The Germanic languages

Grammar

All Germanic languages are synthetic, i.e., they add suffixes to roots and stems to express grammatical relations. However, they differ from each other in how conservative or how progressive each language is with respect to preserving the inflectional system of *Proto-Germanic. For instance, German, Dutch and Icelandic, have preserved much of the complex inflectional morphology of inherited from *Proto-Germanic. Others, like English, Swedish, Yiddish, and Afrikaans have lost most of the inflections.

Nouns

Some of the general features of Germanic nouns are listed below.

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  All Germanic languages have two numbers: singular and plural.
  
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  The majority of Germanic languages have two genders: masculine and feminine. German, Dutch, and Icelandic have preserved the neuter gender.Dutch has two genders – common (masculine and feminine) and neuter.
  
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  Case inflections have all but disappeared in most Germanic languages, with the exception of German, and Icelandic that have retained four cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive.
  
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  All Germanic languages have strong (irregular) and weak (regular) nouns. Strong nouns have a change in the root vowel, e.g., English foot(singular) and feet (plural).
  
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  All Germanic languages have a definite and indefinite article. The definite article may precede the noun or be suffixed to the noun, e.g., in Icelandic.
  
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  Many Germanic languages form the possessive by the addition of –s or –es, for example, English man, man’s; German Mann, Mannes.
  
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  In most Germanic languages, articles and adjectives agree with nouns in gender and case in the singular; there is no gender distinction in the plural.
  
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  In some Germanic languages adjectives have strong and weak endings.
  
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  Personal pronouns have retained some case distinctions even if these were lost in the nouns, e.g., English.
  

Verbs

Below are some general features of Germanic verbs.

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  All Germanic languages have strong and weak verbs. Strong verbs form the past tense and past participle by changing the root vowel, for example, English ring, rang, rung; German ringen, rang, gerungen. Weak verbs add an ending -d/-ed/-t, for example, English talk, talked, talked;German fragen, fragte, gefragt.
  
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  Verbs are conjugated based on person (lst, 2nd, 3rd) and number (singular and plural).
  
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  Verbs have simple and numerous compound tenses formed with auxiliary verbs such as have in English and haben in German.
  
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  There are three moods: indicative, subjunctive/conditional, and imperative.
  
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  There are two voices: active and passive.