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Middle High German (German: Mittelhochdeutsch), abbreviated MHG (Mhd.), is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. It is preceded by Old High German and followed by Early New High German. In some uses, the term covers a longer period, going up to 1500.^[1]

Varieties[link]

Middle High German is not a unified written language and the term covers two main dialect areas:^[2]

• Upper German (Oberdeutsch)
  • Alemannic (Alemannisch = Westoberdeutsch)
  • Bavarian (Bairisch = Ostoberdeutsch)
  • East Franconian (Ostfränkisch = Nordoberdeutsch)
  • South Franconian (Südfränkisch = Nordoberdeutsch)
• Central German or Middle German (Mitteldeutsch)
  • Franconian (Westmitteldeutsch)
    • Rhine Franconian (Rheinfränkisch)
    • Middle Franconian (Mittelfränkisch)
    • Hessian (Hessisch)
  • East Central German (Ostmitteldeutsch)
    • Thuringian (Thüringisch)
    • Upper Saxon (Obersächsisch)
    • Silesian (Schlesisch)
    • High Prussian (Hochpreußisch)

The Middle Low German and Middle Dutch areas in the North are not covered by MHG. While there is no standard MHG, the prestige of the Hohenstaufen court gave rise in the late 12th century to a supra-regional literary language (mittelhochdeutsche Dichtersprache) based on Swabian, an Alemannic dialect. However, the picture is complicated by the fact that modern editions of MHG texts have a tendency to use normalised spellings based on this variety (usually called "Classical MHG"), which make the written language appear more consistent than is actually the case in the manuscripts. It is uncertain whether the literary language reflected a supra-regional spoken language of the courts.

An important development in this period was the eastward expansion of German settlement beyond the Elbe-Saale line which marked the limit of Old High German. This process started in the 11th century, and all the East Central German dialects are a result of this expansion.

"Judeo-German" is the precursor of the Yiddish language which is attested in the 13th-14th centuries as a variety of Middle High German written in Hebrew characters.

Writing system[link]

Middle High German texts are written in the Latin alphabet, in Gothic minuscules that evolved into the Fraktur typefaces of the Early Modern period.

Middle High German had no standardised spelling. Modern editions, however, generally standardise according to a set of conventions established by Karl Lachmann in the 19th century.^[3] There are several important features in this standardised orthography which are not characteristics of the original manuscripts:

• the marking of vowel length is almost entirely absent from MHG manuscripts.
• the marking of umlauted vowels is often absent or inconsistent in the manuscripts.
• a curly-tailed z (<ȥ> or <ʒ>) is used in modern handbooks and grammars to indicate the /s/ or /s/-like sound which arose from Germanic /t/ in the High German consonant shift. This character has no counterpart in the original manuscripts which typically use <s> or <sz> to indicate this sound
• the original texts often use <i> and <u> for the semi-vowels /j/ and /w/.

A particular issue is that many manuscripts are of much later date than the works they contain, with signs of later scribes modifying the spellings, with greater or lesser consistency, in accordance with the conventions of their own time. There is also considerable regional variation in the spellings of the original texts, which modern editions largely conceal.

Vowels[link]

The standardised orthography of MHG editions uses the following vowel spellings:

• Short vowels: <a e i o u> and the umlauted vowels <ä ö ü>
• Long vowels: <â ê î ô û> and the umlauted vowels <æ œ iu>
• Closing diphthongs: <ei ou> and the umlauted diphthong <öu/eu/oi>
• Opening diphthongs: <ie uo> and the umlauted diphthong <üe>

Grammars (as opposed to textual editions) often distinguish between <ë> and <e>, the former indicating the mid-open /ɛ/ which derived from Germanic /e/, the latter (often with a dot beneath it) indicating the mid-close /e/ which results from primary umlaut. No such orthographic distinction is made in MHG manuscripts.

The etymological distinction made in the standardised spelling between <e> and <ä>, with <ä> representing a lower vowel arising from the secondary umlaut of /a/, may well be valid for the earlier texts, but the distinction between these two front vowels was lost by the end of the period (as in Modern German).

