Tree of Germanic Languages

The Ministry of Higher and Secondary Special Education of the Republic of Uzbekistan
The Uzbek State University of World Languages
Roman-German philology
COURSE PAPER
Theme:



Done by:


Checked by


Tashkent 2005
Plan:

1. 
   Germanic languages
   
2. 
   Tree of Germanic languages
   
3. 
   Seven distinctive features of Germanic languages
   
4. 
   Language description
   
5. 
   The examples of Germanic languages
   
6. 
   Sources and bibliography
   

Germanic languages.

The history of English language has been reconstructed on the basis of written records of different periods. The earliest texts in English are dated back to 7th c.A.D.; the earliest records in other Germanic languages to the 3rd or 4th A.D. But to say where the English language came from one must learn some facts of the prewritten history of the Germanic group.

Certain information about the early stages of English and Germanic history can be found in the works of ancient historians, especially Roman. They contain the description of Germanic tribes, personal names and place-names.
English language belongs to the Germanic group of languages, which is one of the twelve groups of the Indo-European linguistic family. The history of the Germanic group begins with the appearance of what is known as the Proto-Germanic language which split from the Proto-Indo-European tongues between 15th and 10th c. B.C.
The common ancestral (reconstructed) language is called Proto-Indo-European. It probably originated in the area north of the Black Sea. The various subgroups of the Indo-European family include:
· Indo-Iranian languages
· Italic languages (including Latin and its descendants, the Romance languages)
· Germanic languages
· Celtic languages
· Baltic languages
· Slavic languages
· Illyrian languages
· Albanian language (and extinct cousins)
· Anatolian languages (extinct, most notable was the language of the Hittites)
· Tocharian languages
· Greek language
· Armenian language

As the Indo-Europeans spread over a larger territory, the ancient Germans moved further north than other tribes and settled on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea. Proto-Germanic has never been recorded. In the 19th c. it was reconstructed by the methods of comparative linguistics from written records. Towards the beginning of our era Germanic divided into dialectical groups which later developed into separate languages.