English is a Germanic language which simply means that it has historical connections to a group of languages which are found primarily in Europe. The Germanic Language Family is a part of a larger language family known as Indo-European. The Germanic languages include German, English, Dutch, the Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese), Yiddish, Luxembourgian, Frisian, and Afrikaans.
In the first century B.C.E. the Germanic peoples were living on both sides of the Baltic and North seas and were speaking a fairly uniform language. German evolved into three primary dialects known as North, West, and East. The East Germanic tribes settled east of the Oder River and their languages (which include Gothic) have become extinct. The West Germanic tribes settled in the lands between the Elbe and Oder Rivers. The North Germanic tribes settled in Scandinavia.
In the section below, I would like to briefly describe some of the Germanic languages.
English: English is the most widely spoken Germanic language, and, in fact, is the most widely spoken Indo-European language. It is the native language to about 350 million people and is the most common second language in the world. Its Germanic roots are seen in the Anglo-Saxon influence and in addition it was influenced by the invasions of Old Norse speakers. Following 1066, the language was influenced by French. As English has spread around the world it has acquired vocabulary from many other languages.
German: At the present time German is the native language to about 100 million people and it is the national language of Germany and Austria. Written German is uniform, but there are two major dialects: High German which is spoken in the highlands of the south, and Low German which is spoken in the lowlands in the north. High German is the standard written language, even in regions where Low German is commonly spoken.
With regard to writing, in the fourteenth century German used a Gothic style known as Fraktur which remained the standard until the middle of the twentieth century. Following World War II, Fraktur was replaced by the Roman characters used elsewhere in Europe. German is the only language in which all nouns begin with a capital letter.
Since English is a Germanic language, there are many words which are the same in both English and German. Some of these include finger, hand, butter, ring, name, warm, and blind.
Dutch: At the present time about 15 million people speak Dutch as their native language. Dutch is closer to English than is German.
The Dutch are a maritime nation and thus they have left the imprint of the language in many different areas of the world. It is not uncommon to find that Dutch nautical terms have been adopted by other languages. With regard to English, some of the English words that have been adopted from Dutch include deck, yacht, easel, freight, furlough, brandy, cookie, cruller, waffle, maelstrom, and Santa Claus.
Frisian: Frisian, the language closest to English, is the native language of about 300,000 people in the Netherlands.
Flemish: This language is similar to Dutch and is the native language of more than 5 million people in Belgium. There are cultural and religious distinctions between Dutch and Flemish.
Luxembourgian: While many linguists feel that this is a German dialect, others classify it as a distinct language because Luxembourg is an independent country. There are about 350,000 native speakers.
Icelandic: This Germanic language has about 250,000 native speakers in Iceland. Icelandic is a Scandinavian (North Germanic) language which is remarkably similar to the Old Norse which was spoken by the Vikings. Icelanders can read the Eddas and Old Norse sagas with little difficulty.
One of the interesting features of Icelandic is the absence of words from other languages for modern ideas and innovations. Icelanders prefer to create their own Icelandic words.
Faroese: About 250 miles north of Scotland, midway between Iceland and Norway, are the Faroe Islands. A thousand years ago, Norwegian Vikings who spoke Old Norse settled the islands. Like Icelandic, Faroese is similar to Old Norse. While the official language is Danish, Faroese is the native language for about 40,000 people.
Danish: This is the native language to about 5 million people. As a Scandinavian language Danish is closely related to Norwegian and Swedish.
Norwegian: About 4 million people speak Norwegian as their native language. There are two distinct dialects of Norwegian. There is a Dano-Norwegian dialect which was originally called riksmål (“state language”). This dialect is currently called bokmål (“book language”) and most media (books, newspapers, broadcasting) use bokmål. A movement for the recognition of Norwegian as a language distinct from Danish began about 1850. This led to the establishment of landsmål (“country language”) which was based on the rural dialects. Landsmål is currently known as nynorsk (New Norse) and is seen as an attempt to carry on the Old Norse tradition. Both dialects—bokmål and nynorsk—have equal standing in government and schools.
Swedish: This is the most widely spoken Scandinavian language with about 8 million native speakers. Swedish is closer to Danish than to Norwegian. During the Middle Ages, many German words came into Swedish. Then, in the eighteenth century, there was a large infusion of words from French.
Afrikaans: Afrikaans developed out of the seventeenth century Dutch which was spoken by colonists in South Africa. The isolation of these colonists from the Netherlands brought about increasing differences and Afrikaans today is recognized as a separate language. It is the native language for about 6 million people.
Yiddish: About a thousand years ago, Jewish immigrants from northern France settled in cities along the Rhine River. They adopted the German dialects of the area with a pronunciation that was heavily influenced by Hebrew. While Hebrew remained the language of religion, by the fourteenth and fifteenth century Yiddish was widely spoken by European Jews.
About 80% of the Yiddish vocabulary is German, about 10% is Hebrew, and about 10% from Slavic languages. One of the unusual features of Yiddish is its use of idiomatic expressions which makes translation of some concepts difficult. The destruction of the European Jews by the Nazis during World War II significantly reduced the number of Yiddish speakers. Many linguists feel that Yiddish will not survive as a language.
Gothic: This is an extinct East Germanic language. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, which is a sixth century copy of a fourth century Bible translation. This is the largest text corpus currently known for an East Germanic language. There are no modern descendents of the Gothic language. While Gothic was close to extinction in the sixth century, it may have survived in remote areas of the Iberian peninsula until the eighth century.
Many linguists consider Gothic closer to Proto-Germanic (the ancestor to the German languages) than any other language and the reconstruction of Proto-Germanic has relied heavily on Gothic.