Consonants[link]

The standardised orthography of MHG editions uses the following consonant spellings:

• Stops: <p t k/c b d g q>
• Affricates: <pf/ph tz/z>
• Fricatives: <v f s ȥ sch ch h>
• Nasals: <m n>
• Liquids: <l r>
• Semivowels: <w j>

Grammar[link]

Pronouns[link]

Middle High German pronouns of the first person refer to the speaker; those of the second person refer to an addressed person. The pronouns of the third person may be used to replace nominal phrases. These have the same gender, number and case as the original nominal phrase. This goes for other pronouns, too.

Personal pronouns[link]

• Note: the genitive form is used as an adjective and hence takes on adjective endings following the normal rules. This includes 'unser' and 'iuwer', despite the fact that they already end in -er.

Nouns[link]

Middle High German nouns were declined according to four cases (Nominative, genitive, dative, accusative), two numbers (singular and plural) and three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), much like Modern High German, though there are several important differences.

Strong nouns[link]

Weak nouns[link]

Note that ë is a short, open /ɛ/, so MHG dër /dɛr/ as opposed to modern /deːr/.

Articles[link]

Middle High German articles have a feature called "strength", which influences the declension of the adjectives. There are strong articles, weak articles, and articles that have strong and weak cases. Sometimes this feature is not constant in literature.

The inflected forms depend on the number, the case and the gender of the corresponding noun. Articles have the same plural forms for all three genders.

Definite article (strong)

The instrumental case, only existing in the neuter singular, is used only with prepositions: von diu, ze diu, etc. In all the other genders and in the plural it is substituted with the dative: von dëm, von dër, von dën.

Verbs[link]

Verbs were conjugated according to three moods (indicative, subjunctive and imperative), three persons, two numbers (singular and plural) and two tenses (present tense and preterite) There was a present participle, a past participle and a verbal noun that somewhat resembles the Latin gerund, but that only existed in the genitive and dative cases.

An important distinction was made between strong verbs (that exhibited ablaut) and weak verbs (that didn't).

Furthermore, there were also some irregular verbs.

Strong verbs[link]

The present tense conjugation went as follows:

Imperative: 2.sg: nim, 2.pl: nëmet Present participle: nëmente Infinitive: nëmen Verbal noun: Genitive: nëmennes, dative: ze nëmenne

The bold vowels demonstrate umlaut; the vowels in brackets were dropped in rapid speech.

The preterite conjugation went as follows:

Past participle: genomen

Weak verbs[link]

The present tense conjugation went as follows:

Imperative: 2.sg: suoche, 2.pl: suochet Present participle: suochente Infinitive: suochen Verbal noun: Genitive: suochennes, dative: ze suochenne

The vowels in brackets were dropped in rapid speech.

The preterite conjugation went as follows:

Past participle: gesuochet

Periodisation[link]

There are several criteria which separate MHG from the preceding Old High German period:

• the weakening of unstressed vowels to <e> - OHG taga > MHG tage ("days")
• the full development of Umlaut and its use to mark a number of morphological categories
• the devoicing of final stops - OHG tag > MHG tac ("day")

Culturally, the two periods are distinguished by the transition from a predominantly clerical written culture to one centred on the courts of the great nobles. The rise of the Swabian Hohenstaufen and then the Luxemburg, Wittelsbach and Habsburg dynasties make the South the dominant region in both political and cultural terms.

Linguistically, the transition to Early New High German is marked by four vowel changes which together produce the phonemic system of modern German:

• Monophthongisation of some of the MHG diphthongs: MHG huot> NHG Hut ("hat")
• Diphthongisation of long vowels MHG hût > NHG Haut ("skin").
• lengthening of stressed short vowels in open syllables MHG sagen /zaɡən/ > NHG sagen /zaːɡən/ ("say")
• The loss of unstressed vowels in many circumstances - MHG vrouwe > NHG Frau ("lady")

The centres of culture in the ENHG period are no longer the courts but the towns.

Phonology[link]

The charts show the vowel and consonant systems of classical MHG. The spellings indicated are the standard spellings used in modern editions - there is much more variation in the manuscripts.

