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Germanic language
From Teflpedia
A Germanic language is a language which is a member of the Germanic language family and is therefore historically related to proto-Germanic.
Typical linguistic features of Germanic languages include:
- They are inflected tense-poor. English for example, has two inflected tenses.
- They are case-poor, compared to PIE. English, for example, has mostly lost its case system.
- They have Germanic strong and weak verbs:
- Weak verbs form preterites by suffixation of alveolar stops /t/ or /d/. e.g. English watched or wanted.
- Strong verbs form preterites by stem-changing. e.g. English sing+sang+sung
- They have dative shift.
The historical origin and geographic centre of Germanic languages tends to be in Northern Europe, though English has spread worldwide.