- •General remarks
- •1.2. Comparative method and “genetic” hypothesis
- •1.3. Neogrammarian movement
- •1.4. Methods of historical linguistics
- •1.5. Modern views of language evolution
- •Family Tree Theory
- •Indo-European Family of Languages
- •Indo-European Family of languages
- •Proto-Language. The Evolution of Proto-Germanic
- •Historical Sources of Germanic Tribes and Dialects
- •Geographical distribution. Dialect geography
- •Classification of Germanic languages
- •1.1. Germanic consonant system
- •1.1.1. The First Consonant Shift (Grimm’s Law)
- •1.1.2. The Second Consonant Shift
- •1.1.3. The Third Consonant Shift
- •1.1.4. Other consonant changes
- •2.1. Germanic vowel system.
- •2.1.1 Independent changes.
- •2.1.2 Assimilative changes. Vowel mutation / Umlaut
- •2.1.3 Other vowel changes.
- •1.1. The Word-Class Noun
- •1.1.1. Structure of a Noun in Germanic
- •1.1.2. Grammatical categories of a Noun in Germanic
- •1.2. The Rise of Article
- •1.3. The word-class adjective
- •1.4. The word-class verb
- •1.4.1. Morphological classification of old Germanic verbs
- •1.4.2. Evolution of grammatical categories
- •Reading material Basic
- •Additional
- •1.1. Runes and their origin
- •1.2. Wulfila’s Gothic alphabet
- •1.3 Introduction of the Latin alphabet
- •Additional
- •1. Etymological layers of Old Germanic vocabulary
- •1.1. Native words
- •1.2. Loan words
- •1.3. Ways of word-formation
- •Reading material Basic
- •Historical Background
- •Vandalic
- •[Edit] History and evidence
- •[Edit] Alphabet
- •[Edit] Sounds
- •[Edit] Vowels
- •[Edit] Consonants
- •[Edit] Stops
- •[Edit] Fricatives
- •[Edit] Nasals and approximants and other phonemes
- •[Edit] Accentuation and Intonation
- •[Edit] Morphology [edit] Nouns
- •[Edit] Pronouns
- •[Edit] Verbs
- •[Edit] Gothic compared to other Germanic languages
- •[Edit] Gothic and Old Norse
- •[Edit] Examples
- •[Edit] Notes From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- •Vandalic language From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- •Burgundian language (Germanic) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- •Goths From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- •[Edit] Etymology
- •[Edit] Proto-history [edit] Jordanes
- •[Edit] Jordanes and Orosius
- •[Edit] Pliny
- •[Edit] History
- •[Edit] Archaeology
- •[Edit] Languages
- •[Edit] Symbolic legacy
- •[Edit] See also
- •[Edit] Footnotes From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- •[Change] Other websites
- •Visigoths From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- •[Edit] Division of the Goths: Tervingi and Vesi
- •[Edit] Etymology of Tervingi and Vesi/Visigothi
- •[Edit] History
- •[Edit] War with Rome (376–382)
- •[Edit] Reign of Alaric I
- •[Edit] Visigothic kingdom
- •[Edit] Visigothic religion
- •[Edit] Visigothic culture
- •[Edit] Law
- •[Edit] Non-Balti kings
- •Ostrogoths From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- •[Edit] Divided Goths: Greuthungi and Ostrogothi
- •[Edit] Etymology of Greuthungi and Ostrogothi
- •[Edit] Prehistory
- •[Edit] History [edit] Hunnic invasions
- •[Edit] Post-Hunnic movements
- •[Edit] Kingdom in Italy
- •[Edit] War with Rome (535–554)
- •[Edit] Ostrogothic culture
- •2.: Visigoths and ostrogoths — ( p. 8 ) - Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 2 [1776]
- •The origin of the goths; and the gothic history of jordanes — (
- •Germany
- •The story of the Goths and Romans is well known. The Visigoths ...
