Resultado de búsqueda
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, North 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.
- 52- (phylozone)
- Proto-Germanic
- Indo-EuropeanGermanic
- Overview
- Linguistic characteristics of the protolanguage
Germanic languages, branch of the Indo-European language family. Scholars often divide the Germanic languages into three groups: West Germanic, including English, German, and Netherlandic (Dutch); North Germanic, including Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Faroese; and East Germanic, now extinct, comprising only Gothic and the languages of the Vandals, Burgundians, and a few other tribes.
In numbers of native speakers, English, with 450 million, clearly ranks third among the languages of the world (after Mandarin and Spanish); German, with some 98 million, probably ranks 10th (after Hindi, Bengali, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, and Japanese). To these figures may be added those for persons with another native language who have learned one of the Germanic languages for commercial, scientific, literary, or other purposes. English is unquestionably the world’s most widely used second language.
The earliest historical evidence for Germanic is provided by isolated words and names recorded by Latin authors beginning in the 1st century bce. From approximately 200 ce there are inscriptions carved in the 24-letter runic alphabet. The earliest extensive Germanic text is the (incomplete) Gothic Bible, translated about 350 ce by the Visigothic bishop Ulfilas (Wulfila) and written in a 27-letter alphabet of the translator’s own design. Later versions of the runic alphabet were used sparingly in England and Germany but more widely in Scandinavia—in the latter area down to early modern times. All extensive later Germanic texts, however, use adaptations of the Latin alphabet.
See table for the names and approximate dates of the earliest recorded Germanic languages.
Britannica Quiz
Languages & Alphabets
The special characteristics of the Germanic languages that distinguish them from other Indo-European languages result from numerous phonological and grammatical changes.
German ( Standard High German: Deutsch, pronounced [dɔʏtʃ] ⓘ) [10] is a West Germanic language mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol.
- 95 million (2014), L2 speakers: 80–85 million (2014)
14 de dic. de 2021 · December 14, 2021. Author. Marianne Stenger. When you think of the Germanic languages, German is probably the first one that comes to mind. But, believe it or not, English is actually the most widely spoken Germanic language, with around 1.35 billion speakers worldwide.
Languages of Germany; Official: German (95%) Regional: German dialects, Limburgish, Danish, Sorbian, Frisian, Romani, Low German: Immigrant: Kurdish, Turkish, Portuguese, Arabic, Albanian, Russian, Polish, Hausa, Serbo-Croatian, Dutch, Italian, Greek, Romanian, Hindustani, Spanish, and others: Foreign: English (56%) French (14% ...
- German (95%)
21 de feb. de 2020 · By Sabine Hartwig. February 21, 2020. You might have heard about language families before, and today we’ll be talking about Germanic languages. When we say Germanic languages, we’re referring to all of the languages that were once part of the language ancestor Proto-Germanic.
17 de abr. de 2024 · German language, official language of both Germany and Austria and one of the official languages of Switzerland. German belongs to the West Germanic group of the Indo-European language family, along with English, Frisian, and Dutch (Netherlandic, Flemish). Learn more about the German language.
