Germanic languages: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 08:41, 10 August 2005

Revision as of 08:43, 10 August 2005

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The [[6th century]] [[Lombardic language]], for instance, may constitute an originally either North or West Germanic dialect that became assimilated to West Germanic as the [[Lombards]] settled at the [[Elbe]]. The earliest coherent Germanic text preserved is the [[4th century]] [[Gothic language|Gothic]] translation of the [[New Testament]] by [[Ulfila]].

Early testimonis of West Germanic are in [[Old High German]] and [[Old English]] from about the [[9th century]].

North Germanic, or rather [[Proto-Norse]], is only attested in scattered runic inscriptions until it evolves into [[Proto-Old Norse]] by about [[800 BC]], early longer texts in [[Old Norse]] date tobetween the [[9th century]] and the [[13th century]].

By about the [[10th century]], the dialects had diverged enough to make [[mutual intelligibility|intercomprehensability]] difficult. The linguistic contact of the [[Viking]] settlers of the [[Danelaw]] with the [[Anglo-Saxon]]s left traces in the English language, and is suspected to have facilitated the collapse of Old English Grammar that led to [[Middle English]] from the [[12th century]].

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The North Germanic languages, on the other hand, remained more unified, largely retaining mutual intelligibility until modern times.

==Classification==