Vowels[link]

Notes:

1. Not all dialects distinguish the three unrounded mid front vowels.
2. It is probable that the short high and mid vowels are lower than their long equivalents, as in Modern German, but this is impossible to establish from the written sources.
3. The <e> found in unstressed syllables may indicate [ɛ] or schwa [ə].

Diphthongs[link]

MHG diphthongs are indicated by the spellings: <ei>, <ie>, <ou>, <öu> and <eu>, <üe>, <uo>, having the approximate values of /ei/, /iə/, /ou/, /øy/, /eu/, /yə/, and /uo/, respectively.

Consonants[link]

1. Precise information about the articulation of consonants is impossible to establish, and will have varied between dialects.
2. 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.
3. MHG has long consonants, and the following double consonant spellings indicate not vowel length as in Modern German orthography, but rather genuine double consonants: pp, bb, tt, dd, ck (for /kk/), gg, ff, ss, zz, mm, nn, ll, rr.
4. It is reasonable to assume that /x/ had an allophone [χ] after back vowels, as in Modern German.

Sample text[link]

From the prologue of Hartmann von Aue's Iwein (circa 1200; c.f. MS B (Giessen), mid 13th c.)

This text shows many typical features of Middle High German poetic language. Most Middle High German words survive into modern German in some form or other: this passage contains only one word (jehen 'say' 14) which has since disappeared from the language. But many words have changed their meaning substantially. Muot (6) means 'state of mind', where modern German Mut means courage. Êre (3) can be translated with 'honour', but is quite a different concept of honour from modern German Ehre; the medieval term focusses on reputation and the respect accorded to status in society.

From the beginning of Das Nibelungenlied:

Literature[link]

• Minnesang
  • Codex Manesse
  • Walther von der Vogelweide
  • Heinrich Frauenlob
  • Oswald von Wolkenstein

• Epics
  • Hartmann von Aue's Erec and Iwein
  • Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival
  • Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan
  • Nibelungenlied
  • Kudrun
  • Ulrich von Türheim's Rennewart and Willehalm
  • Rudolf von Ems's works
  • Konrad von Würzburg's works
  • Eilhart von Oberge' Tristrant

• Chronicles
  • Annolied (Early Middle High German)
  • Jans der Enikel's Weltchronik and Fürstenbuch
  • Kaiserchronik

• Law
  • Sachsenspiegel

See also[link]

• High German consonant shift
• Matthias von Lexer

References[link]

External links[link]

• Wright's Middle High German Primer
• Middle High German conceptual database
• Online versions of the two main MHG dictionaries
• Mediaevum.de's MHG Texts:
  • 11th Century (Early MHG)
  • 12th Century
  • 13th Century
  • 14th Century
• Middle High German audio literature

Sources[link]

• Hermann Paul, Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik, 23rd edn, edited by Peter Wiehl and Sigfried Grosse (Niemeyer, 1989) ISBN 3-484-10233-0
• M.O'C. Walshe, A Middle High German Reader: With Grammar, Notes and Glossary (Oxford University Press, 1974) ISBN 0-19-872082-3
• Joseph Wright, Middle High German Primer, 5th edn revised by M.O'C. Walshe (Oxford University Press, 1955)

"Hochdeutsch" or "High German" is also used in the sense of Standard German.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2006)

The present-day distribution of the Germanic languages in Europe:
North Germanic languages

  Icelandic

  Faroese

  Norwegian

  Swedish

  Danish

West Germanic languages

  Scots

  English

  Frisian

  Dutch

  Low German

  High German

Dots indicate areas where multilingualism is common.

The High German languages (in German, Hochdeutsche Sprachen) or the High German dialects (Hochdeutsche Mundarten/Dialekte) are any of the varieties of standard German, Luxembourgish and Yiddish, as well as the local German dialects spoken in central and southern Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Luxembourg and in neighboring portions of Belgium and the Netherlands (Ripuarian dialects in southeast Limburg), France (Alsace and northern Lorraine), Italy, Denmark, and Poland. The language is also spoken in diaspora in Romania (Transylvania), Russia, the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Namibia.

