Editing Germanic languages (section)

==Distinctive characteristics==
Germanic languages possess a number of defining features compared with other Indo-European languages.

Some of the best-known are the following:
# The [[sound change]]s known as [[Grimm's law]] and [[Verner's law]], which shifted the values of all the Indo-European stop consonants (for example, original *{{IPA|/t d dʰ/}} became Germanic *{{IPA|/θ t d/}} in most cases; compare ''three'' with [[Latin]] {{lang|la|tres}}, ''two'' with Latin {{lang|la|duo}}, ''do'' with [[Sanskrit]] {{transliteration|sa|dhā-}}). The recognition of these two sound laws were seminal events in the understanding of the regular nature of linguistic sound change and the development of the [[comparative method (linguistics)|comparative method]], which forms the basis of modern [[historical linguistics]].
# The development of a strong [[stress (language)|stress]] on the first syllable of the word, which triggered significant phonological reduction of all other syllables. This is responsible for the reduction of most of the basic English, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish words into monosyllables, and the common impression of modern English and German as consonant-heavy languages. Examples are Proto-Germanic {{lang|gem-x-proto|*strangiþō}} → ''strength'', {{lang|gem-x-proto|*aimaitijō}} → ''ant'', {{lang|gem-x-proto|*haubudą}} → ''head'', {{lang|gem-x-proto|*hauzijaną}} → ''hear'', {{lang|gem-x-proto|*harubistaz}} → German {{lang|de|Herbst}} "autumn, harvest", {{lang|gem-x-proto|*hagatusjō}} → German {{lang|de|Hexe}} "witch, hag".
# A change known as [[Germanic umlaut]], which modified vowel qualities when a high front vocalic segment ({{IPA|/i/}}, {{IPA|/iː/}} or {{IPA|/j/}}) followed in the next syllable. Generally, back vowels were fronted, and front vowels were raised. In many languages, the modified vowels are indicated with an [[Umlaut (diacritic)|umlaut]] mark (e.g., {{lang|de|ä ö ü}} in German, pronounced {{IPA|/ɛ(ː) œ ~ øː ʏ ~ yː/}}, respectively). This change resulted in pervasive alternations in related words — prominent in modern German and present to a lesser extent in modern English (e.g., ''mouse/mice'', ''goose/geese'', ''broad/breadth'', ''tell/told'', ''old/elder'', ''foul/filth'', ''gold/gild''<ref>These alternations are no longer easily distinguishable from vowel alternations due to earlier changes (e.g. [[Indo-European ablaut]], as in ''write/wrote/written'', ''sing/sang/sung'', ''hold/held'') or later changes (e.g. vowel shortening in [[Middle English]], as in ''wide/width'', ''lead/led'').</ref>).
# Large numbers of vowel qualities. English has around 11–12 vowels in most dialects (not counting diphthongs), [[Standard Swedish]] has 17 [[Monophthong|pure vowels (monophthongs)]],{{sfnp|Wang|Ding|Tao|Li|2012|p=657}} standard German and Dutch 14, and [[Danish language|Danish]] at least 11.{{sfnp|Basbøll|Jacobsen|2003}} The Amstetten dialect of [[Bavarian German]] has 13 distinctions among long vowels alone, one of the largest such inventories in the world.<ref>{{SOWL|290}}</ref>
# ''[[V2 word order|Verb second]]'' (V2) word order, which is uncommon cross-linguistically. Exactly one noun phrase or adverbial element must precede the verb; in particular, if an adverb or prepositional phrase precedes the verb, then the subject must immediately follow the finite verb. In modern English, this survives to a lesser extent, known as "inversion": examples include some constructions with ''here'' or ''there'' (''Here comes the sun; there are five continents''), verbs of speech after a quote (''"Yes", said John''), sentences beginning with certain conjunctions (''Hardly had he said this when...; Only much later did he realize...'') and sentences beginning with certain adverbs of motion to create a sense of drama (''Over went the boat; out ran the cat; [[Pop Goes The Weasel]]''). It is more common in other modern Germanic languages.{{example needed|date=April 2023}}

Other significant characteristics are:
# The reduction of the various [[grammatical tense|tense]] and [[grammatical aspect|aspect]] combinations of the Indo-European verbal system into only two: the [[present tense]] and the [[past tense]] (also called the [[preterite]]).
# The development of a new class of [[Germanic weak verb|weak verbs]] that use a dental [[suffix]] ({{IPA|/d/}}, {{IPA|/t/}} or {{IPA|/ð/}}) instead of [[Apophony|vowel alternation]] ([[Indo-European ablaut]]) to indicate past tense. The vast majority of verbs in all Germanic languages are weak; the remaining verbs with vowel ablaut are the [[Germanic strong verb|strong verbs]]. The distinction has been lost in Afrikaans.
# A distinction in [[definiteness]] of a [[noun phrase]] that is marked by different sets of inflectional endings for [[adjectives]], the so-called strong and weak inflections. A similar development happened in the [[Balto-Slavic languages]]. This distinction has been lost in modern English but was present in [[Old English]] and remains in all other Germanic languages to various degrees.
# Some words with etymologies that are difficult to link to other Indo-European families but with variants that appear in almost all Germanic languages. See [[Germanic substrate hypothesis]].
#[[Discourse marker|Discourse particles]], which are a class of short, unstressed words which speakers use to express their attitude towards the utterance or the hearer. This word category seems to be rare outside of the Germanic languages. An example would be the word 'just', which the speaker can use to express surprise.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Harbert, Wayne.|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/252534420|title=The Germanic languages|date=2007|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-511-26991-2|location=Cambridge|pages=32–35|oclc=252534420}}</ref>

Some of the characteristics present in Germanic languages were not present in Proto-Germanic but developed later as [[areal feature]]s that spread from language to language:
* Germanic umlaut only affected the [[North Germanic languages|North]] and [[West Germanic languages]] (which represent all modern Germanic languages) but not the now-extinct [[East Germanic languages]], such as [[Gothic language|Gothic]], nor Proto-Germanic, the common ancestor of all Germanic languages.
* The large inventory of vowel qualities is a later development, due to a combination of Germanic umlaut and the tendency in many Germanic languages for pairs of long/short vowels of originally identical quality to develop distinct qualities, with the length distinction sometimes eventually lost. Proto-Germanic had only five distinct vowel qualities, although there were more actual vowel phonemes because length and possibly nasality were phonemic. In modern German, long-short vowel pairs still exist but are also distinct in quality.
* Proto-Germanic probably had a more general S-O-V-I word order. However, the tendency toward V2 order may have already been present in latent form and may be related to [[Wackernagel's law]], an Indo-European law dictating that sentence [[clitic]]s must be placed second.<ref>According to [[Donald Ringe]], cf. {{Harvcoltxt|Ringe|2006|p=295}}</ref>

Roughly speaking, Germanic languages differ in how conservative or how progressive each language is with respect to an overall trend toward [[analytic language|analyticity]]. Some, such as [[Icelandic language|Icelandic]] and, to a lesser extent, German, have preserved much of the complex [[inflectional morphology]] inherited from Proto-Germanic (and in turn from [[Proto-Indo-European language|Proto-Indo-European]]). Others, such as English, [[Swedish language|Swedish]], and [[Afrikaans]], have moved toward a largely analytic type.