Germanic Languages Don't Diverge

== Emergence of German-Celtic languages (100-500 BC) ==
It's generally excepted by Linguistics experts that in the beginning the Celtic and Germanic languages were all similar (or mutually intelligible) and some understanding has even been thought to have been between these language groups and the Slavs, a people who lived to the East. Artifacts dating back to nearly 200 BC show that the Slavic and Germanic peoples seem to have been able to communicate some very basic things via writing on rocks (hello, goodbye, I will give you this for this, etc). Artifacts from around the same time also show that Germanic and Celtic languages were very much understandable to speakers of said language groups.
=== Gothic Language & East Germanic Languages (300's-present) ===
Only a few documents in Gothic survive, not enough to completely reconstruct the language. Most Gothic-language sources are translations or glosses of other languages (namely, Greek), so foreign linguistic elements most certainly influenced the texts. These are the primary sources:
* The largest body of surviving documentation consists of various codices, mostly from the sixth century, copying the Bible translation that was commissioned by the Arian bishop Ulfilas (Wulfila, 311–382), leader of a community of Visigothic Christians in the Roman province of Moesia (modern-day Serbia, Bulgaria/Romania). He commissioned a translation of the Greek Bible into the Gothic language, of which roughly three-quarters of the New Testament and some fragments of the Old Testament have survived. The translations, performed by several scholars, are collected in the following codices:
:* Codex Argenteus (Uppsala), including the Speyer fragment: 188 leaves
:: The best-preserved Gothic manuscript and dating from the sixth century, it was preserved and transmitted by northern Ostrogoths in modern-day Italy. It contains a large portion of the four gospels. Since it is a translation from Greek, the language of the Codex Argenteus is replete with borrowed Greek words and Greek usages. The syntax in particular is often copied directly from the Greek.
:* Codex Ambrosianus (Milan) and the Codex Taurinensis (Turin): Five parts, totaling 193 leaves
:: It contains scattered passages from the New Testament (including parts of the gospels and the Epistles), of the Old Testament (Nehemiah), and some commentaries known as Skeireins. The text likely had been somewhat modified by copyists.
:* Codex Gissensis (Gießen): One leaf with fragments of Luke 23–24 (apparently a Gothic-Latin diglot) was found in an excavation in Arsinoë in Egypt in 1907 and was destroyed by water damage in 1945, after copies had already been made by researchers.
:* Codex Carolinus (Wolfenbüttel): Four leaves, fragments of Romans 11–15 (a Gothic-Latin diglot).
:* Codex Vaticanus Latinus 5750 (Vatican City): Three leaves, pages 57–58, 59–60, and 61–62 of the Skeireins. This is a fragment of Codex Ambrosianus E.
:* Gothica Bononiensia (also known as the Codex Bononiensis), a recently discovered (2009) palimpsest fragment of two folios with what appears to be a sermon, containing besides non-biblical text a number of direct Bible quotes and allusions, both from previously attested parts of the Gothic Bible (the text is clearly taken from Ulfilas' translation) and previously unattested ones (e.g., Psalms, Genesis).
:* Fragmenta Pannonica (also known as the Hács-Béndekpuszta fragments or Tabella Hungarica), which consist of fragments of a 1 mm thick lead plate with remnants of verses from the Gospels.
* A scattering of old documents: two deeds (the Naples and Arezzo deeds, on papyri), alphabets (in the Gothica Vindobonensia and the Gothica Parisina), a calendar (in the Codex Ambrosianus A), glosses found in a number of manuscripts and a few runic inscriptions (between three and 13) that are known or suspected to be Gothic: some scholars believe that these inscriptions are not at all Gothic. Several names in an Indian inscription were thought to be possibly Gothic by Krause. Furthermore, late ninth-century Christian inscriptions using the Gothic alphabet, not runes, and copying or mimicking biblical Gothic orthography, have been found at Mangup in Crimea.
* A small dictionary of more than 80 words and an untranslated song, compiled by the Fleming Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, the Habsburg ambassador to the court of the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul from 1555 to 1562, who was curious to find out about the language and by arrangement met two speakers of Crimean Gothic and listed the terms in his compilation Turkish Letters: dating from nearly a millennium after Ulfilas, these terms are not representative of his language. Busbecq's material contains many puzzles and enigmas and is difficult to interpret in the light of comparative Germanic linguistics.[why?][citation needed]
Reports of the discovery of other parts of Ulfilas' Bible have not been substantiated. Heinrich May in 1968 claimed to have found in England twelve leaves of a palimpsest containing parts of the Gospel of Matthew.
