Germanic varieties are divided into three groups: West, East, and North Germanic. Their exact relation is difficult to determine from the sparse evidence of runic inscriptions, and they remained mutually intelligible throughout the Migration period, so that some individual varieties are difficult to classify.

The 6th-century Lombardic language, for instance, may be a variety originally either Northern or Eastern, before being assimilated by West Germanic as the Lombards settled at the Elbe. The Western group would have formed in the late Jastorf culture, the Eastern group may be derived from the 1st-century variety of Gotland (see Old Gutnish), leaving southern Sweden as the original location of the Northern group. The earliest coherent Germanic text preserved is the 4th century Gothic translation of the New Testament by Ulfilas. Early testimonies of West Germanic are in Old Frankish (5th century), Old High German (scattered words and sentences 6th century, coherent texts 9th century) and Old English (coherent texts 10th century). North Germanic is only attested in scattered runic inscriptions, as Proto-Norse, until it evolves into Old Norse by about 800.

Longer runic inscriptions survive from the 8th and 9th centuries (Eggjum stone, Rök stone), longer texts in the Latin alphabet survive from the 12th century (Íslendingabók), and some skaldic poetry held to date back to as early as the 9th century.

[[Image:Europe germanic-languages 2.PNG|300px|thumb|right|West Germanic languages North Germanic languages ]]

By about the 10th century, the varieties had diverged enough to make inter-comprehensibility difficult. The linguistic contact of the Viking settlers of the Danelaw with the Anglo-Saxons left traces in the English language, and is suspected to have facilitated the collapse of Old English grammar that resulted in Middle English from the 12th century.

The East Germanic languages were marginalized from the end of the Migration period. The Burgundians, Goths, and Vandals became linguistically assimilated by their respective neighbors by about the 7th century, with only Crimean Gothic lingering on until the 18th century.

During the early Middle Ages, the West Germanic languages were separated by the insular development of Middle English on one hand, and by the High German consonant shift on the continent on the other, resulting in Upper German and Low Saxon, with graded intermediate Central German varieties. By Early modern times, the span had extended into considerable differences, ranging from Highest Alemannic in the South to Northern Low Saxon in the North and, although both extremes are considered German, they are hardly mutually intelligible. The southernmost varieties had completed the second sound shift, while the northern varieties remained unaffected by the consonant shift.

The North Germanic languages, on the other hand, remained more unified, with the peninsular languages largely retaining mutual intelligibility into modern times.

==Classification== Note that divisions between and among subfamilies of Germanic are rarely precisely defined; most form continuous clines, with adjacent varieties being mutually intelligible and more separated ones not.

Diachronic

The table below shows the succession of the significant historical stages of each language (vertically), and their approximate groupings in subfamilies (horizontally). Horizontal sequence within each group does not imply a measure of greater or lesser similarity.

Contemporary

All living Germanic languages belong either to the West Germanic or to the North Germanic branch. The West Germanic group is the larger by far, further subdivided into Anglo-Frisian on one hand, and Continental West Germanic on the other. Anglo-Frisian notably includes English and all its variants, while Continental West Germanic includes German (standard register and dialects) as well as Dutch (standard register and dialects).

West Germanic languages

* High German languages (includes Standard German and its dialects)

** Central German

*** East Central German

*** West Central German

**** Luxembourgish

**** Pennsylvania German (spoken by the Amish and other groups in southeastern Pennsylvania)

** Upper German

***High Franconian

*** Alemannic German

*** Austro-Bavarian German

**** Mócheno language

**** Cimbrian language

**** Hutterite German

** Yiddish

* Low Franconian

** Dutch and its dialects

** Afrikaans (a separate standard language)

* Low German

** West Low German

** East Low German

*** Plautdietsch (Mennonite Low German)

* Anglo-Frisian

** Frisian group

** English group

*** English and its dialects

*** Lowland Scots

*** Yola (extinct)

North Germanic

* West Scandinavian

** Norwegian (of Western branch origin, but heavily influenced by the Eastern branch)

** Icelandic

** Faroese

** Greenlandic Norse (extinct)

** Norn (extinct)

* East Scandinavian

** Danish

** Swedish

* Gutnish

Common linguistic features

Phonology

The oldest Germanic languages all share a number of features, assumed to be inherited from Proto-Germanic. Phonologically, this includes the important sound changes known as Grimm's Law and Verner's Law, which introduced a large number of fricatives; late Proto-Indo-European (PIE) had only one, /s/.

