Back Агерман бызшәақәа Abkhazian Germaanse tale Afrikaans Germanische Sprachen GSW ጀርመናዊ ቋንቋዎች Amharic Luengas chermanicas AN Germanisca sprǣca ANG لغات جرمانية Arabic لغات چيرمانيه ARZ Llingües xermániques AST German dilləri Azerbaijani
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| Germanic | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution | Worldwide, principally Europe (Central Europe, Northern Europe, and Western Europe), Africa (East Africa and Southern Africa), the Americas (Anglo-America, the Dutch Caribbean, and Suriname), Asia (South Asia and Southeast Asia), and Oceania |
Native speakers | c. 515 million |
| Linguistic classification | Indo-European
|
| Proto-language | Proto-Germanic |
| Subdivisions | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 / 5 | gem |
| Linguasphere | 52- (phylozone) |
| Glottolog | germ1287 |
 European Germanic languages | |
 World map showing countries and territories where at least one Germanic language is the primary or official language Countries or territories where the first language of most of the population is a Germanic language
Countries or territories where a Germanic language is an official language but not a primary language
Countries or territories where a Germanic language has no official status but is notable, i.e. used in some areas of life and/or spoken among a local minority | |
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The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people[nb 1] mainly in Europe, Northern America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, English, is also the world's most widely spoken language with an estimated 2 billion speakers. All Germanic languages are derived from Proto-Germanic, spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia, Iron Age Northern Germany[2] and along the North Sea and Baltic coasts.[3]
The West Germanic languages include the three most widely spoken Germanic languages: English with around 360–400 million native speakers;[4][nb 2] German, with over 100 million native speakers;[5] and Dutch, with 24 million native speakers. Other West Germanic languages include Afrikaans, an offshoot of Dutch originating from the Afrikaners of South Africa, with over 7.1 million native speakers;[6] Low German, considered a separate collection of unstandardized dialects, with roughly 4.35–7.15 million native speakers and probably 6.7–10 million people who can understand it [7]: 88 [8][9] (at least 2.2 million in Germany (2016)[8] and 2.15 million in the Netherlands (2003));[10][7]: 88 Yiddish, once used by approximately 13 million Jews in pre-World War II Europe,[11] now with approximately 1.5 million native speakers; Scots, with 1.5 million native speakers; Limburgish varieties with roughly 1.3 million speakers along the Dutch–Belgian–German border; and the Frisian languages with over 500,000 native speakers in the Netherlands and Germany.
The largest North Germanic languages are Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian, which are in part mutually intelligible and have a combined total of about 20 million native speakers in the Nordic countries and an additional five million second language speakers; since the Middle Ages, however, these languages have been strongly influenced by Middle Low German, a West Germanic language, and Low German words account for about 30–60% of their vocabularies according to various estimates. Other extant North Germanic languages are Faroese, Icelandic, and Elfdalian, which are more conservative languages with no significant Low German influence, more complex grammar and limited mutual intelligibility with other North Germanic languages today.[12]
The East Germanic branch included Gothic, Burgundian and Vandalic. The last to die off was Crimean Gothic, spoken until the late 18th century in some isolated areas of Crimea.[13]
The SIL Ethnologue lists 48 different living Germanic languages, 41 of which belong to the Western branch and six to the Northern branch; it places Riograndenser Hunsrückisch German in neither of the categories, but it is often considered a German dialect by linguists.[14] The total number of Germanic languages throughout history is unknown as some of them, especially the East Germanic languages, disappeared during or after the Migration Period. Some of the West Germanic languages also did not survive past the Migration Period, including Lombardic. As a result of World War II and subsequent mass expulsion of Germans, the German language suffered a significant loss of Sprachraum, as well as moribundity and extinction of several of its dialects. In the 21st century, German dialects are dying out[nb 3] as Standard German gains primacy.[15]
The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic, also known as Common Germanic, which was spoken in about the middle of the 1st millennium BC in Iron Age Scandinavia and Iron Age Northern Germany.[16] Proto-Germanic, along with all of its descendants, notably has a number of unique linguistic features, most famously the consonant change known as "Grimm's law." Early varieties of Germanic entered history when the Germanic tribes moved south from Scandinavia and northern Germany in the 2nd century BC to settle in the area of today's western Germany and along the Baltic coasts.[17]
- ^ König & van der Auwera (1994).
- ^ Bell-Fialkoll, Andrew, ed. (2000). The Role of Migration in the History of the Eurasian Steppe: Sedentary Civilization v. "Barbarian" and Nomad. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 117. ISBN 0-312-21207-0.
- ^ "Germanic languages - Proto-Germanic, Indo-European, Germanic Dialects | Britannica". Archived from the original on 29 December 2023. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
- ^ "Världens 100 största språk 2010" [The world's 100 largest languages in 2010]. Nationalencyklopedin (in Swedish). 2010. Archived from the original on 6 October 2014. Retrieved 12 February 2014.
- ^ SIL Ethnologue (2006). 95 million speakers of Standard German; 105 million including Middle and Upper German dialects; 120 million including Low German and Yiddish.
- ^ "Afrikaans". Archived from the original on 3 December 2013. Retrieved 3 August 2016.
- ^ a b Bloemhoff, Henk (2005). Taaltelling Nedersaksisch. Een enquête naar het gebruik en de beheersing van het Nedersaksisch in Nederland [Lower Saxon Language Census. A survey of the use and proficiency of Low Saxon in the Netherlands] (PDF). Nedersaksisch Instituut (Report) (in Dutch). Groningen: Rijksuniversiteit te Groningen. ISBN 90-6466-1324. LCCN 2006364430. OCLC 230137295. OL 31709135M. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2 December 2024. Retrieved 30 December 2024.
- ^ a b Status und Gebrauch des Niederdeutschen 2016 Archived 16 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine, A. Adler, C. Ehlers, R. Goltz, A. Kleene, A. Plewnia (2016)
- ^ Saxon, Low Archived 2 January 2018 at the Wayback Machine Ethnologue.
- ^ The Other Languages of Europe: Demographic, Sociolinguistic, and Educational Perspectives by Guus Extra, Durk Gorter; Multilingual Matters, 2001 – 454; page 10.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
yivo-yiddishwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Holmberg, Anders and Christer Platzack (2005). "The Scandinavian languages". In The Comparative Syntax Handbook, eds Guglielmo Cinque and Richard S. Kayne. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Excerpt at Durham University Archived 3 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ "1 Cor. 13:1–12". lrc.la.utexas.edu. Archived from the original on 23 March 2021. Retrieved 3 August 2016.
- ^ "Germanic". Ethnologue. Archived from the original on 18 July 2013. Retrieved 3 August 2016.
- ^ Heine, Matthias (16 November 2017). "Sprache und Mundart: Das Aussterben der deutschen Dialekte". Die Welt. Archived from the original on 23 March 2021. Retrieved 4 October 2018.
- ^ "Germanic peoples". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
- ^ "The Early Germanic Peoples: A Historical Overview from Ancient Sources". The Archaeologist. 18 May 2024. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
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