Germanic Branch

Sound system

All Germanic languages have undergone some common sound changes:

• First Germanic Sound Shift (Grimm’s Law)
  You probably know of Jacob Grimm as the author of fairy tales. But he was also one of the great linguists of the 19th century. He found evidence for the unity of all the modern Germanic languages in the phenomenon known as the First Germanic Sound Shift (also known as Grimm’s law ), which set the Germanic branch apart from the other branches of the Indo-European family. This shift occurred before the 7th century when records started to be kept. According to Grimm’s law, the shift occurred when /p, t, k/ in the classical Indo-European languages (Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit) became/ f, t, h/ in Germanic languages. For example, Latin pater > English father, Latin cornu > English horn.
• Second Germanic consonant shift (High German consonant shift)
  The Second consonant shift took place probably beginning between the 3rd-5th centuries AD, and was almost complete before the earliest written records in the High German language were made in the 9th century. It occurred in High German (spoken in mountainous areas) which gave rise to today’s Standard German. Low German dialects were not affected by the Second Consonant Shift. Here are some examples: classical Indo-European /k, t, p/ became /h, th, f/ in English and /h, d, f/ in German. For example, Latin frater > English brother and German Bruder.
  classical Indo-European /g, d, b/ became /k, t, p/ in English and /kh, ts, f/ in German. For example, Latin decem > English ten and German zehn.
  Click here to learn more about the Second Consonant Shift.

Vowels

Most modern Germanic languages have a large inventory of vowel phonemes consisting of 14-16 vowels. Vowel length typically distinguishes word meaning, and there is a contrast between rounded and unrounded front vowels in many of the Germanic languages.

Consonants

Modern Germanic languages have fairly similar consonant systems consisting of 20-22 phonemes.

Stress

All Germanic languages are characterized by a shift of stress to the root and later to the first syllable of the word. Though English has an irregular stress pattern, native words always have a fixed stress, regardless of what is added to them. In addition, some Germanic languages have a pitch accent, e.g.,Norwegian and Swedish).

Grammar

All Germanic languages are synthetic, i.e., they add suffixes to roots and stems to express grammatical relations. However, they differ from each other in how conservative or how progressive each language is with respect to preserving the inflectional system of *Proto-Germanic. For instance, German, Dutch and Icelandic, have preserved much of the complex inflectional morphology of inherited from *Proto-Germanic. Others, like English, Swedish, Yiddish, and Afrikaans have lost most of the inflections.

Nouns

Some of the general features of Germanic nouns are listed below.

• All Germanic languages have two numbers: singular and plural.
• The majority of Germanic languages have two genders: masculine and feminine. German, Dutch, and Icelandic have preserved the neuter gender.Dutch has two genders – common (masculine and feminine) and neuter.
• Case inflections have all but disappeared in most Germanic languages, with the exception of German, and Icelandic that have retained four cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive.
• All Germanic languages have strong (irregular) and weak (regular) nouns. Strong nouns have a change in the root vowel, e.g., English foot(singular) and feet (plural).
• All Germanic languages have a definite and indefinite article. The definite article may precede the noun or be suffixed to the noun, e.g., in Icelandic.
• Many Germanic languages form the possessive by the addition of –s or –es, for example, English man, man’s; German Mann, Mannes.
• In most Germanic languages, articles and adjectives agree with nouns in gender and case in the singular; there is no gender distinction in the plural.
• In some Germanic languages adjectives have strong and weak endings.
• Personal pronouns have retained some case distinctions even if these were lost in the nouns, e.g., English.

Verbs

Below are some general features of Germanic verbs.

• All Germanic languages have strong and weak verbs. Strong verbs form the past tense and past participle by changing the root vowel, for example, English ring, rang, rung; German ringen, rang, gerungen. Weak verbs add an ending -d/-ed/-t, for example, English talk, talked, talked;German fragen, fragte, gefragt.
• Verbs are conjugated based on person (lst, 2nd, 3rd) and number (singular and plural).
• Verbs have simple and numerous compound tenses formed with auxiliary verbs such as have in English and haben in German.
• There are three moods: indicative, subjunctive/conditional, and imperative.
• There are two voices: active and passive.

Word order

Word order is best described in terms of the position of the verb in Germanic clauses. It occupies final position in subordinate clauses, and first or second position in main clauses. The position of all other sentence constituents is relatively free. This feature is shared by all Germanic languages, except English, which has a Subject-Verb-Object word order.

Vocabulary

Most words in Germanic languages are derived from *Proto-Germanic. Germanic languages have also borrowed from neighboring languages, and especially from Latin and Greek, as well as from each other. Much of its scientific terminology has Greek and Latin roots. The latest source of loanwords is English. Words are frequently formed by compounding, suffixation and prefixation, e.g., German Weihnachtsmann (literally ”Holy Night Man,’ i.e., ‘Santa Claus’), English antiestablishmentarianism.

Below are some common expressions in various Germanic languages, showing the similarities and differences among them.

Below are the numerals 1-10 in major Germanic languages.