Germanic languages

The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, Northern America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, English, is also the world's most widely spoken language with an estimated 2 billion speakers. All Germanic languages are derived from Proto-Germanic, spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia, Iron Age Northern Germany and along the North Sea and Baltic coasts.
The West Germanic languages include the three most widely spoken Germanic languages: English with around 360–400 million native speakers; German, with over 100 million native speakers; and Dutch, with 24 million native speakers. Other West Germanic languages include Afrikaans, an offshoot of Dutch originating from the Afrikaners of South Africa, with over 7.1 million native speakers; Low German, considered a separate collection of unstandardized dialects, with roughly 4.35–7.15 million native speakers and probably 6.7–10 million people who can understand it and 2.15 million in the Netherlands ); Yiddish, once used by approximately 13 million Jews in pre-World War II Europe, now with approximately 1.5 million native speakers; Scots, with 1.5 million native speakers; Limburgish varieties with roughly 1.3 million speakers along the Dutch–Belgian–German border; and the Frisian languages with over 500,000 native speakers in the Netherlands and Germany.
The largest North Germanic languages are Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian, which are in part mutually intelligible and have a combined total of about 20 million native speakers in the Nordic countries and an additional five million second language speakers; since the Middle Ages, however, these languages have been strongly influenced by Middle Low German, a West Germanic language, and Low German words account for about 30–60% of their vocabularies according to various estimates. Other extant North Germanic languages are Faroese, Icelandic, and Elfdalian, which are more conservative languages with no significant Low German influence, more complex grammar and limited mutual intelligibility with other North Germanic languages today.
The East Germanic branch included Gothic, Burgundian and Vandalic. The last to die off was Crimean Gothic, spoken until the late 18th century in some isolated areas of Crimea.
The SIL Ethnologue lists 48 different living Germanic languages, 41 of which belong to the Western branch and six to the Northern branch; it places Riograndenser Hunsrückisch German in neither of the categories, but it is often considered a German dialect by linguists. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic, also known as Common Germanic, which was spoken in about the middle of the 1st millennium BC in Iron Age Scandinavia and Iron Age Northern Germany. Proto-Germanic, along with all of its descendants, notably has a number of unique linguistic features, most famously the consonant change known as "Grimm's law." Early varieties of Germanic entered history when the Germanic tribes moved south from Scandinavia and northern Germany in the 2nd century BC to settle in the area of today's western Germany and along the Baltic coasts.

Modern status

West Germanic languages

English is an official language of Belize, Canada, Nigeria, Falkland Islands, Saint Helena, Malta, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa, Philippines, Jamaica, Dominica, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, American Samoa, Palau, St. Lucia, Grenada, Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Puerto Rico, Guam, Hong Kong, Singapore, Pakistan, India, Papua New Guinea, Namibia, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and former British colonies in Asia, Africa and Oceania. Furthermore, it is the de facto language of the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, as well as a recognized language in Nicaragua and Malaysia.
German is a language of Austria, Belgium, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland; it also has regional status in Italy, Poland, Namibia and Denmark. German also continues to be spoken as a minority language by immigrant communities in North America, South America, Central America, Mexico and Australia. A German dialect, Pennsylvania Dutch, is still used among various populations in the American state of Pennsylvania in daily life. A group of Alemannic German dialects commonly referred to as Alsatian is spoken in Alsace, part of modern France.
Dutch is an official language of Aruba, Belgium, Curaçao, the Netherlands, Sint Maarten, and Suriname. The Netherlands also colonized Indonesia, but Dutch was scrapped as an official language after Indonesian independence. Today, it is only used by older or traditionally educated people. Dutch was until 1983 an official language in South Africa but evolved into and was replaced by Afrikaans, a partially mutually intelligible daughter language of Dutch.
Afrikaans is one of the 12 official languages in South Africa and is a lingua franca of Namibia. It is used in other Southern African nations, as well.
Low German is a collection of very diverse dialects spoken in the northeast of the Netherlands and northern Germany. Some dialects like East Pomeranian have been imported to South America.
Scots is one of the 3 official languages of Scotland and is spoken by over 1.5 million people, mostly in the Lowlands of Scotland but also in the Northern Isles and parts of Ulster.
Frisian is spoken among half a million people who live on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany.
Luxembourgish is a Moselle Franconian dialect that is spoken mainly in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, where it is considered to be an official language. Similar varieties of Moselle Franconian are spoken in small parts of Belgium, France, and Germany.
Yiddish, once a native language of some 11 to 13 million people, remains in use by some 1.5 million speakers in Jewish communities around the world, mainly in North America, Europe, Israel, and other regions with Jewish populations.
Limburgish varieties are spoken in the Limburg and Rhineland regions, along the Dutch–Belgian–German border.

