Branch of the Indo-European language family, comprising languages descended from Proto-Germanic. These are divided into West Germanic, including English, German, Frisian, Dutch, Afrikaans, and Yiddish; North Germanic, including Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Faeroese (the language of the Faroe Islands); and East Germanic, now extinct, comprising Gothic and the languages of the Vandals, Burgundians, and a few other tribes.
The Gothic Bible of &AD; 350 is the earliest extensive Germanic text. The West Germanic languages developed around the North Sea and in overseas areas colonized by their speakers. The North Germanic, or Scandinavian, languages, were carried as far west as Greenland and as far east as Russia in the Viking expansion of the early Middle Ages. The continental Scandinavian languages were strongly influenced by Low German in the late Middle Ages, but Icelandic and Faeroese have preserved many characteristics of Old Scandinavian grammar.
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