As a technical term, the "high" in High German is a geographical reference to the group of dialects that forms "High German" (in the broader sense), out of which developed standard High German (in the narrower sense), Yiddish and Luxembourgish. It refers to the upland and mountainous areas of central and southern Germany, it also includes Luxembourg, Austria, Liechtenstein and most of Switzerland. This is opposed to Low German, which is spoken on the lowlands and along the flat sea coasts of the north.^[1] High German in this broader sense can be subdivided into Upper German (Oberdeutsch, this includes the Austrian and Swiss German dialects), Central German (Mitteldeutsch, this includes Luxembourgish, which is now a standardized language), and High Franconian which is a transitional dialect between the two.^[2]

History[link]

The High German dialects as used in central and southern Germany (Saxony, Bavaria) and Austria were an important basis for the development of standard German.^[3]

The historical forms of the language are Old High German and Middle High German.

Classification[link]

High German (in the broader sense) is distinguished from other West Germanic varieties in that it took part in the High German consonant shift (c. AD 500). To see this, compare English/Low Saxon pan/Pann with German Pfanne ([p] to [pf]), English/Low Saxon two/twee with German zwei ([t] to [ts]), English/Low Saxon make/maken with German machen ([k] to [x]).^[4] In the High Alemannic dialects, there is a further shift; Sack (like English/Low Saxon "sack/Sack") is pronounced [z̥akx] ([k] to [kx]).

Family tree[link]

Note that divisions between subfamilies within Germanic are rarely precisely defined, as most form continuous clines, with adjacent dialects being mutually intelligible and more separated ones not. In particular, there has never been an original "Proto-High German". For this and other reasons, the idea of representing the relationships between West Germanic language forms in a tree diagram at all is controversial among linguists. What follows should be used with care in the light of this caveat.

• Central German (German: Mitteldeutsch)
  • East Central German
    • Standard German^[5]
    • Lausitzisch-Neumärkisch
    • Upper Saxon
    • North Upper Saxon
    • Thuringian Dialect
    • Silesian German (mostly in Lower Silesia, in Poland)
    • High Prussian
  • Transylvanian Saxon (in Transylvania)
  • West Central German
    • Central Franconian
      • Ripuarian
      • Moselle Franconian, including the Luxembourgish language
    • Rhine Franconian
      • Lorraine Franconian (France)
      • Pfälzisch language
      • Hunsrückisch
        • Riograndenser Hunsrückisch (in Southern Brazil)
    • Central Hessian (Hessian)
    • East Hessian (Hessian)
    • North Hessian (Hessian)
• Transitional areas between Central German and Upper German
  • High Franconian
    • East Franconian German
    • South Franconian German
• Pennsylvania German (in the United States and Canada)
• Upper German (German: Oberdeutsch)
  • Alemannic
    • Swabian
    • Low Alemannic (including one Swiss German dialect: Basel German)
    • Alsatian language (but often also classified as within Low Alemannic)
    • Central Alemannic
    • High Alemannic (including many Swiss German dialects)
    • Highest Alemannic (including Swiss German dialects)
  • Austro-Bavarian (On the use of dialects and Standard German in Austria, see Austrian language)
    • Northern Austro-Bavarian (spoken in Upper Palatinate)
    • Central Austro-Bavarian (includes the dialects of Upper Bavaria, Lower Bavaria, Upper Austria, Lower Austria and Vienna — see Viennese language)
    • Southern Austro-Bavarian (includes the dialects of Tirol, Carinthia and Styria)
    • Cimbrian (northeastern Italy)
    • Mócheno (Trentino, in Italy)
    • Hutterite German (in Canada and the United States)
• Yiddish
  • Western Yiddish (Germany, France)
  • Eastern Yiddish
    • Northeastern Yiddish (Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Russia, northeastern Poland)
    • Central Yiddish (Poland, Galicia)
    • Southeastern Yiddish (Ukraine, Bessarabia, Romania)
• Texas German, a dialect spoken by descendants of immigrants who settled in the Texas Hill Country region in the mid-19th century.

