West Germanic

The dialectal differentiation of West Germanic was quite distinct even at the beginning of our era since Pliny and Tacitus described them under three tribal names On the eve of their "great migrations" of the 4th and 5th c. the West Germans included several tribes. The Franconians (or Franks) subdivided into Low, Middle and High Franconians. The Angles and the Frisians (known as the Anglo-Frisian group), the Jutes and the Saxons inhabited the coastal area of the modern Netherlands, the Federal Republic of Germany and the southern part of Denmark. A group of tribes known as High Germans lived in the mountai­nous southern regions of the Federal Republic of Germany (High Germans, Low Germans) The High Germans included a number of tribes whose names are known since the early Middle Ages: the Alemanians, the Swabians, the Bavarians, the Thuringians and others.

The Franconian dialects were spoken in the extreme North of the Empire; in the later Middle Ages they developed into Dutch - the language of the Low Countries (the Netherlands) and Flemish - the language of Flanders. The earliest texts in Low Franconian date from the 10th c; 12th с records represent the earliest Old Dutch.

The modern language of the Netherlands, formerly called Dutch, and Its variant m Belgium, known as the Flemish dialect, are now treated as a single languuge, Netherlandish. Netherlandish is spoken by almost 20 million people.

About three hundred years ago the Dutch Language was brought to South Africa. Their dialects in Africa eventually grew into a separate West Germanic language, Afrikaans. Today Afrikaans is the mother-tongue of over four million Afrikaners and coloured people and one of the state languages in the South African Republic

The High German dialects consolidated into a common language known as Old High German (OHG). The first written records in OHG date from the 8th and 9th c. (glosses to Latin texts, translations from Latin. and religious poems). Towards the 12th c. High German (known as Middle High Germarn had intermixed with neighbouring tongues, especially Middle and High Franconian, and eventually developed into the Literary German language. The total number of German-speaking people approaches 100 million.

The first English written records have come down from the 7th c., which is the earliest date in the history of writing in the West Germanic subgroup (see relevant chapters below). The Frisians and the Saxons who did not take part in the invasion of Britain stayed on the continent. Frisian has survived as a local dialect in Friesland (in the Netherlands) and Ostfriesland (the Federal Republic of Germany). It has both an oral and written form, the earliest records dating from the 13th c. In the Early Middle Ages the continental Saxons formed a powerful tribe. Together with High German tribes they took part in the eastward drive and the colonization of the former Slavonic territories. Old Saxon known in written form from the records of the 9th c. has survived as one of the Low German dialects.