The main vowel developments are the merging (in most circumstances) of long and short /a/ and /o/, producing short /a/ and long /ō/. This likewise affected the diphthongs, with PIE /ai/ and /oi/ merging into /ai/, and PIE /au/ and /ou/ merging into /au/. PIE /ei/ developed into long /ī/. PIE long /ē/ developed into a vowel denoted as /ē₁/ (often assumed to be phonetically ), while a new, fairly uncommon long vowel /ē₂/ developed in varied and not completely understood circumstances. Proto-Germanic had no front rounded vowels, although all Germanic languages except for Gothic subsequently developed them through the process of i-umlaut.

Proto-Germanic developed a strong stress accent on the first syllable of the root (although remnants of the original free PIE accent are visible due to Verner's Law, which was sensitive to this accent). This caused a steady erosion of vowels in unstressed syllables. In Proto-Germanic this had progressed only to the point that absolutely final short vowels (other than /i/ and /u/) were lost and absolutely final long vowels were shortened, but all of the early literary languages show a more advanced state of vowel loss. This ultimately resulted in some languages (e.g. modern English) in the loss of practically all vowels following the main stress, and the consequent rise of a very large number of monosyllabic words.

Morphology

The oldest Germanic languages have the typical complex inflected morphology of old Indo-European languages, with four or five noun cases; verbs marked for person, number, tense and mood; multiple noun and verb classes; few or no articles; and rather free word order. The old Germanic languages are famous for having only two tenses (present and past), with three PIE past-tense aspects (imperfect, aorist, and perfect/stative) merged into one and no new tenses (future, pluperfect, etc.) developing. There were three moods: indicative, subjunctive (developed from the PIE optative mood) and imperative. Gothic verbs had a number of archaic features inherited from PIE that were lost in the other Germanic languages with few traces, including dual endings, an inflected passive voice (derived from the PIE mediopassive voice), and a class of verbs with reduplication in the past tense (derived from the PIE perfect). The complex tense system of modern English (e.g. ''In three months, the house will still be being built'' or ''If you had not acted so stupidly, we would never have been caught'') is almost entirely due to subsequent developments (although paralleled in many of the other Germanic languages).

Among the other innovations in Proto-Germanic (hence common to all Germanic languages) are the preterite present verbs, a special set of verbs whose present tense looks like the past tense of other verbs and which is the origin of most modal verbs in English; a past-tense ending (in the so-called "weak verbs", marked with ''-ed'' in English) that appears variously as /d/ or /t/, often assumed to be derived from the verb "to do"; and two separate sets of adjective endings, originally corresponding to a distinction between indefinite semantics ("a man", with a combination of PIE adjective and pronoun endings) and definite semantics ("the man", with endings derived from PIE ''n''-stem nouns). The two sets of adjective endings were lost in English in the late Middle English period but are still preserved (as a distinction between "strong" and "weak" endings) in most other Germanic languages.

Linguistic developments

The subgroupings of the Germanic languages are defined by shared innovations. It is important to distinguish innovations from cases of linguistic conservatism. That is, if two languages in a family share a characteristic that is not observed in a third language, that is evidence of common ancestry of the two languages ''only if'' the characteristic is an innovation compared to the family's proto-language.

The following innovations are common to the Northwest Germanic languages (all but Gothic):

The lowering of /u/ to /o/ in initial syllables before /a/ in the following syllable ("a-Umlaut", traditionally called ''Brechung'')

"Labial umlaut" in unstressed medial syllables (the conversion of /a/ to /u/ and /ō/ to /ū/ before /m/, or /u/ in the following syllable) The conversion of /ē₁/ into /ā/ (vs. Gothic /ē/) in initial syllables

The raising of final /ō/ to /u/ (Gothic lowers it to /a/)

The monophthongisation of /ai/ and /au/ to /ǣ/ and /ō/ in non-initial syllables (however, evidence for the development of /au/ in medial syllables is lacking)

The development of an intensified demonstrative ending in /s/ (reflected in English "this" compared to "the")

The use of /ē₂/ in the preterite of Class VII strong verbs in North and West Germanic, while Gothic uses reduplication (e.g. Gothic ''haihait''; ON, OE ''hēt'', preterite of the Gmc verb ''*haitan'' "to be called") as part of a comprehensive reformation of the Gmc Class VII from a reduplicating to a new ablaut pattern, which presumably started in verbs beginning with vowel or /h/ (a development which continues the general trend of de-reduplication in Gmc); there are forms (such as OE dial. ''heht'' instead of ''hēt'') which retain traces of reduplication even in West and North Germanic

The following innovations are also common to the Northwest Germanic languages, but represent areal changes:

Proto-Germanic /z/ > /r/ (e.g. Gothic ''dius''; ON ''dȳr'', OHG ''tior'', OE ''dēor'', "wild animal"); note that this is not present in Proto-Norse and must be ordered after West Germanic loss of final /z/

Germanic umlaut

The following innovations are common to the West Germanic languages:

Loss of final /z/ (except in short monosyllables)

Change of voiced dental fricative /ð/ to stop /d/

Change of voiceless dental fricative /þ/ to stop /d/ after /l/ (except when /þ/ is word-final)

West Germanic gemination of consonants, except ''r'', before /j/ in short-stemmed words (gemination of /p/, /t/, /k/ and /h/ is also observed before liquids), but not if /j/ (or a liquid) is vocalised (becomes syllabic) word-finally

The simplification of /ngw/ to /ng/

A particular type of ''umlaut'' /e-u-i/ > /i-u-i/

Loss of /j/ before /i/ and /w/ before /u/ in endings

The change of /b/ or /g/ to /w/ before nasal consonant

Changes to the 2nd person singular past-tense: Replacement of the past-singular stem vowel with the past-plural stem vowel, and substitution of the ending ''-t'' with ''-i''

Short forms (''*stān, stēn'', ''*gān, gēn'') of the verbs for "stand" and "go"; but note that Crimean Gothic also has ''gēn''

The development of a gerund

The following innovations are common to the Ingvaeonic subgroup of the West Germanic languages:

The so-called Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law, which (e.g.) converted ''*munþ'' "mouth" (cf. Old High German ''mund'') into ''*mūþ'' (cf. Old English ''mūþ'').

The loss of the Germanic reflexive pronoun

The reduction of the three Germanic verbal plural forms into one form ending in ''-þ''

The development of Class III weak verbs into a relic class consisting of four verbs (''*sagjan'' "to say", ''*hugjan'' "to think", ''*habjan'' "to have", ''*libjan'' "to live")

The split of the Class II weak verb ending ''*-ō-'' into ''*-ō-/-ōja-''

Development of a plural ending *-ōs in a-stem nouns (note, Gothic also has ''-ōs'', but this is an independent development, caused by terminal devoicing of ''*-ōz''; Old Frisian has ''-ar'', which is thought to be a late borrowing from Danish)

Merger of the accusative and dative in first and second person pronouns (also shared by Old Low Franconian)

Possibly, the monophthongization of Germanic ''*ai'' to ''ē/ā'' (this may represent independent changes in Old Saxon and Anglo-Frisian)

The following innovations are common to the Anglo-Frisian subgroup of the Ingvaeonic languages:

Raising of nasalized ''a, ā'' into ''o, ō''

Anglo-Frisian brightening: Fronting of non-nasal ''a, ā'' to ''æ,ǣ'' when not followed by ''n'' or ''m''

Metathesis of ''CrV'' into ''CVr'', where ''C'' represents any consonant and ''V'' any vowel

Monophthongization of ''ai'' into ''ā''

