Germanic languages

The Germanic languages form a branch of the Indo-European family, with roughly 515 million native speakers spread across Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. English, the most spoken Germanic language, also holds the title of the world's most widely spoken language, with an estimated 2 billion speakers. All Germanic languages trace back to Proto-Germanic, which was spoken during the Iron Age in Scandinavia, northern Germany, and along the coasts of the North Sea and the Baltic.

Among the West Germanic languages, the three largest are English (360–400 million native speakers), German (over 100 million), and Dutch (24 million). Other West Germanic languages include Afrikaans, which developed from Dutch among South Africa's Afrikaners and has over 7.1 million native speakers; Low German, a collection of unstandardized dialects with roughly 4.35–7.15 million native speakers and up to 10 million people who can understand it (including at least 2.2 million in Germany as of 2016 and 2.15 million in the Netherlands in 2003); Yiddish, once spoken by about 13 million Jews in pre-World War II Europe but now down to around 1.5 million native speakers; Scots, with 1.5 million native speakers; Limburgish varieties, with roughly 1.3 million speakers along the Dutch-Belgian-German border; and the Frisian languages, with over 500,000 native speakers in the Netherlands and Germany.

The largest North Germanic languages are Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian, which are partially mutually intelligible and together have about 20 million native speakers in the Nordic countries, plus an additional 5 million second-language speakers. Since the Middle Ages, these languages have been heavily influenced by Middle Low German (a West Germanic language), with Low German words making up an estimated 30–60% of their vocabularies. Other living North Germanic languages—Faroese, Icelandic, and Elfdalian—are more conservative, lacking significant Low German influence, having more complex grammar, and showing limited mutual intelligibility with other North Germanic languages today.

The East Germanic branch included Gothic, Burgundian, and Vandalic. The last to die out was Crimean Gothic, which survived until the late 18th century in isolated parts of Crimea.

According to the SIL Ethnologue, there are 48 living Germanic languages: 41 in the Western branch and 6 in the Northern branch. It places Riograndenser Hunsrückisch German in neither category, though linguists often consider it a German dialect. The common ancestor of all these languages is Proto-Germanic (also called Common Germanic), spoken around the middle of the 1st millennium BC in Iron Age Scandinavia and northern Germany. Proto-Germanic and its descendants are known for unique linguistic features, most famously the consonant shift called Grimm's law. Early Germanic varieties entered recorded history when Germanic tribes moved south from Scandinavia and northern Germany in the 2nd century BC, settling in what is now western Germany and along the Baltic coasts.

English is an official language in Belize, Canada, Nigeria, the Falkland Islands, Saint Helena, Malta, Ireland, South Africa, the Philippines, Jamaica, Dominica, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, American Samoa, Palau, St. Lucia, Grenada, Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Puerto Rico, Guam, Hong Kong, Singapore, Pakistan, India, Papua New Guinea, Namibia, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and many former British colonies in Asia, Africa, and Oceania. It is also the de facto language of the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand, and Australia, and a recognized language in Nicaragua and Malaysia.

German is an official language in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Switzerland, and has regional status in Italy, Poland, Namibia, and Denmark. It is also spoken by immigrant communities in North America, South America, Central America, Mexico, and Australia. The German dialect Pennsylvania Dutch is still used daily by some populations in Pennsylvania. A group of Alemannic German dialects called Alsatian is spoken in Alsace, France.

Dutch is an official language in Aruba, Belgium, Curaçao, the Netherlands, Sint Maarten, and Suriname. Though the Netherlands colonized Indonesia, Dutch was dropped as an official language after independence and is now used mainly by older or traditionally educated people. Dutch was an official language in South Africa until 1983, when it evolved into and was replaced by Afrikaans, a partially mutually intelligible daughter language.

Afrikaans is one of 12 official languages in South Africa and serves as a lingua franca in Namibia, and is also used in other Southern African nations.

Low German consists of very diverse dialects spoken in northeastern Netherlands and northern Germany. Some dialects, like East Pomeranian, have been brought to South America.

Scots is one of three official languages of Scotland, spoken by over 1.5 million people, mainly in the Lowlands, but also in the Northern Isles (Orcadian and Shetlandic) and parts of Ulster (where it is called Ulster Scots).

Frisian is spoken by about half a million people along the southern North Sea coast in the Netherlands and Germany.

Luxembourgish is a Moselle Franconian dialect spoken mainly in Luxembourg, where it is an official language. Similar Moselle Franconian varieties are spoken in small parts of Belgium, France, and Germany.

Yiddish, once the native language of 11 to 13 million people, now has around 1.5 million native speakers.