West_Germanic_language West_Germanic_language

West Germanic language - Definition and Overview

West Germanic is the largest branch of the Germanic family of languages, including such languages as English, Dutch, and German.

The other families of Germanic are North Germanic and East Germanic.

Language classification
Indo-European languages
Germanic languages
West Germanic languages

History

There was never a West Germanic proto-language from which all the languages currently in the group seem to have derived. As such the grouping is more of a geographical convenience to categorize languages that share many similarities with each other but also individually compare closely to particular aspects of North Germanic or East Germanic.

Family tree

Note that divisions between subfamilies of Germanic are rarely precisely defined; most form dialect continua, with adjacent dialects being mutually intelligible and more separated ones not.

See also

Example Usage of Germanic

wjafranklin: He's all, "Blah, blah, blah Prussia, blah, blah unified Germanic peoples, blah blah blah." Total lamewad, I'm telling you.
squawkbox: @JaeKay @JaeKay Oh no. Germanic languages have the upper hand! :P
richmond2008: now I must awaken to tell an origional Germanic make car joke, circa 1999, more specifically an under the hood Germanic make car joke,
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