Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic branches during the fifth century BC to fifth century AD: West Germanic , East Germanic and North Germanic . [ 1 ]

Proto-Germanic itself was likely spoken after c. 500 BC, [41] and Proto-Norse from the 2nd century AD and later is still quite close to reconstructed Proto-Germanic, but other common innovations separating Germanic from Proto-Indo-European suggest a common history of pre-Proto-Germanic speakers throughout the Nordic Bronze Age.

The Germanic parent language (GPL), also known as Pre-Germanic Indo-European (PreGmc) or Pre-Proto-Germanic (PPG), is the stage of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family that was spoken c. 2500 BC – c. 500 BC, after the branch had diverged from Proto-Indo-European but before it evolved into Proto-Germanic during the First ...

The Germanic languages are a group of Indo-European languages. They came from one language, Proto-Germanic, which was first spoken in Scandinavia in the Iron Age. Today, the Germanic languages are spoken by around 515 million people as a first language. [1] English is the most spoken Germanic language, with 360-400 million native speakers. [2]

2025年1月15日 · Like every language spoken over a considerable geographic area, Proto-Germanic presumably consisted of a number of geographic varieties or dialects that over time developed in different ways into the different early and modern Germanic languages.

2025年1月15日 · Much of its structure, however, can be deduced by the comparative method of reconstruction (a reconstructed language is called a protolanguage; reconstructed forms are marked with an asterisk).

2024年11月10日 · Proto-Germanic is a reconstructed language. Its words and roots are not directly attested in any written works, but have been reconstructed through the comparative method, which finds regular similarities between languages that cannot be explained by coincidence or word-borrowing, and extrapolates ancient forms from these similarities.

2024年9月9日 · Proto-Germanic. Hypothetical prehistoric ancestor language of all Germanic languages, including English.

2023年5月11日 · Welcome to this Wikibooks page! This will be intended as a course for the Proto-Germanic language, the ancestor of all Germanic languages spoken after 500 BC in Northern Europe.

Proto-Germanic may have been a pro-drop language since verb inflection generally distinguished person and number. However, since some verb endings had already fallen together, especially in the strong past singular and in the passive voice, the use of personal pronouns must have already been common, but it was likely still optional.