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Proto-Germanic is itself descended from Proto-Indo-EuropeanThe Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages. As PIE is not directly attested, all PIE sounds and words are reconstructed using the comparative method. The standard convention is to mark unattes, which is also the distant ancestor of a great many other languages in Europe and Asia. For the changes undergone by Proto-Germanic during its descent from Proto-Indo-European, see Germanic languagesThe Germanic languages form one of the branches of the Indo-European (IE) language family, spoken by the Germanic peoples who settled in northern Europe along the borders of the Roman Empire. They are characterised by a number of unique linguistic feature.
Proto-Indo-European speakers are thought by some scholars to have arrived at the plains of southern SwedenThe Kingdom of Sweden Konungariket Sverige in Swedish) is a Nordic country in Scandinavia, in Northern Europe. It is bordered by Norway on the west, Finland on the northeast, the Skagerrak and the Kattegat on the southwest, and the Baltic Sea and the Gulf and DenmarkKongeriget Danmark ( In Detail) Motto of the Queen: Guds hjaelp, Folkets kaerlighed, Danmarks styrke (English: God's help, the love of the people, Denmark's strength) Official language Danish Capital Copenhagen Kobenhavn Monarch Margrethe II Prime Ministe, regarded to be the original dwelling-place of the Germanic peoplesThe term Germanic peoples may refer to: the Germanic tribes that in the first millennium were seen as a barbarian threat by the Roman Empire and its successors; the Germanic Christianity that in the second millennium came to dominate much of Northern Euro, during the early Bronze AgeThe Bronze Age is a period in a civilization's development when the most advanced metalworking has developed the techniques of smelting copper from natural outcroppings and alloys it to cast bronze. The Bronze Age is part of the Three-age system for prehi (about four thousand years ago). The Battle-axe peopleThe name Battle-axe people corded ware culture identifies widely-scattered late Neolithic sites in Europe. Burial sites containing the characteristic corded ware, impressed with cords in the unfired clay, are known in a wide area in northern, central and are the best candidate for this immigration.
Colin Renfrew has proposed that the I-E languages were spread much earlier, with agriculture. The archaeological evidence from Scandinavia, however, seem to show that the local population learned agricultural skills without the infusion of a new culture.Some also suggest that Proto-Germanic may have arisen somewhat as a Creole language due to cultural diffusion among geographically static indigenous population groups. However, considering the inflected character and the homogeneous forms of the Germanic languages, the creation of such a creole would have been a resounding and unique feat indeed.
It has been suggested that proto-Germanic arose as a hybrid of two Indo-European dialects, one each of Centum and Satem types though they would have been mutually intelligible at the time of hybridization. This hypothesis may help to explain the difficulty of placing Germanic in the Indo-European family.
The reconstructed Proto-Germanic vocabulary includes a number of fundamental words (referring to, among other things, parts of the body, animals and nature) which are clearly non-Indo-European in origin, suggesting a vocabulary influence from the earlier inhabitants of northern Europe. The mechanism of this influence is unknown; it may have been simple borrowing, or perhaps retention of old words by people who adopted Proto-Germanic as their new language. For examples, see Non-Indo-European roots of Germanic.