West Germanic languages

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The West Germanic languages are a subgroup of the Germanic languages , which includes English , Standard German , Dutch , Afrikaans , Low German , Frisian and Yiddish . A detailed list of the individual languages ​​can be found at the end of this article .

Early written certificates

(West-) Germanic names of tribes, gods and people in Latinized form, plus a few words such as urus (aurochs), glesum (amber), ganta (goose) are already passed on through ancient literature, for example through the Germania of Tacitus and sapo (make-up). The earliest autochthonous written evidence of West Germanic is the Frienstedt ridge with a runic inscription from the 3rd century AD, which, however, is largely isolated. About 80 other runic inscriptions from West Germanic areas are known from the time up to the 7th century, when the runic tradition broke off with Christianization.

A scarcely denser transmission of West Germanic language in fragmentary written evidence begins from the 6th century. The Lex Salica , for example, originates from this period , a Latin text that was created in the western part of the Franconian Empire and contains individual words of Germanic origin from the Old Franconian language , which later became extinct .

The transmission of entire texts begins in the 8th century. For example, Old English texts are documented for the first time in this century, although the best-known source of Old English , the heroic poem Beowulf , only survives in a manuscript from around 1000. Texts in Old Bavarian , Old Alemannic and Old Upper Franconian, those West Germanic variants that are also summarized under the term Old High German , are also documented from the 8th century . From the 9th century, texts in Old Saxon have also come down to us, the predecessor language of Low German , here in particular Genesis and Heliand . Old Frisian has only been documented by written sources since the 13th century.

The question of the existence of a West Germanic original language

West Germanic languages ​​around 580 AD

In view of the lack of West Germanic texts from the time of the Migration Period, it is not certain whether there was ever an approximately uniform West Germanic language (Proto West Germanic). The American old Germanist Don rings formulates the current state of research as follows:

“That North Germanic is a self-contained subgroup [of Germanic] is perfectly obvious, as all of its dialects share a long series of common innovations , some of which are really striking. It has been denied that the same applies to West Germanic, but I will [...] show that all West Germanic languages share some highly unusual innovations that force us to develop a West Germanic evolutionary branch [Orig. ( engl. ): clade ] to apply [cf. also factors for language change ] . Of course, and the internal sub-grouping of both the North is confused plentiful and West Germanic, it seems clear that the two sub- families in a network of dialects , have diversified long in contact remained together (in some cases up to the present) . "

The basic work on Proto West Germanic announced here by Rings was published in the fall of 2014.

Breakdown

Traditional division

The earlier common structure of the West Germanic languages ​​divided them into an Anglo-Frisian and a continental Germanic branch. The Anglo-Frisian languages ​​were further divided into Anglic languages ​​(with English as the main representative) and Frisian languages. In contrast, there were the continental West Germanic languages ​​with High German (with the Upper and Central German dialects as well as Yiddish ) and Low German languages ​​(including Lower Saxon and Dutch ).

The delimitation of Anglo-Frisian was made due to some special sound developments, such as the development of the consonant k before palatal vowels to a fricative (Examples: German cheese , Dutch kaas - English cheese , Frisian tsiis ; German church , Dutch kerk - English church , Frisian tsjerke ) and by eliminating nasals before fricatives with substitute stretching (examples: German five - English five ; German mouth - English mouth ). Many of these features can also be found in other West Germanic varieties, especially in the early language levels, which is why this traditional classification has been rejected by the majority of linguists for decades.

The West Germanic as part of the newer classification

In the second half of the 20th century, in addition to the traditional division of all Germanic languages ​​into three (West, East and North Germanic ), there was also a division into five subgroups. This classification was proposed by Friedrich Maurer in 1943 and has met with much approval since then. Maurer accepts five language and culture groups for the new era:

  • Northern Germanic in Scandinavia
  • North Sea Germans (Frisians, Angling, Saxony)
  • Weser-Rhine Teutons (some of them later merged into the Saxons; the main part of the Franks emerged from the Weser-Rhine Teutons)
  • Elbe Germans (including: the later Lombards, Baiern and Alemanni)
  • Oder-Weichsel-Germanic (formerly called East Germanic ; Goths and other peoples)

The role of West Germanic in this classification is assessed differently by the linguists: in some cases the languages ​​of North Sea Germanic, Weser-Rhine Germanic and Elbe Germanic are the substitutes for West Germanic, so that the five-part classification is only a refinement of the traditional three-part classification; West Germanic is sometimes rejected as a language unit because the languages ​​of these three groups are too inconsistent.

