West Germanic languages
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
West Germanic is the largest branch of the Germanic family of languages, including such languages as English, Dutch, and German.
The other families of Germanic are North Germanic and East Germanic.
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History
There was never a West Germanic proto-language from which all the languages currently in the group seem to have derived. As such the grouping is more of a geographical convenience to categorize languages that share many similarities with each other but also individually compare closely to particular aspects of North Germanic or East Germanic.
Family tree
Note that divisions between subfamilies of Germanic are rarely precisely defined; most form dialect continua, with adjacent dialects being mutually intelligible and more separated ones not.
- Anglic (descending from Anglo-Saxon)
- Modern English (with a significant influx of French vocabulary)
- Lowland Scots
- Cayman Islands English (not a creole)
- Angloromani (with a significant influx of Romany vocabulary)
- Frisian
- Low German (descending from Old Saxon / Old Low Franconian)
- Low Franconian
- Dutch
- West Flemish
- Limburgish
- Afrikaans (with a significant influx of vocabulary from Malay and native African languages)
- Low Saxon
- Several dialects in northern Germany and the Netherlands
- Plautdietsch (Mennonite Low German)
- East Low German
- Low Franconian
- High German
- German
- Central German
- Upper German
- Alemannic
- Austro-Bavarian
- Bavarian
- Cimbrian (with a heavy influx of Italian vocabulary)
- Mócheno
- Hutterite German (spoken by Hutterites)
- Yiddish (with a significant influx of vocabulary from Hebrew and written in the Hebrew alphabet)
- Wymysojer
- German
See also
ca:Llengües germàniques occidentals cs:Západogermánské jazykyel:Δυτική Γερμανική id:Bahasa Jermanik Barat nl:West-Germaanse talen nds:Westgermaansche Spraken pl:Języki zachodniogermańskie sk:Západogermánske jazyky zh:西日耳曼语支
