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Present day Germanic languages: language list with a sample text
| Afrikaans | Afrikaans is a contemporary West Germanic language developed from seventeenth century Dutch in the Cape region. It is presently one of the eleven official languages of the Republic of South Africa. Number of speakers (1988): 10 million |
| Black English Vernacular, or African-American Vernacular English | Black English Vernacular (BEV), or African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), is a term used for the language spoken by US citizens of Black African background. It has its origins in the pidgins and creoles developed by Africans enslaved and brought to America from the 16th century onwards. Socially isolated from white communities, BEV continued to develop in distinctive ways even after the end of slavery and the migration of American Blacks from the agricultural South to cities in the industrial North in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. |
| Dalska (Dalmål) | Dalska is a distinct Swedish dialect. It is archaic in several respects, and it is incomprehensible to speakers of Standard Swedish. It is spoken by the inhabitants of Älvdalen, Orsa, Mora, Rättvik, Leksand and Gagnef counties around the lake Siljan, the north west part of Dalecarlia (Dalarna). The area had 72,000 inhabitants in 1990, but only a minority master the genuine dialect. The dialect is not a homogeneous one, and it varies from village to village. Most distinctive are the dialects of Älvdalen. |
| Danish | Modern Danish is the contemporary descendent of Old Danish. It is the official language of Denmark. Number of Speakers (1988): 5 million |
| Dutch-Flemish | Dutch or Flemish is the contemporary descendent of Middle Dutch. With slight differences, the same language is called Dutch in the Netherlands and Flemish in Belgium. It is one of the two official languages of the Netherlands and one of the three official languages of Belgium. |
| English | Modern English is the contemporary descendent of Middle English. The intensive contact with French after the Norman conquest in the 11th century had a strong influence on the language, especially on the vocabulary. Number of speakers (1988): 431 million |
| Faroese | Faroese is the mother tongue of almost all 50 000 inhabitants on the Faroe Islands. The Islands were first inhabited in the 8th century by people from Norway. When Denmark left Norway to Sweden in 1814, the Faroe Islands remained a part of the kingdom of Denmark. The language is known from mediaeval ballads, but a written language was first created in the 19th century. During the 20th century, Faroese has increasingly become the language of media and education in the Faroe Islands. |
| Gutnish | Gutnish is a contemporary Eastern North Germanic language spoken on the island of Gotland. It is first attested in legal documents of the fourteenth century C. E. Many authorities would classify Gutnish as a dialect of Swedish. Number of Speakers (1988): roughly 50,000 |
| Icelandic | Icelandic is the contemporary language of Iceland. It is a close descendent of Old Norse orse. Among the Germanic languages, Icelandic is the language that has preserved the greatest number of morphological features of its historical antecedent. Number of Speakers (1988): 250,000 |
| German | Modern High German is the contemporary descendent of Middle High German. It is an official language in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. Number of speakers (1988): 118 million |
| Low German (Plattdeutsch) | New (or Modern) Low German (Plattdeutsch) is the contemporary descendent of Middle Low German. It is spoken on the North German plain in Germany and the Netherlands. The name Low Saxon is preferred in the Netherlands. There are many extant dialects of Low German. Number of Speakers: 1.5 to 2.0 million |
| Norwegian | Modern Norwegian, a contemporary Western North Germanic language, is the official language of Norway. It has two major written standards: Nynorsk and Bokmål. Nynorsk is the contemporary descendent of Old Norwegian. Bokmål, also called Dano-Norwegian or Riksmål, is heavily influenced by Danish. Bokmål is the more commonly used in print. Since 1951 there has been a concerted effort to effect a merger of the two standards. Number of Speakers (1988): 5 million Examples of Norwegian (The Lord's Prayer) in Nynorsk and Bokmål. Bokmål: |
| Pennsylvania German | Pennsylvania German is the language of the descendants of early German Mennonite immigrants in Pennsylvania. They arrived there in the 18th and 19th centuries, and they have also spread to other parts of North America. In the 1990 US census 246,000 people claimed Pennsylvania German ancestry (more than half of them in Pennsylvania). The language is kept alive, at least among the Amish, and 84,000 claimed Pennsylvania German as the language spoken in their homes in 1990. Because of the similarity of the words Deutsch and Dutch, the Pennsylvania Germans and their language are widely known as "Pennsylvania Dutch." |
| Scots | Scots is used for the language that developed in Scotland from Old English (see the entry for Scots in the historical section below). Some Scottish authors still write in a modern-day version of Scots, and a massive 10-volume Scottish National Dictionary was completed in 1976. (Several newer and more wieldy dictionaries of Scots also exist.) The linguistic situation today in Scotland is a complex one, with "Southron" (Standard English) the usual language of power, prestige, education, and writing, and Scots as a substrate, bearing rich connotations of tradition and national pride. 'Full' traditional Scots, completely incomprehensible to monolingual English speakers, is not widely spoken, but even many of the common dialects in Scotland are very difficult for non-Scots to understand. (Primary source: The Oxford Companion to the English Language, ed. by Tom McArthur, Oxford University Press 1992.) |
| Swedish | Modern Swedish is a contemporary Eastern North Germanic language, a descendent of Old Swedish. It is the official language of Sweden and it is also spoken by a minority in Finland. Number of Speakers (1988): 9 million |
| Yiddish | Yiddish is originally the language of East European Jews. Jewish refugees entering Poland from Germany in the 14th and 15th century spoke a type of Middle High German influenced heavily by Hebrew. In Poland the Jews flourished, and after the partition of Poland they spread to Russia, Austria, Hungary, Germany, and Romania. The Yiddish that developed in the Slavic-speaking countries (Eastern Yiddish, the basis for Modern Standard Yiddish) acquired many Slavic characteristics. Later on emigration to North and South America, South Africa, and Australia created several Yiddish-speaking communities outside Europe. By the year 1900 there were 8 million people in Eastern Europe and 1 million in North America with Yiddish as their mother tongue. Yiddish-speaking Jews have always lived as a minority together with Poles, Ukrainians, Germans, Russians etc., and thus almost all Yiddish-speaking people have become bilingual (often trilingual). Because of the Holocaust, and assimilation and emigration to America and Israel, Yiddish is hardly used any more in Europe. The Yiddish-speaking communities in America and Israel are also decreasing. Today, there are hardly more than half a million speakers of Yiddish. In the Soviet Union only 153,000 people claimed that Yiddish was their mother tongue in the 1989 census, in the USA 213,000 (1990 census) and in Israel 49,000 (1983 census). (Primary source: ther Germanic Languages, ed. by Ekkehard König & Johan van der Auwera, Routledge 1994.) |
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