- •1.2 Peculiarities of the East Germanic subgroup
- •9.3 Gothic and Germanic
- •Reading material Basic
- •Additional
- •10. North Germanic Languages
- •10.1 Historical background. Division into East Scandinavian and West
- •10.2. East Scandinavian subgroup
- •10.2.1. Danish
- •10.2.2. Swedish
- •10.3. West Scandinavian Subgroup
- •10.3.1. Norwegian
- •10.3.2. Icelandic
- •10.3.3. Faroese
- •10.4 Simple sentence in Scandinavian languages
- •Additional
- •11. West germanic languages
- •11.1 Historical background
- •11.2 Peculiarities of West-Germanic subgroup
- •11.3. Frisian
- •11.4. Dutch
Historical Sources of Germanic Tribes and Dialects
The earliest evidences about Germanic tribes, places of their settlement and their contacts with other ancient peoples are mostly provided by historiographers who were not Germanic by their origin.
The first mentioning of the Germanic tribes was done in IVth century by Pitheas, who came across Gothic tribes during his voyage to the Baltic coast.
Other historians who mentioned provided the information about Germanic tribes in their works include the following ones:
1) Plutarch, who mentioned Teutones as one of the peoples who endangered the safety of the Roman Empire.
2) J. Ceasar who described the military attacks of Germanic tribes on the Roman Empire in his “Ceasar’s Commentaries on Gaelic Wars”
3) Strabo, who devoted the 7th book of his “Strabo’s Geographica” to Germania
4) Pliny the Elder, whose book “Historia Naturalis” contains the concise classification of Germanic tribes
5) C. Tacitus who gave a profound description of Germanic tribes, their way of life of his time in his “Germania”
6) Gregory of Tours who described the history of Franks of the VIth century in “Historia Francorum”
7) Casseodorus wrote the history of Goths.
The information provided in these sources mainly concerns the description of the way of life of Germans and attempts of classifying Germanic tribes into groups.
Thus, C. Tacitus described Germans as strong, brave warriors – blue-eyed, red-haired, heavily-built, who lead their lives either in wars or in idelness, leaving the managements of the household to women, the old men and the weakest members of the family.
Among the most clear and concise classifications there is the one elaborated by Pliny the Elder, who devided Germani tribes into 6 groups:
the Vandals (Vindili) who inhabited the easterns part of Germanic territory and spoke the dialects which gave rise to East Germanic languages;
the Ingaevones who inhabited the north-western part of Germanic territory, the shores of the North Sea (English is the descendant of the dialects originally belonging to these tribes);
the Istaevones who inhabited the western part of Germanic territory (Dutch originated from Istaevonic dialects);
the Hermiones who inhabited the southern part of Germanic territory (German comes from this group of dialects);
the Helleviones who inhabited Scandinavia (the dialects are the predecessors of North Germanic languages);
the Peucini and Bastarnae who lived close to Dacians and whose affiliation to Germanic tribes is doubted by some scholars.
Geographical distribution. Dialect geography
The geographical distribution of languages and dialects is studied be such branch of linguistics as geolinguistics which task is to mark transitional areas on linguistic maps and to group languages in terms of their contacts.
Geolinguistics operates the term isogloss. Isoglosses are lines on a map which separate regions according to linguistic differences in languages or dialects.
There are four main kinds of isoglosses:
1) isolex – lines separating regions according to the differences of lexical items;
2) isomorph – lines separating regions according to the differences of morphological features;
3) isophone – lines separating regions according to the differences of phonological features;
4) isoseme – lines separating regions according to the differences of semantic features.
It is absolutely impossible to draw precise lines on linguistic maps and define exact boundaries of such dialectal regions having differences in in semantic, lexical, morphological and phonological features, so, in linguistic maps the isoglosses are criss-crossed. The boundaries are obscure and the territories where the areas merge are called transition areas.
As for Germanic languages….
Geographical distribution of the Germanic group of languages among other groups of the Indo-European family tree shows their nearest neighbours - Celtic in the West, Italic in the South, Slavic in the East, and Baltic in the north-east.
+ dialects