Reginheim

Germanic languages:

Description:
All Germanic languages have evolved from one root-language called Proto-Germanic, this common language is believed to have been spoken by the earliest Germanic peoples.
Proto-Germanic is a hypothetical language of which we have no written accounts; it has been reconstructed by researching the oldest known Germanic languages like Gothic and runic Swedish and by comparing modern Germanic languages; this results in a proto-language that must have been spoken before a separation into various dialects occured.
Because of geographical separation and local dialects the Proto-Germanic language was divided into three groups; northern Germanic, western Germanic, and eastern Germanic.
This three new "languages" were actually just dialects and the similarities between this three dialects were so great that they could be mutually understood, eventually this three dialects were divided into several other dialects that eventually resulted in new languages, some of this languages became extinct while others evolved into the modern languages we still speak today.
Germanic languages officially belong to the Indo-European language family but a large portion of it is derived from a non-Indo-European source which makes the origin of the Proto-Germanic language and it's speakers even more mysterious.
According to linguisticians (language experts) 60% of the Proto-Germanic language can be traced back to Indo-European roots while 40% of it is derived from another unknown source.
This unknown source was probably the language of the ancient people that inhabited Northern Europe before the Indo-European migrations, not much is known about this interesting people but some researchers believe that they may have been the ones who built Stonehenge and the other megalithic monuments of Northern- and Western Europe.
Another interesting thing to mention is that most of the Indo-European words in the Germanic language are used for land-based objects while many of the words used for coastal-based objects are of non-Indo-European origin, something which indicates that the Indo-European influences were higher inland, it also seems that Scandinavian and Low German languages have lesser Indo-European words than for instance German and the now extinct eastern Germanic languages.
The most non-Indo-European words can be found in shippingterms but also in everyday words, I have listed a few of those words below:

(the words in this list can sometimes have a different meaning than their counterparts in other languages)

Non-Indo-European words in Germanic languages:
English: bear blood bow bring broad calf carp drive drink earth eel evil folk hand helmet keel king knight lamb little mast oar rudder run sea shield sick soul steer stork wife	German: bär blut bogen bringen breit kalb karpfen treiben trinken erde aal übel volk hand helm kiel könig knecht lamm - mast - ruder rennen see schild siech seele steuer storch weib	Dutch: beer bloed boog brengen breed kalf karper drijven drinken aarde aal euvel volk hand helm kiel koning knecht lam luttel mast - roer rennen zee schild ziek ziel stuur - wijf	Swedish: björn blod bog bringa bred kalv karp driva dricka jord ål elak folk hand hjälm köl konung knekt lamm lilla mast åra ror ränna sjö sköld sjuk själ styra stork viv	Proto-Germanic: beron bloþam bugiz brengan braidaz kalbaz karpaz dreiban drenkan erþo elaz ubilaz fulkam handuz helmaz keulaz kuningaz knehtaz lambaz lutilaz mastaz airo roþru rennan saiwaz skelduz seukaz saiwalo steuraz sturkaz weibam

The first Germanic soundshift:
The Germanic language was created by the completion of the first Germanic soundshift (also known as the "consonant shift" or "Grimm's law"), this was a developement that slowly changed the Indo-European words used by the Northern Europeans into new words, which would eventually separate the Indo-European (Pre-Germanic) language used in Northern Europe from other Indo-European languages, thus creating the Proto-Germanic language, another typical characteristic of Germanic languages is the fixed stress on the root syllable.

To make it a bit easier I shall give an example of this, the root syllable is the first syllable that is pronounced in a word; so for instance the word "grandfather" consists of three syllables; "grand-fa-ther", of which the root syllable is "grand".
The most important part of the pronounciation of the word is the "stress", this is the syllable that dominates the pronounciation of the entire word, for instance the word "grandfather" is pronounced as "GRAND-fa-ther", in Germanic languages the stress is always in the first (root) syllable while most other languages can also put the stress on other syllables of a word.
I shall give an example of this; the English word "adventure" is a French loanword that is pronounced according to the French (Romanic language) pronounciation rules instead of the Germanic ones; thus "ad-VEN-ture", when we would have applied the Germanic pronounciation rules to this word it would have been pronounced as "AD-ven-ture".

