Germanic languages present a subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. All modern Germanic languages have a common ancestor. which is traditionally referred to as Proto-Germanic. Germanic languages are divided into North Germanic (Icelandic. Farocse, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish) and West Germanic (English, Frisian, Flemish, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Yiddish). The now defunct East Germanic branch consisted of Gothic, which is extinct.
Germanic languages Common Characteristics
The first Germanic sound shift or consonant shift (also called Grimm's law)
The sounds p, d, t, and к in the former became f, t, th. and h respectively in the latter, as in Latin pater, English father; Latin dent, English tooth; and Latin cornu, English horn.
A second shift of consonants took place in some of the West German dialects. For instance, under certain circumstances, d became t, and / became ss or z, as in English bread, Dutch brood, but German Brot; English foot, Dutch voet, but German Fuss; and English ten. Dutch tien, but German zehn.
The dialects in which this second consonant shift took place were the High German dialects spoken in Mountain areas. The West German dialects not affected by the 2nd shift were the Law German dialects.
(1) recessive accent
(2) umlaut, foot (singular), feet (plural) in English; fot (singular), fotter (plural) in Swedish; and Kampf (singular), Kampfe (plural) in German.
(3) strong and weak verbs; regular, irregular verbs
(4) the formation of the genitive singular by the addition of-s or -es.
(5) The comparison of adjectives in the Germanic languages follows a parallel pattern, as in English: rich, richer, richest; German reich, reicher, reichst; and Swedish rik, rikare, rikast.
(6) word similarity
The development of English
Old English was the language of the Anglo-Saxons, who spoke a kind of Germanic language. It was in its nature a synthetic language.
Middle English English slowly dropped its inflections and was becoming more an analytic language.
Modern English
