West Germanic Languages

Germanic languages are a group of related languages of the Western range of the Indo-European language family. The range of modern German languages includes the territory of several countries of Western Europe (Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland), North America (USA, Canada), Southern Africa (South Africa), Asia (India), Australia, New Zealand. The total number of speakers is about 550 million.

Germanic languages are traditionally divided into three sub-groups: North Germanic (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese), West Germanic (English, German, Dutch, Luxembourgish, Afrikaans, Frisian, Yiddish) and East Germanic (extinct Gothic, Burgundian, Vandals and a few others).

The study of the subgroups of the languages is very interesting and important, especially for students who want to learn some foreign languages. 

The West Germanic languages makes the largest of the three branches of the Germanic family of languages (the others being the North Germanic and the extinct East Germanic languages).

The three most prevalent West Germanic languages are English, German, and Dutch. The family also includes other High and Low German languages including Afrikaans (which is a daughter language of Dutch), Yiddish and Luxembourgish (which are sister languages of German), and Frisian and Scots (which are sister languages of English). Additionally, several creoles, patois, and pidgins are based on Dutch, English, and German, as they were each languages of colonial empires.

The subject of the research is the branch of West Germanic Languages.

The objectives of the study are:

1) to study the origin of West Germanic Languages and their development;

2) to determine their peculiarities and common features. 

West Germanic Languages dates back to the tribal languages of west Germans – the Ingvaeones (the Saxons, the Angles, the Frisians), the Istvaeones (the Franks) and the Irminones (the Suebi Alemanni, the Bavarians). Later from these tribes were created some nationalities and then nations. The Angles, the Saxons and the Ute, resettled to the British Isles in fifth- sixth century A.D., have given rise to British nationality and then the nation. The Frisians didn’t create an independent state but retained their language and now make up the population of the Dutch province of Friesland, as well as a small area on the coast of the North Sea and part of the Frisian Islands within West Germany. The Saxons, who did not settle in Britain, became the part of German nationality, later the nation. Their tribal language was the basis of the Lower German dialects of Germany.

The majority of the Franks – Istvaeones as well as the Irminones - the   Suebi Alemanni, the Bavarians – formed the German nationality and then the main part of German nation. The Northern Franks set from the other tribes and gave rise to the Dutch Nation. The Flemish, German by language part of Belgium, are also descended from them.

The West Germanic subgroup of German languages is represented in the early Middle Ages by written monuments whose linguistic characteristics formed the basis of the generally accepted classification of ancient West Germanic languages (dialects). According to this classification, these languages are: 1) Old English (Anglo-Saxon), 2) Old Frisian, 3) Old Saxon, 4) Old Lower Frankish, 5) Old Upper German.

Old Saxon is one of the tribal dialects of the West German group of German languages, a dialect of the Ingvaeones Saxon tribe. As fate would, this tribe didn’t form the state and couldn’t give the rise to the independent nation.

The Saxons early lost their political autonomy as a result

of subordination to the Frankish state of the Carolingians (as a result of the wars of Charlemagne against the Saxons in 772-804), which led to their violent Christianization. In 852 the Duchy of Saxony was created within the territory of the Kingdom of the East Franks. The Duke of Saxony Henry I was elected by the King of Germany in 919 and his son Otto I was the first Emperor

of the Holy Roman Empire, founded them in 962. 

The tribal Saxon language – Old Saxon – was spoken by the Saxons 

in the Middle Ages, who settled between the Rhine and Elba, the North Sea and Harz. Only a small number of written monuments in Old Saxon, mostly religious monuments dating back to the 9th and 12th centuries, have reached us. The most significant of them date back to the 9th century. They were created in 830 by the order of Louis the Pious,

son of Charlemagne. For example, it is an evangelical harmony «Geliand» (ds. Hēliand 'Savior'), a large (6,000 poems) anonymous poem containing a description of life of Christ. The second major monument, also poetic, «Genesis» («Genesis») is a statement of biblical legends about the creation of the world (about 300

lines). Both monuments have traces of High German and partly

Old English influences. Smaller monuments include the formulas of blessing, church letters, and nominal lists.