Maurer also rejects the terms (original) German and Anglo-Frisian , as long as they are supposed to be old standard languages. In his model, German is not an old starting point, but the end of a language development; the German is thus a merger of various "West Germanic" sources. This also applies to the terms Upper German and Low German .

The family tree model , which is the traditional classification based on it reject and others because it can not display accurate enough in their view, the relationship between the Germanic languages.

Germanic languages ​​according to Maurer

List of West Germanic languages

Classification of the Germanic languages ​​or dialects
  • Line between North and West Germanic
    • North Germanic languages
  • Icelandic
  • Faroese
  • Norwegian nynorsk
  • Norwegian bokmål
  • Swedish
  • Danish
    • West Germanic languages
  • Scots
  • English
  • Frisian
  • Dutch
  • Low German
  • Middle German
  • Upper German
    • The dialects around 1990

    The following living, extinct (†) or replaced by newer language levels (†) languages ​​from the family of Germanic languages belong to the West Germanic languages:

    See also

    literature

    • Maurer, Friedrich: Nordgermanen and Alemanni - studies of Germanic and early German language history, tribal and folklore 3., revised. and exp. Edition. Francke, Bern 1952, 187 pp. (Bibliotheca Germanica, 3); Source of the graphic, first edition 1942.
    • Wiesinger, Peter: Spelling and pronunciation in older Early New High German: on the relationship between grapheme - phoneme - phon using the Bavarian-Austrian example by Andreas Kurzmann around 1400 . Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1996, 265 pp. ISBN 3-11-013727-5 (Studia linguistica Germanica, 42); read online at Google Books .
    • Euler, Wolfram : The West Germanic - from its formation in the 3rd to its breakdown in the 7th century - analysis and reconstruction. 244 pp., Inspiration Un Limited, London / Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-9812110-7-8 .
    • Euler, Wolfram: The Formation of Transitional Dialects and Language Boundaries - Considerations Using the Example of West Germanic and Nordic . Innsbruck: Inst. For languages ​​a. Literatures d. Univ. Innsbruck, Abt. Sprachwiss., 2002. 57 pp. ISBN 3-85124-687-X .
    • Rings, Donald R. and Taylor, Ann (2014). The Development of Old English - A Linguistic History of English , vol. II, 632p. ISBN 978-0-19-920784-8 . Oxford.
    • Schmidt, Wilhelm: History of the German language, a textbook for studying German , 10th edition, p. 489, Stuttgart: S. Hirzel Verlag (2007) ISBN 3-7776-1432-7 .
    • König Werner, dtv-Atlas German language , 14th edition, Munich: dtv (2004), based on the 1st edition from 1978, ISBN 3-423-03025-9 .
    • Sonderegger, Stefan: Old High German Language and Literature - an introduction to the oldest German ; Presentation and grammar. 3rd, through u. essential exp. Edition - Berlin (among others): de Gruyter, 2003, 390 pp. ISBN 3-11-017288-7 .
    • Niebaum, Hermann: Introduction to the Dialectology of German / Hermann Niebaum; Jürgen Macha. - 2., rework. Edition - Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2006. - XVII, 256 pp. ISBN 978-3-484-26037-5 (Germanistic workbooks, 37).
    • Weddige, Hilkert: Middle High German - an introduction. 6th edition - Munich: Beck, 2004. - XII, 210 pp. ISBN 3-406-45744-4 .

    Web links

    Commons : West Germanic languages  - collection of images, videos and audio files

    Remarks

    1. ↑ ZBSA News Archive 2012: Sensational find at the ZBSA: Oldest evidence of the West Germanic language .
    2. ^ Don Rings: From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic: A Linguistic History of English. Vol. I, Oxford 2006, pp. 213 f .; quoted from Euler (2013), p. 37.
    3. ↑ Donald Rings, Ann Taylor: The Development of Old English: A Linguistic History of English. Vol. II, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-920784-8 (632 pages).
    4. ^ Herbert L. Kufner: The grouping and separation of the Germanic languages. In: Frans van Coetsem and Herbert L. Kufner: Toward a Grammar of Proto-Germanic. Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1972, ISBN 3-484-45001-X , old. ISBN 3-484-10160-1 ; P. 94.