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The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people [ nb 1 ] mainly in Europe, North 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.
East Germanic languages; North Germanic languages; West Germanic languages; They all descend from Proto-Germanic, and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European. South Germanic languages, an attempt to classify some of the West Germanic languages into a separate group, is rejected by the overwhelming majority of scholars. † denotes extinct languages.
German is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages. The Germanic languages are traditionally subdivided into three branches: North Germanic, East Germanic, and West Germanic.
English is by far the most-spoken West Germanic language, with more than 1 billion speakers worldwide. Within Europe, the three most prevalent West Germanic languages are English, German, and Dutch. Frisian, spoken by about 450,000 people, constitutes a fourth distinct variety of West Germanic. The language family also includes Afrikaans ...
The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages —a sub-family of the Indo-European languages —along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also referred to as the Nordic languages, a direct translation of the most common term used among Danish ...
The East Germanic languages, also called the Oder-Vistula Germanic languages, are a group of extinct Germanic languages that were spoken by East Germanic peoples. East Germanic is one of the primary branches of Germanic languages, along with North Germanic and West Germanic. The only East Germanic language of which texts are known is Gothic ...
The Germanic parent language (GPL), also known as Pre-Germanic Indo-European (PreGmc) or Pre-Proto-Germanic (PPG), is the stage of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family that was spoken c. 2500 BC – c. 500 BC, after the branch had diverged from Proto-Indo-European but before it evolved into Proto-Germanic during the First Germanic Sound Shift.
Germanic peoples. Roman bronze statuette dated to the late 1st century – early 2nd century CE, representing a Germanic man with his hair in a Suebian knot. The Germanic peoples were tribal groups who lived in Northern Europe in Classical Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. In modern scholarship, they typically include not only the Roman-era ...