Estimated developement of the Germanic language:
?	-	2500BC	Native Northern European language
2500BC	-	2000BC	Mixture of native language and Indo-European influences
2000BC	-	500BC	Pre-Germanic (start of the first Germanic soundshift)
500BC	-	100BC	Proto-Germanic language (completion of the first Germanic sound shift)
100BC	-	400AD	Separation of Proto-Germanic into 3 main dialects and various subdialects
400AD	-	700AD	Dialects change into separate languages, second Germanic soundshift creates High German
700AD	-	Present	Various old Germanic languages evolve into the modern Germanic languages

The Germanic soundshift "Germanized" the Indo-European words into new words, just like many languages do today with loanwords, for instance the Latin word "castellum" has been borrowed and adapted by many modern languages, in English it eventually became "castle" because that word was easier to pronounce for the English, in Dutch it became "kasteel", this is just an example of how words are being adapted to the pronounciation of the new language they are adopted in.
The following list gives an indication of some of the changes that occured during the transfer from Indo-European words to their Proto-Germanic adaptations, to make things easier for the common reader I have decided not to use any difficult linguistical symbols because they only make things more complicated, instead I will use the letter that corresponds the closest with the sound it represents:

The Germanic sound shift:
Indo-European example:	Indo-European sound:		Germanic sound:	Germanic example:	Modern English translation:
peku	P	-	F	fehu	cattle
teuta	T	-	Th (Þ)	þeudo	people
kornu	K	-	H	hurna	horn
kwid	Kw	-	Hw	hwat	what
hebol	B	-	P	apala / aplu	apple
pod	D	-	T	fotuz	foot
geus	G	-	K	kuz	choose
gwena	Gw	-	Kw	kweno	woman
bheidh	Bh	-	B	bitiz	bite
dheub	Dh	-	D (Ð)	deupaz	deep
ghosti	Gh	-	G	gastiz	guest
gwhnt	GwH	-	Gw	gunþjo	battle

The second Germanic soundshift:
The second Germanic sound shift, also known as the High German soundshift occured between the 5th and 8th century AD.
While most Germanic languages have only had the first shift, the modern German ("German" and not "Germanic") language has undergone a second shift.
The second sound shift divided the western Germanic language in two groups; Low German (also known as Nether German, Niederdeutsch, or Plattdeutsch) and High German (Hochdeutsch), the words "low" and "high" point to the geographical altitude differences between the two language groups.
Two other words for High German and Low German used to be Deutsch (southern "high" German) and Dietsch (northern "low" German and Dutch), the modern English word "Dutch" is also derived from the word Dietsch but nowadays the word is no longer used because the Dutch nazi's abused it in world war 2, the words "Deutsch" and "Dietsch" are both derived from Proto-Germanic "Þeudo" (folk, tribe).
During the second soundshift the language of the western Germanic tribes inhabiting southern Germany was influenced by the neighbouring Celts and Romans, this influences caused the western Germanic language to divide in two groups; the Low German language in the north that remained almost the same, and the High German language in the south that had adopted many Latin words and was spoken with a somewhat Celtic dialect, this two groups are separated by the so called "Benrather line" that runs from Aachen to Frankfurt a/d. Oder and divides Germany in two parts.
The language that originated from this new southern dialect was Old High German, which eventually became modern German and is now mainly spoken in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Liechtenstein.
The Low German languages are Dutch, English, Frisian, and the dialects spoken in northern Germany, this languages have developed from the dialects that were spoken in the coastal areas of western Germania.
A good example of the differences between Low German and High German can be seen when we compare Dutch (a Low German language) to German (a High German language), therefor I shall now list the changes from Low German to High German and give some Dutch and German examples.
High and Low German language

At the beginning of a word or syllable, after a consonant, or in gemination:

Change:	Dutch:	German:	(English:)
P - PF	appel	apfel	(apple)
T - (T)S	zetten	setzen	(to set/place)
K - CH (or CK)	maken	machen	(to make)

After a vowel:

Change:	Dutch:	German:	(English:)
P - F (or FF)	open	offen	(open)
T - SS (ß)	water	wasser	(water)
K - CH	ik	ich	( I )

Developement:
Several modern languages and dialects have originated from the old Germanic languages, and some of those are still very close to their old ascendants; in the area where I live for instance the people speak a Low Saxon (or Nether-Saxon) dialect that belongs to the Low German language group and is much older than common Dutch, if we compare some western Germanic dialects to the official languages spoken in those countries we can easily see that some of those dialects are derived from a much older root than the official language:

Modern English word: beautiful
Modern Dutch word: schoon
Modern German word: schön
Modern Low Saxon dialects: skôn, skön, skaun, skoon (etc.)
Old High German: skoni
Old Saxon: skôni
Proto-Germanic word: skauniz

An interesting developement in some Western Germanic languages is the change of the "K" sound into a "G" sound (mostly written as "g" or "ch"), which is probably a High German influence that has also affected some Low German dialects and their descendant languages.
In Scandinavian languages (Northern Germanic) the "K" sound has mostly been preserved as well as in various Western Germanic dialects, as can be seen in the following example:

English word: school
Dutch word: school
German word: schule
Swedish word: skola
Danish word: skole
Norwegian word: skole
Low Saxon dialects: skole
Old High German: skuola
Old Saxon: skola
Proto-Germanic: skola

In later periods some Germanic languages have been adapted to the pronounciation of non-Germanic languages, which has created new languages like Yiddish and Afrikaans; Yiddish is a mixture of High German, Hebrew (mainly lexical influences), and the Slavonic languages (mainly the pronounciation) and was spoken by Jews living in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, in Germany it was spoken on a smaller scale, nowadays the language is also spoken in Israel, the United States, and some other countries, especially by the Hassidim (the orthodox Jews).
Afrikaans is a language that is mainly spoken by the Afrikaners (also known as Boeren), who are descendants of European colonists in South Africa, it originates from 17th century Dutch mixed with English and some local languages, I shall now give some examples of Yiddish and Afrikaans so that you can make some comparisons:

Yiddish: Ikh vel onshraybn a bukh.
German: Ich werde schreiben ein Buch.
English: I will write a book.

Afrikaans: Ek dink dit is 'n baie goed webwerf.
Dutch: Ik vind dit een erg goede website.
English: I find this a very good website.

There can also be many small differences in a single language, English for example is the official language in both England and the USA, but still the English language is pronounced differently in England than it is in the United States, the spelling also varies; in European English it is for example "colour", while in American English it is "color".
This kind of language differences are so small that both "dialects" are mutually comprehensible and the differences between European English and American English can be compared to the differences between Dutch and Flemish (Belgian Dutch), or German and Austrian German.

Well, enough chatter; let's show the simplified developement tree I made, it's not an artistic marvel but it gives the information we need:

Developement tree of Germanic languages

Language map:
Germanic languages are still being spoken today, especially the English language is widely used nowadays and has managed to become a universal language, I'm even writing this page in English while my native language is Dutch, just to make sure that as many people as possible will be able to read this site.
In modern Europe there are three dominant language groups; Romance (or Romanic), Slavonic, and Germanic.
Approximately 25% of the Europeans speak a Romance language, 35% speaks Slavonic, 30% speaks Germanic, and 10% something else, the Celtic languages were once used throughout Europe but those have now been limited to some isolated areas in Ireland, Great-Britain, and France.
The modern Germanic languages all originate from western Germanic or northern Germanic dialects, the eastern Germanic language has become extinct, I have made a language map of Europe to give you an impression of the countries and regions where Germanic languages are being spoken, I have decided to limit this map to Europe but Germanic languages are also being spoken in north America, Australia, and various other parts of the world.
You will also notice some "language-islands" on the map, most of those "islands" are remnants of older times in which those areas belonged to a Germanic speaking country; the coastal areas of Finland are inhabited by descendants of Swedish colonists who are still speaking Swedish and there are many German speaking minorities in areas that once belonged to Germany, southern Tirol in northern Italy once belonged to Austria as well as certain areas in the Balkans.

Germanic languages in Europe