References[link]

Germanic
Geographic distribution:	In northern, western and central Europe, Anglo-America, Oceania, southern Africa
Linguistic classification:	Indo-European Germanic
Proto-language:	Proto-Germanic
Subdivisions:	North Germanic West Germanic East Germanic (extinct)
ISO 639-2 and 639-5:	gem
Countries where a Germanic language is the first language of the majority of the population   Countries where a Germanic language is an official but not primary language

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 called 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^[1][2] and over 100 million^[3] native speakers respectively. They belong to the West Germanic family. The West Germanic group also includes other major languages, such as Dutch with 23 million^[4] and Afrikaans with over 6 million native speakers;^[5]. The North Germanic languages include Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese, which have a combined total of about 20 million speakers.^[6] The SIL Ethnologue lists 53 different Germanic languages.

Characteristics[link]

Germanic languages possess a number of defining features compared with other Indo-European languages, such as the following:

1. Large numbers of vowels. For example, the Amstetten dialect of Bavarian German has 13 distinct long vowels.^[7] Standard Swedish has 9 long vowels and 8 short vowels, which are distinguished by both length and quality, making for at least 16 vowel qualities.^[8]
2. A change known as Germanic umlaut, which modified vowel qualities when a high vocalic segment (/i/, /iː/ or /j/) followed in the next syllable. This is largely responsible for the large vowel systems.
3. The reduction of the various tense and aspect combinations of the Indo-European verbal system into only two: the present tense and the past tense (also called the preterite).
4. 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.
5. The use of so-called strong and weak adjectives: different sets of inflectional endings for adjectives depending on the definiteness of the noun phrase. (A similar development happened in the Balto-Slavic languages. This has been lost in modern English, but was present in Old English, and is still present in modern German.)
6. Grimm's Law, which shifted the values of all the Indo-European stop consonants. (A similar shift occurred later in the history of German, known as the High German consonant shift.)
7. Some words with etymologies that are difficult to link to other Indo-European families but with variants that appear in almost all Germanic languages.
8. The sound change known as Verner's Law, which left a trace of Indo-European accent variations in voicing variations in fricatives.
9. The shifting of word stress onto word stems and later onto the first syllable of the word, along with significant phonological reduction of all other syllables. (A similar change occurred in the history of the Italic languages and the Celtic languages. English no longer has initial stress due to the borrowing of numerous foreign words, especially from Latin and French.)

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 uncommon cross-linguistically. This feature was not inherited from Proto-Germanic,^[9] but may have already been present in latent form, and may be related to Wackernagel's Law, an Indo-European law dictating that sentence clitics must be placed second. 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[link]

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.^[10] 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.^[11] 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 script, 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, Ȝ, and the Latinized runes Þ and Ƿ (with its Latin counterpart W). In print, German used to be prevalently set in blackletter typefaces (e.g. fraktur or schwabacher) until the 1940s, whereas Kurrent and since the early 20th century Sütterlin was used for German handwriting.

History[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

The expansion of the Germanic tribes 750 BC – AD 1 (after the Penguin Atlas of World History 1988):

   Settlements before 750 BC

   New settlements by 500 BC

   New settlements by 250 BC

   New settlements by AD 1

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 c. 500 BC. Proto-Germanic itself was likely spoken after c. 500 BC,^[12] and Proto-Norse from the 2nd century AD and later is still quite close to reconstructed Proto-Germanic, 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^{[citation needed]}, 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, 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.

The present-day distribution of the Germanic languages in Europe:
North Germanic languages

  Icelandic

  Faroese

  Norwegian

  Swedish

  Danish

West Germanic languages

  Scots

  English

  Frisian

  Dutch

  Low German

  German

Dots indicate areas where multilingualism is common.

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 unified until well past 1000 AD, and in fact the mainland Scandinavian languages still largely retain mutual intelligibility into modern times. The main split in these languages is between the mainland languages and the island languages to the west, especially Icelandic, which has maintained the grammar of Old Norse virtually unchanged while the mainland languages have diverged greatly.

Classification[link]

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[link]

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.