==Vocabulary comparison== Several of the terms in the table below have had semantic drift. For example, the form ''Sterben'' and other terms for ''die'' are cognates with the English word ''starve''. There is also at least one example of a common borrowing from a non-Germanic source (''ounce'' and its cognates from Latin). {|class="wikitable" style="font-size: 85%" |- !width="75"|English ! Scots ! West Frisian ! Afrikaans ! Dutch ! Dutch (Limburgish) ! Low German ! Low German (Groningen) ! Middle German (Luxemburgish) ! German ! Gothic ! Icelandic ! Faroese ! Swedish ! Danish ! Norwegian (Bokmål) ! Norwegian (Nynorsk) |- |apple || aiple || apel || appel || appel || appel || Appel || Abbel || Apel || Apfel || aplus || epli || epli || äpple || æble || eple || eple |- |board || buird || board || bord || bord || bórdj/telleur || Boord || Bred || Briet || Brett || baúrd || borð || borð || bräde || bord || brett || brett |- |beech || beech || boeke || beuk || beuk || beuk || Boeoek / Böök || Beukenboom || Bich || Buche || bōka/-bagms || beyki || bók(artræ) || bok || bøg || bok || bok / bøk |- |book || beuk || boek || boek || boek || book || Book || Bouk || Buch || Buch || bōka || bók || bók || bok || bog || bok || bok |- |breast || breest ||boarst || bors || borst || boors || Bost || Bôrst || Broscht || Brust || brusts || brjóst || bróst / bringa || bröst || bryst || bryst || bryst |- |brown || broun || brún || bruin || bruin || broen || bruun || broen || brong || braun || bruns || brúnn || brúnur || brun || brun || brun || brun |- |day || day || dei || dag || dag || daag || Dag || Dag || Do || Tag || dags || dagur || dagur || dag || dag || dag || dag |- |dead || deid || dea || dood || dood || doed || doot || dood || dout || tot || dauþs || dauður || deyður || död || død || død || daud |- |die (starve) || dee || stjerre || sterf || sterven || stèrve || starven / döen || staarven || stierwen || sterben || diwan || deyja || doyggja || dö || dø || dø || døy / starva |- |enough || eneuch || genôch || genoeg || genoeg || genóg || noog || genog || genuch || genug || ganōhs || nóg || nóg/nógmikið || nog || nok || nok || nok |- |finger || finger || finger || vinger || vinger || veenger || Finger || Vinger || Fanger || Finger || figgrs || fingur || fingur || finger || finger || finger || finger |- |give || gie || jaan || gee || geven || geve || geven || geven || ginn || geben || giban || gefa || geva || ge / giva || give || gi || gje(va) |- |glass || gless || glês || glas || glas || glaas || Glas || Glas || Glas || Glas || – || glas || glas || glas || glas || glass || glas |- |gold || gowd || goud || goud || goud || goud / góldj || Gold || Gold || – || Gold || gulþ || gull || gull || guld / gull || guld || gull || gull |- |good || guid || gód || goed || goed || good || goot || goud || gutt || gut || gōþ(is) || góð(ur) / gott || góð(ur) / gott || god || god || god || god |- |hand || haund || hân || hand || hand || hand || Hand || Haand || Hand || Hand || handus || hönd || hond || hand || hånd || hånd || hand |- |head || heid || holle || hoof / kop || hoofd / kop || kop || Kopp || Heufd / Kop || Kopp || Haupt / Kopf || háubiþ || höfuð || høvd / høvur || huvud || hoved || hode || hovud |- |high || heich || heech || hoog || hoog || hoeg || hoog || hoog / höch || héich || hoch || háuh || hár || høg / ur || hög || høj || høy / høg || høg |- |home || hame || hiem || heim / tuis || heem, heim / thuis || thoes || Tohuus || Thoes || Heem || Heim || háimōþ || heim || heim || hem || hjem || hjem / heim || heim |- |hook / crook || heuk || hoek || haak || haak || haok || Haak || Hoak || Krop / Kramp || Haken || kramppa || haki / krókur || krókur / ongul || hake / krok || hage / krog || hake / krok || hake / krok |- |house || hoose || hûs || huis || huis || hoes || Huus || Hoes || Haus || Haus || hūs || hús || hús || hus || hus || hus || hus |- |many || mony || mannich / mennich || baie / menige || menig || minnig || Mennig || Ìnde || – || manch || manags || margir || mangir / nógvir || många || mange || mange || mange |- |moon || muin || moanne || maan || maan || maon || Maan || Moan || Mound || Mond || mēna || máni / tungl || máni || måne || måne || måne || måne |- |night || nicht || nacht || nag || nacht || nach || Nach / Nacht || Nacht || Nuecht || Nacht || nótt || nótt || nátt || natt || nat || natt || natt |- |no (nay) || nae || nee || nee || nee(n) || nei || nee || nee / nai || nee(n) || nee / nein / nö || nē || nei || nei || nej / nä || nej / næ || nei || nei |- |old (but: elder, eldest) || auld || âld || oud || oud || aajt (''old'') / gammel (''decayed'') || oolt / gammelig || old / olleg || aalt || alt || sineigs || gamall (but: eldri, elstur) / aldinn || gamal (but: eldri, elstur)|| gammal (but: äldre, äldst)|| gammel (but: ældre, ældst) || gammel (but: eldre, eldst) || gam(m)al (but: eldre, eldst) |- |one || ane || ien || een || een || ein || een || aine || een || eins || áins || einn || ein || en || en || en || ein |- |ounce || unce || ûns || ons || ons || óns || Ons || Onze || – || Unze || unkja || únsa || únsa || uns || unse || unse || unse / unsa |- |snow || snaw || snie || sneeu || sneeuw || sjnie || Snee || Snij / Snèj || Schlue || Schnee || snáiws || snjór || kavi / snjógvur || snö || sne || snø || snø |- |stone || stane || stien || steen || steen || stein || Steen || Stain || Steen || Stein || stáins || steinn || steinur || sten || sten || stein || stein |- |that || that || dat || daardie / dit || dat / die || dat / tot || dat / dit || dat / dij || dat || das || þata || það || tað || det || det || det || det |- |two / twain || twa || twa || twee || twee || twie || twee || twij / twèje || zoo / zwou / zwéin || zwei/zwo || twái || tveir / tvær / tvö || tveir / tvey / tvær / tvá || två || to || to || to |- |who || wha || wa || wie || wie || wee || wokeen || wel || wien || wer || Ƕas / hwas || hver || hvør || vem || hvem || hvem || kven |- |worm || wirm || wjirm || wurm || worm || weurm || Worm || Wörm || Wuerm || Wurm || maþa || maðkur / ormur || maðkur / ormur || mask / orm  || orm || makk / mark / orm   || makk/mark/orm |- !width="75"|English ! Scots ! West Frisian ! Afrikaans ! Dutch ! Dutch (Limburgish) ! Low German ! Low German (Groningen) ! Middle German (Luxemburgish) ! German ! Gothic ! Icelandic ! Faroese ! Swedish ! Danish ! Norwegian (Bokmål) ! Norwegian (Nynorsk) |}

