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Earliest recorded Germanic languages
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THE ROOTS OF GERMAN VOCABULARY
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- Old English (Anglo-Saxon) 700–1050 Old High German
- Old Saxon (Old Low German) 850–1050 Old Norwegian
- Old Icelandic 1150–1500* Middle Netherlandic
- Old Danish 1250–1500* Old Swedish
*Standard cutoff date for beginnings of modern Germanic languages. The Germanic languages are related in the sense that they can be shown to be different historical developments of a single earlier parent language. Although for some language families there are written records of the parent language (e.g., for the Romance languages, which are variant developments of Latin), in the case of Germanic no written records of the parent language exist. Much of its structure, however, can be deduced by the comparative method of reconstruction (a reconstructed language is called a protolanguage; reconstructed forms are marked with an asterisk). For example, a comparison of Runic -gastiz, Gothic gasts, Old Norse gestr, Old English giest, Old Frisian iest, and Old Saxon and Old High German gast ‘guest’ leads to the reconstruction of Proto-Germanic *ǥastiz. Similarly, a comparison of Runic horna, Gothic haurn, and Old Norse, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Saxon, and Old High German horn ‘horn’ leads scholars to reconstruct the Proto-Germanic form *hornan. Such reconstructions are, in part, merely formulas of relationship. Thus, the Proto-Germanic *o of *hornan in this position yielded au in Gothic and o in the other languages. In other positions (e.g., when followed by a nasal sound plus a consonant) *o yielded u in all the languages: Proto-Germanic *dumbaz, Gothic dumbs, Old Norse dumbr, Old English, Old Frisian, and Old Saxon dumb, Old High German tumb ‘dumb.’ What may be deduced is that this vowel sounded more like u in some environments, but like o in others; it may be written as *u∼o, with the tilde indicating that it varied between these two pronunciations. The above example shows that such reconstructions are more than mere formulas of relationship; they also give some indication of how Proto-Germanic actually sounded. Occasionally scholars are fortunate enough to find external confirmation of these deductions. For example, on the basis of Old English cyning, Old Saxon and Old High German kuning ‘king,’ the Proto-Germanic *kuningaz can be reconstructed; this would seem to be confirmed by Finnish kuningas ‘king,’ which must have been borrowed from Germanic at a very early date. By pushing the comparative method still farther back, it can be shown that Germanic is related to a number of other languages, notably Celtic, Italic, Greek, Baltic, Slavic, Iranian, and Indo-Aryan (Indic). All these language groups are subsequent developments of a still earlier parent language for which there are, again, no written records but which can be reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European German is a member of the Germanic language family, which means it is closely related to other Germanic languages like Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, and English. Because English and German share a common language ancestor, an English speaker will have some advantages when it comes to learning German vocabulary, as many of the words sound the same in both languages. These words are called cognates, and you’ll easily be able to figure out their meanings because they look and sound so similar to English words with the same meaning. For example, take a guess at the meaning of the verbs schwimmen, bringen and lernen or the nouns Finger, Hand, Haus or Garten without needing to consult a German dictionary. Not too hard to translate back to English, right? One other interesting element of German vocabulary is that German is a language full of compound words. That means you can combine two German vocabulary words to create an even longer word with a more complex meaning. For example, the word der Kühlschrank is composed of the word kühl, meaning “cool,” and Schrank, meaning “wardrobe.” So a Kühlschrank is a “cool wardrobe,” a funny way of describing what English speakers would call a “refrigerator.” Download 25.99 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
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