• ^1 There are conflicting opinions on the classification of Lombardic. Contrary to its isolated position in the table above, it also has been classified as close to either Upper German or Old Saxon.
• ^2 Late Middle Ages refers to the post-Black Death period. Especially for the language situation in Norway this event was important.
• ^3 From Early Northern Middle English^[13]. McClure gives Northumbrian Old English^[14]. In the Oxford Companion to the English Language (p. 894) the 'sources' of Scots are described as "the Old English of the Kingdom of Bernicia" and "the Scandinavian-influenced English of immigrants from Northern and Midland England in the 12-13c [...]." The historical stages 'Early—Middle—Modern Scots' are used, for example, in the "Concise Scots Dictionary"^[15] and "A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue"^[16].
• ^4 The speakers of Norn were assimilated to speak the Modern Scots varieties.
• ^5 The Gutnish language today is practically a dialect of Swedish.
• ^6 Mainland Old Norwegian existed along a dialect continuum between West and East Old Norse.

Contemporary[link]

Germanic languages and main dialect groups

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
      • Scots
      • Ulster 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
      • Dalecarlian dialects
  • Gutnish

Common linguistic features[link]

Phonology[link]

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 [ǣ]), 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.

Table of outcomes[link]

The following table shows the main outcomes of Proto-Germanic vowels and consonants in the various older languages. For vowels, only the outcomes in stressed syllables are shown. Outcomes in unstressed syllables are quite different, vary from language to language, and depend on a number of other factors, e.g. whether the syllable was medial or final, whether the syllable was open or closed, and (in some cases) whether the preceding syllable was light or heavy.

Notes:

• C- means before a vowel (word-initially, or sometimes after a consonant).
• -C- means between vowels.
• -C means after a vowel (word-finally or before a consonant). Word-final outcomes generally occurred after deletion of final short vowels (which occurred shortly after Proto-Germanic, and is reflected in the history of all written languages except for Proto-Norse).
• The above three are given in the order C-, -C-, -C. If one is omitted, the previous one applies. For example, f, -[v]- means that [v] occurs after a vowel regardless of what follows.
• Something like a(…u) means "a if /u/ occurs in the next syllable".
• Something like a(n) means "a if /n/ immediately follows".
• Something like (n)a means "a if /n/ immediately precedes".

Morphology[link]

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 primary innovations in Proto-Germanic 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).

Strong vs. weak nouns and adjectives[link]

Originally, adjectives in Proto-Indo-European followed the same declensional classes as nouns. The most common class (the o/ā class) used a combination of o-stem endings for masculine and neuter genders and ā-stems ending for feminine genders, but other common classes (e.g. the i class and u class) used endings from a single vowel-stem declension for all genders, and various other classes existed that were based on other declensions. A quite different set of "pronominal" endings was used for pronouns, determiners and words with related semantics (e.g. "all", "only").

An important innovation in Proto-Germanic was the development of two separate sets of adjective endings, originally corresponding to a distinction between indefinite semantics ("a man") and definite semantics ("the man"). The endings of indefinite adjectives were derived from a combination of pronominal endings with one of the common vowel-stem adjective declensions — usually the o/ā class (often termed the a/ō class in the specific context of the Germanic languages), but sometimes the i or u classes. Definite adjectives, however, had endings based on n-stem nouns. Originally both types of adjectives could be used by themselves, but already by Proto-Germanic times a pattern evolved whereby definite adjectives had to be accompanied by a determiner with definite semantics (e.g. a definite article, demonstrative pronoun, possessive pronoun, or the like), while indefinite adjectives were used in other circumstances (either accompanied by a word with indefinite semantics such as "a", "one" or "some", or unaccompanied).