See also

Germanic verb and its various subordinated articles

Language families and languages

Non-Indo-European roots of Germanic languages

List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents

Germanisation and Anglicisation

Germanic name

Germanic placenames

German name

German placename etymology

Isogloss

Germanic substrate hypothesis

Notes

External links

Germanic Lexicon Project

'Hover & Hear' pronunciations of the same Germanic words in dozens of Germanic languages and 'dialects', including English accents, and compare instantaneously side by side

''Bibliographie der Schreibsprachen'': Bibliography of medieval written forms of High and Low German and Dutch

Ethnologue Report for Germanic

Swadesh lists of Germanic basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)

Todays geographical extension, Worldmap on the German Wiki

Languages Category:Indo-European languages

af:Germaanse tale als:Germanische Sprachen ar:لغات جرمانية an:Luengas chermanicas ast:Llingües xermániques az:Alman qrupu bn:জার্মানীয় ভাষাসমূহ zh-min-nan:German gí-cho̍k be:Германскія мовы be-x-old:Германскія мовы bar:Germanische Sprochn br:Yezhoù germanek bg:Германски езици ca:Llengües germàniques cs:Germánské jazyky cy:Ieithoedd Germanaidd da:Germanske sprog de:Germanische Sprachen et:Germaani keeled el:Γερμανικές γλώσσες es:Lenguas germánicas eo:Ĝermana lingvaro eu:Germaniar hizkuntzak fa:زبان‌های ژرمنی fo:Germansk mál fr:Langues germaniques fy:Germaanske talen fur:Lenghis gjermanichis gd:Cànanan Gearmailteach gl:Linguas xermánicas gan:日耳曼語族 glk:آلمانی زوانؤن ko:게르만어파 hy:Գերմանական լեզուներ hi:जर्मैनी भाषा परिवार hsb:Germanske rěče hr:Germanski jezici id:Rumpun bahasa Germanik ia:Linguas germanic os:Гермайнаг æвзæгтæ is:Germönsk tungumál it:Lingue germaniche he:שפות גרמאניות kn:ಜರ್ಮನಿಕ್ ಭಾಷೆಗಳು ka:გერმანული ენები kk:Герман тілдері kw:Yethow germanek sw:Kigermanik ku:Zimanên germanî la:Linguae Germanicae lv:Ģermāņu valodas lt:Germanų kalbos li:Germaanse taole hu:Germán nyelvek mk:Германски јазици mr:जर्मेनिक भाषा arz:لغات جيرمانيه ms:Rumpun bahasa Germanik mwl:Lhénguas germánicas nl:Germaanse talen nds-nl:Germaanse sproaken ja:ゲルマン語派 frr:Germaans no:Germanske språk nn:Germanske språk nrm:Langue Gèrmannique oc:Lengas germanicas pms:Lenghe germàniche tpi:Ol Tokples Siamanik nds:Germaansche Spraken pl:Języki germańskie pt:Línguas germânicas ro:Limbile germanice qu:Germanu rimaykuna ru:Германские языки se:Germánalaš gielat sco:Germanic leids stq:Germaniske Sproaken scn:Lingui girmànichi simple:Germanic languages sk:Germánske jazyky sl:Germanski jeziki ckb:زمانە جێرمەنییەکان sr:Германски језици sh:Germanski jezici fi:Germaaniset kielet sv:Germanska språk th:กลุ่มภาษาเจอร์เมนิก tg:Забонҳои германӣ tr:Cermen dilleri uk:Германські мови vi:Nhóm ngôn ngữ German vls:Germaansche toaln yo:Àwọn èdè oníjẹ́mánì diq:Zıwanê Cermenki zea:Germaonse taelen zh:日耳曼语族