Introducing English Linguistics

Genetic classifications of languages
The development of English
23
Indo-European 
Germanic 
Italic  Celtic   Balto-Slavic  Hellenic Indo-Iranian Albanian 
English
German
Dutch
Swedish
Danish               
Latin*
Spanish
French
Italian
Portuguese                
   
Sanskrit*
Hindi
Bengali
Persian (Farsi)      
Albanian 
   
*Indicates a dead, or extinct, language; two additional branches not represented above, 
Anatolian and Tocharian, are also dead. 
Irish
Welsh 
Russian
Polish
Czech    
Greek
FIGURE
2.1
The Indo-European 
language family.
English is a member of a language family, Germanic, that is a direct
descendant of Indo-European and that consists of fifty-three languages
(www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid-90017). Figure 2.2 lists
some of the more commonly spoken Germanic languages and the three
branches – West, North, and East – in which Germanic languages can be
classified.
While the one East Germanic language listed in Figure 2.2, Gothic, is
now dead, North Germanic contains languages commonly spoken in
Scandinavia, and West Germanic languages spoken throughout the world
(English and Yiddish) as well as in Europe (German, Dutch, and Frisian)
and South Africa (Afrikaans).
Figure 2.2 provides a further breakdown of the five stages of develop-
ment that English has gone through: Old English, Middle English, Early

---

Modern English, Modern English, and Contemporary English. Not every-
one divides English into five distinct phases. Contemporary English is
included in the list because, as mentioned earlier in this chapter, lan-
guages are dynamic, not static, entities, and the designation of
Contemporary English is used to reflect the fact that the English language
is constantly changing. It is also important to note that all languages can
be divided into stages similar to those for English. For instance, the two
varieties of German spoken in Germany – High German (Hochdeutsch)
and Low German (Niederdeutsch) – each went through two earlier stages
of development: Old and Middle High/Low German.