germanischen

Germanic is a branch of the Indo-European language family comprising the languages descended from Proto-Germanic. The term also refers to the ancient peoples who spoke these languages and to their historical culture. Proto-Germanic is reconstructed to have been spoken in parts of Northern Europe during the late Bronze Age to early Iron Age, roughly 500 BCE to 0 CE. The Germanic languages split into three main groups: North Germanic, West Germanic, and East Germanic. North Germanic includes Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese; these languages developed in the Scandinavian and North Atlantic regions. West Germanic includes German, English, Dutch, Afrikaans, Frisian, and Yiddish to varying degrees, and spread across Central, Western, and parts of Northern Europe. East Germanic languages, now extinct, were spoken by the Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, and related groups.

English and German show the legacy of early sound changes such as Grimm’s Law and Verner’s Law. The Germanic languages share features including a system of strong and weak verbs, noun inflection with cases and gender, and often flexible word order. Over time, contact with Latin, French, Slavic, and Celtic languages shaped their lexicon and grammar. The writing system evolved from runic inscriptions to the Latin alphabet, with Icelandic preserving many archaic features. The term Germanic thus describes a linguistic family as well as a historical-cultural sphere of peoples and their languages.