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'''Proto-Germanic''', the
proto-language believed by scholars to be the common ancestor of the
Germanic languages, includes among its descendants
Dutch,
Yiddish,
German,
English,
Afrikaans,
Norwegian,
Old Norse,
Swedish,
Icelandic and
Danish. There are no extant documents in Proto-Germanic, which was unwritten, and virtually all our knowledge of this extinct language has been obtained by application of the
comparative method. There are a few surviving inscriptions in a
runic script from
Scandinavia dated to c.
200 which many feel represent a stage of the language immediately after the "Proto-Germanic" stage, if not exactly identical.
Proto-Germanic is itself descended from
Proto-Indo-European, which is also the distant ancestor of a great many other languages in Europe and Asia. For the changes undergone by Proto-Germanic during its descent from Proto-Indo-European, see
Germanic languages.
Proto-Indo-European speakers are thought by some scholars to have arrived at the plains of southern
Sweden and
Denmark, regarded to be the original dwelling-place of the
Germanic peoples, during the early
Bronze Age (about four thousand years ago). The
Battle-axe people are the best candidate for this immigration.
Colin Renfrew has proposed that the I-E languages were spread much earlier, with agriculture. The archaeological evidence from Scandinavia, however, seem to show that the local population learned agricultural skills without the infusion of a new culture.
Some also suggest that Proto-Germanic may have arisen somewhat as a
Creole language due to cultural diffusion among geographically static indigenous population groups. However, considering the inflected character and the homogeneous forms of the Germanic languages, the creation of such a creole would have been a resounding and unique feat indeed.
It has been suggested that proto-Germanic arose as a hybrid of two Indo-European dialects, one each of
Centum and
Satem types though they would have been mutually intelligible at the time of hybridization. This hypothesis may help to explain the difficulty of placing Germanic in the Indo-European family.
The reconstructed Proto-Germanic vocabulary includes a number of fundamental words (referring to, among other things, parts of the body, animals and nature) which are clearly non-Indo-European in origin, suggesting a vocabulary influence from the earlier inhabitants of northern
Europe. The mechanism of this influence is unknown; it may have been simple borrowing, or perhaps retention of old words by people who adopted Proto-Germanic as their new language. For examples, see
Non-Indo-European roots of Germanic.
==See also==
Proto-Germanic discussion group
