The Western Germanic languages
The Western Germanic languages form a branch of the Germanic languages (which
themselves constitute a branch of the large Indo-European language family).
Other branches are the Northern Germanic languages and the now extinct
Eastern Germanic languages. The Western Germanic language with the largest
number of speakers and the widest geographical distribution is English. Other languages in this group are Dutch, Afrikaans (a descendant of Dutch), Frisian and German. There are also
dialects of English, Dutch and German that are sufficiently different from the
standard languages (e.g. Scottish English and Swiss German) to justify
considering them separate languages. Yiddish is another Western Germanic
language and it was once spoken by millions of Jews in Europe. This language
developed out of German but was eavily influenced by Hebrew and later by
several Slavic languages.
Notwithstanding the differences in pronunciation, grammar and spelling between
the various Western Germanic languages, even a layman in comparative
linguistics will be able to deduce that these languages are related by
comparing the words in them that make up the basic vocabulary. The following
table shows a few of these words.
| English | Frisian | Dutch | German |
|---|
| sun | sinne | zon | Sonne |
| fox | foks | vos | Fuchs |
| sit | sitte | zitten | sitzen |
| book | boek | boek | Buch |
| red | read | rood | rot |
| sleep | sliepe | slapen | schlafen |
The common ancestor of the Western Germanic languages was a highly
inflectional language, comparable in this respect to Latin or Classical
Greek. But nowadays these languages have lost much of their inflectional
character, although not all of them to the same extent. As far as inflections
are concerned German is the most conservative of the Western Germanic
languages, while English and Afrikaans are languages with almost no
inflection. Dutch and Frisian are somewhere between these extremes. The
following table shows the various forms of the verb sleep in English,
Afrikaans, Dutch and German to illustrate these differences. Only the
indicative mood is given here, but note that German still has forms for all
persons and numbers in the subjunctive mood; in the other languages there are
no special verb forms for the subjunctive at all, or only a few remnants
(c.f. if I were you in English).
| Present tense |
|---|
| English | Afrikaans | Dutch | German |
|---|
| I sleep | ek slaap | ik slaap | ich schlafe |
| you sleep | jy slaap | jij slaapt | du schläfst |
| he sleeps | hy slaap | hij slaapt | er schläft |
| we sleep | ons slaap | wij slapen | wir schlafen |
| you sleep | julle slaap | jullie slapen | ihr schlaft |
| they sleep | hulle slaap | zij slapen | sie schlafen |
Note: In the Dutch forms the change from aa into a is just
a consequence of the Dutch spelling system and it does not reflect a
difference in pronunciation.
| Past tense |
|---|
| English | Afrikaans | Dutch | German |
|---|
| I slept | N/A | ik sliep | ich schlief |
| you slept | N/A | jij sliep | du schliefst |
| he slept | N/A | hij sliep | er schlief |
| we slept | N/A | wij sliepen | wir schliefen |
| you slept | N/A | jullie sliepen | ihr schlief |
| they slept | N/A | zij sliepen | sie schliefen |
Note: Most Afrikaans verbs have no past tense form and the perfect tense
is used instead (e.g. ek het geslaap = I slept or I have
slept.
These examples show that German has the most complex verb conjugation of these
languages. Note that the present tense forms for du and er not
only have their own endings, but that the root vowel changes from a to
ä as well!