In the 19th century, the two types of adjectives — indefinite and definite — were respectively termed "strong" and "weak", names which are still commonly used. These names were based on the appearance of the two sets of endings in modern German. In German, the distinctive case endings formerly present on nouns have largely disappeared, with the result that the load of distinguishing one case from another is almost entirely carried by determiners and adjectives. Furthermore, due to regular sound change, the various definite (n-stem) adjective endings coalesced to the point where only two endings (-e and -en) remain in modern German to express the 16 possible inflectional categories of the language (masculine/feminine/neuter/plural crossed with nominative/accusative/dative/genitive — modern German merges all genders in the plural). The indefinite (a/ō-stem) adjective endings were less affected by sound change, with six endings remaining (-, -e, -es, -er, -em, -en), cleverly distributed in a way that is capable of expressing the various inflectional categories without too much ambiguity. As a result, the definite endings were thought of as too "weak" to carry inflectional meaning and in need of "strengthening" by the presence of an accompanying determiner, while the indefinite endings were viewed as "strong" enough to indicate the inflectional categories even when standing alone. (This view is enhanced by the fact that modern German largely uses weak-ending adjectives when accompanying an indefinite article, and hence the indefinite/definite distinction no longer clearly applies.) By analogy, the terms "strong" and "weak" were extended to the corresponding noun classes, with a-stem and ō-stem nouns termed "strong" while n-stem nouns termed "weak".

However, in Proto-Germanic — and still in Gothic, the most conservative Germanic language — the terms "strong" and "weak" are not clearly appropriate. For one thing, there were a large number of noun declensions. The a-stem, ō-stem and n-stem declensions were the most common, and represented targets into which the other declensions were eventually absorbed, but this process occurred only gradually. Originally the n-stem declension was not a single declension but a set of separate declensions (e.g. -an, -ōn, -īn) with related endings, and these endings were in no way any "weaker" than the endings of any other declensions. (For example, among the 8 possible inflectional categories of a noun — singular/plural crossed with nominative/accusative/dative/genitive — masculine an-stem nouns in Gothic include 7 endings and feminine ōn-stem nouns include 6 endings, meaning there is very little ambiguity of "weakness" in these endings and in fact much less than in the German "strong" endings.) Although it is possible to group the various noun declensions into three basic categories — vowel-stem, n-stem and other-consonant-stem (aka "minor declensions") — the vowel-stem nouns do not display any sort of unity in their endings that supports grouping them together with each other but separate from the n-stem endings.

It is only in later languages that the binary distinction between "strong" and "weak" nouns become more relevant. In Old English, the n-stem nouns form a single, clear class, but the masculine a-stem and feminine ō-stem nouns have little in common with each other, and neither has much similarity to the small class of u-stem nouns. Similarly, in Old Norse, the masculine a-stem and feminine ō-stem nouns have little in common with each other, and the continuations of the masculine an-stem and feminine ōn/īn-stem nouns are also quite distinct. It is only in modern German that the various vowel-stem nouns have merged to the point that a binary strong/weak distinction clearly applies.

As a result, newer grammatical descriptions of the Germanic languages often avoid the terms "strong" and "weak" except in conjunction with German itself, preferring instead to use the terms "indefinite" and "definite" for adjectives and to distinguish nouns by their actual stem class.

In English, both two sets of adjective endings were lost entirely in the late Middle English period.

The following shows a typical masculine a-stem noun, Proto-Germanic *fiskaz "fish", and its development in the various old literary languages:

Linguistic developments[link]

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)^[35]
• The conversion of /ē₁/ into /ā/ (vs. Gothic /ē/) in initial syllables^[36]
• 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")^[37] 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/^[38] (a development which continues the general trend of de-reduplication in Gmc^[39]); 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).^[40]
• 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^[41].
• 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, which includes English, Frisian, and to some extent Dutch and Low German, but not High German:

• The so-called Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law, with loss of /n/ before voiceless friactives: e.g. *munþ, *gans > Old English mūþ, gōs > "mouth, goose", but German mund, gans.
• 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"; cf. the numerous Old High German verbs in -ēn).
• The split of the Class II weak verb ending *-ō- into *-ō-/-ōja- (cf. Old English -ian < -ōjan, but Old High Geman -ōn).
• 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). Cf. modern English plural -(e)s, but German plural -e.
• 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[link]

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).

See also[link]

• 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 placename etymology
• German name
• German placename etymology
• Isogloss
• Germanic substrate hypothesis

Notes[link]