Home > West Germanic languages

The other families of Germanic are North Germanic and East Germanic.

1 History

There was never a West Germanic proto-language from which all the languges currently in the group seem to have derived. As such the grouping is more of a geographical convenience to categorize languages that share many similarities with each other but also individually compare closely to particular aspects of North Germanic or East Germanic.

2 Family tree

Note that divisions between subfamilies of Germanic are rarely precisely defined; most form dialect continua, with adjacent dialects being mutually intelligible and more separated ones not.

• Anglic (descending from Anglo-Saxon)
  • Modern English (with a significant influx of FrenchFrench le francais la langue francaise is one of the most important Romance languages, outnumbered only by Spanish and Portuguese. French is the 11th most spoken language in the world, spoken by about 77 million people (called Francophones) as a mother to vocabulary)
  • Lowland ScotsScots (or Lallans meaning 'Lowlands'), properly Lowland Scots, is a Germanic language used in Lowland Scotland, as well as parts of Northern Ireland and border areas of the Republic of Ireland, where it is known in official circles as Ulster Scots or Ulla
  • Cayman Islands English (not a creoleThe term Creole is used with different meanings in different contexts, which can generate confusion. Generally it refers to a people or a culture that is distinctive or local to a region, but with various additional shades of meaning. Disambiguation See a)
  • Angloromani (with a significant influx of RomanyRomany (or Romani is the language of the Roma and Sinti, travelling peoples often referred to in English as " gypsies". They came originally from northern India and parts of Pakistan, and their language belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Europea vocabulary)
• FrisianThis page covers the West Frisian language, spoken in the Netherlands. For other Frisian languages see Frisian language (disambiguation). Frisian (varyingly Frysk Frasch Fresk or Friisk is a language spoken by a small ethnic group living in the northweste
• Low GermanLanguage classification Indo-European languages Germanic languages West Germanic languages Low German languages Subdivisions East Low German Low Franconian Low Saxon Low German (in Low German, Platt(duutsch or Nedderduutsch is any of a variety of West Ger (descending from Old Saxon / Old Low Franconian)
  • Low FranconianLanguage classification Indo-European languages Germanic languages West Germanic languages Low German languages Low Franconian language Low Franconian is any of several West Germanic languages spoken in the Netherlands, northern Belgium, and South Africa.
    • Dutch
    • West Flemish
    • Limburgish
    • Afrikaans (with a significant influx of vocabulary from Malay and native African languages)
  • Low Saxon
    • Several dialects in northern Germany and the Netherlands
    • Plautdietsch ( Mennonite Low German)
  • East Low German
• High German
  • German
    • Middle German
      • East Middle German
        • Standard German
        • Lower Silesian
        • Upper Saxon
      • West Middle German
        • Luxembourgeois
        • Several dialects in western Germany
        • Pennsylvania German
    • Upper German
      • Alemannic
        • Swiss German
        • Swabian
        • Alemán Coloneiro (spoken in Venezuela)
      • Walser
      • Austro-Bavarian
        • Bavarian
        • Cimbrian (with a heavy influx of Italian vocabulary)
        • Mócheno
        • Hutterite German (spoken by Hutterites)
      • Lombardic (extinct)
    • Fränkisch (extinct in the 1800s)
  • Yiddish (with a significant influx of vocabulary from Hebrew and written in the Hebrew alphabet)
  • Wymysojer