North Germanic languages

In addition to being the official language in Sweden, Swedish is also spoken natively by the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland, which is a large part of the population along the coast of western and southern Finland. Swedish is also one of the two official languages in Finland, along with Finnish, and the only official language in Åland. Swedish is also spoken by some people in Estonia.
Danish is an official language of Denmark and in its overseas territory of the Faroe Islands, and it is a lingua franca and language of education in its other overseas territory of Greenland, where it was one of the official languages until 2009. Danish, a locally recognized minority language, is also natively spoken by the Danish minority in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. Danish was an official language of Iceland when it was a territory ruled by Denmark–Norway; though its official status was terminated in 1944, it is still widely used and is a mandatory subject in school, taught as a second foreign language after English.
Norwegian is the official language of Norway. Norwegian is also the official language in the overseas territories of Norway such as Svalbard, Jan Mayen, Bouvet island, Queen Maud Land, and Peter I island.
Icelandic is the official language of Iceland.
Faroese is the official language of the Faroe Islands, and is also spoken by some people in Denmark.

Statistics

Language	Native speakers
English	360–400
German	100
Dutch	24
Swedish	11.1
Afrikaans	8.1
Danish	5.5
Norwegian	5.3
Low German	3.8
Yiddish	1.5
Scots	1.5
Frisian languages	0.5
Luxembourgish	0.4
Icelandic	0.3
Faroese	0.07
Other Germanic languages	0.01
Total	est. 515

History

All Germanic languages are thought to be descended from a hypothetical Proto-Germanic, united by subjection to the sound shifts of Grimm's law and Verner's law. These probably took place during the Pre-Roman Iron Age of Northern Europe. Proto-Germanic itself was likely spoken after, and Proto-Norse from the 2nd century AD and later is still quite close to reconstructed Proto-Germanic, but other common innovations separating Germanic from Proto-Indo-European suggest a common history of pre-Proto-Germanic speakers throughout the Nordic Bronze Age.
From the time of their earliest attestation, the Germanic varieties are divided into three groups: West, East, and North Germanic. Their exact relation is difficult to determine from the sparse evidence of runic inscriptions.
The western group would have formed in the late Jastorf culture, and the eastern group may be derived from the 1st-century variety of Gotland, leaving southern Sweden as the original location of the northern group. The earliest period of Elder Futhark predates the division in regional script variants, and linguistically essentially still reflects the Common Germanic stage. The Vimose inscriptions include some of the oldest datable Germanic inscriptions, starting in.
The earliest coherent Germanic text preserved is the 4th-century Gothic translation of the New Testament by Ulfilas. Early testimonies of West Germanic are in Old Frankish/Old Dutch, Old High German, and Old English. North Germanic is only attested in scattered runic inscriptions, as Proto-Norse, until it evolves into Old Norse by about 800.
Longer runic inscriptions survive from the 8th and 9th centuries, longer texts in the Latin alphabet survive from the 12th century, and some skaldic poetry dates back to as early as the 9th century.
By about the 10th century, the varieties had diverged enough to make mutual intelligibility difficult. The linguistic contact of the Viking settlers of the Danelaw with the Anglo-Saxons left traces in the English language and is suspected to have facilitated the collapse of Old English grammar that, combined with the influx of Romance Old French vocabulary after the Norman Conquest, resulted in Middle English from the 12th century.
The East Germanic languages were marginalized from the end of the Migration Period. The Burgundians, Goths, and Vandals became linguistically assimilated by their respective neighbors by about the 7th century, with only Crimean Gothic lingering on until the 18th century.
During the early Middle Ages, the West Germanic languages were separated by the insular development of Middle English on one hand and by the High German consonant shift on the continent on the other, resulting in Upper German and Low Saxon, with graded intermediate Central German varieties. By early modern times, the span had extended into considerable differences, ranging from Highest Alemannic in the South to Northern Low Saxon in the North, and, although both extremes are considered German, they are hardly mutually intelligible. The southernmost varieties had completed the second sound shift, while the northern varieties remained unaffected by the consonant shift.
The North Germanic languages, on the other hand, remained unified until well past 1000 AD, and in fact the mainland Scandinavian languages still largely retain mutual intelligibility into modern times. The main split in these languages is between the mainland languages and the island languages to the west, especially Icelandic, which has maintained the grammar of Old Norse virtually unchanged, while the mainland languages have diverged greatly.