Only one of the Gothic translations of the Bible has been preserved. The translation was done in the Balkans region by people in close contact with Greek Christian culture. The Gothic Bible apparently was used by the Visigoths in southern France until the loss of Visigothic France at the start of the 6th century and in Visigothic Iberia until about 700, and perhaps for a time in Italy, the Balkans, and Ukraine. In the latter country at Mangup, ninth-century inscriptions have been found of a prayer in the Gothic alphabet using biblical Gothic orthography. In exterminating Arianism, many texts in Gothic were probably overwritten as palimpsests or collected and burned. Apart from biblical texts, the only substantial Gothic document that still exists and the only lengthy text known to have been composed originally in the Gothic language, is the Skeireins, a few pages of commentary on the Gospel of John.
Very few primary speakers used the Gothic language after about 800, it was used mostly as a secondary language. In De incrementis ecclesiae Christianae (840–842), Walafrid Strabo, a Frankish monk who lived in Swabia, speaks of a group of monks, who reported that even now certain peoples in Scythia (Dobruja), especially around Tomis spoke a sermo Theotiscus ('Germanic language'), the language of the Gothic translation of the Bible, and they used such a liturgy.
In evaluating medieval texts that mention the Goths, many writers used the word Goths to mean any Germanic people in eastern Europe (such as the Varangians), many of whom certainly did not use the Gothic language as known from the Gothic Bible. Some writers even referred to Slavic-speaking people as Goths. However, it is clear from Ulfilas' translation that despite some puzzles the language belongs with the Germanic language group, not with Slavic.
The relationship between the language of the Crimean Goths and Ulfilas's Gothic is less clear. The few fragments of Crimean Gothic from the 16th century show significant differences from the language of the Gothic Bible although some of the glosses, such as ada for "egg", could indicate a common heritage, and Gothic mēna ("moon"), compared to Crimean Gothic mine, can suggest an East Germanic connection.
The language has struggled to survive even as a second language over the centuries, however it has managed to maintain a minuscule number of primary and secondary speakers in southern Crimea, although Modern Gothic is heavily influenced by later German language speakers who migrated to the area. Other then German influenced words it is almost entirely unintelligible to other Germanic languages and some consider it to be a language isolate.
=== The fall of Rome and the rise of the Anglo-Saxons (500's-800's) ===
When Western Rome fell in the late 400's Briton was the primary language spoken in OTL England. By the mid 500's however, it is shown that contact with Saxon traders led to much Germanic influence on Briton, leading to the emergence of Anglo-Saxon sometime in the 600's. Anglo-Saxon was considered a bridge between Celtic languages like Scottish and Welsh and Germanic languages like Saxon and Prussian. Over time (mostly in the 800's) Anglo-Saxon had lost much of the historic Briton influence and during this era could be called a mere dialect of Saxon (the higher-ups of England actually used standard Saxon).
=== The Norse language & dialects of Norse (700's-present) ===
The Norse Language emerged in the late 600's but wasn't used much until the mid 700's. Norse evolved into 4 distinct dialects over time: The Danish-Norwegian Dialect, the Skane dialect, the Stockholm dialect and finally the isolated Gorky dialect (extinct since the early 1600's, by 1300's it was really a separate language, with very little understanding of other Norse dialects). The modern Gorky accent has much influence, however, from this extinct language and sounds completely different from the surrounding Russian accents.
=== German (parent to all Languages above, considered the standard Language of the Germanic Languages) ===
German is a language spoken from the North of Italy all the way to the eastern most reaches of Prussia and also as far West as OTL Belgium & Alsace Lorraine. The language is considered the standard Germanic language and unifies all the dialects and languages under a common language.
=== Middle & Modern Anglo-Saxon (800's-present) ===
Anglo-Saxon has evolved over the years in some pretty major ways. It is still intelligible with German and the Norse languages, but it's features can be hard to grasp for speakers of these related languages. Modern Anglo-Saxon uses quite a few of it's own words and phrases and even borrows from French in some minor ways; but, to a speaker of German or Norse it's still mostly understandable. Anglo-Saxon is the largest and most used language of the Germanic languages, but German is considered the Standard.
=== Dutch & Flemish (500's-present) ===
The term Old Dutch or Old Low Franconian refers to the set of Franconian dialects (i.e. West Germanic varieties that are assumed to have evolved from Frankish) spoken in the Low Countries during the Early Middle Ages, from around the 5th to the 12th century. Old Dutch is mostly recorded on fragmentary relics, and words have been reconstructed from Middle Dutch and Old Dutch loanwords in French. Old Dutch is regarded as the primary stage in the development of a separate Dutch language. It was spoken by the descendants of the Salian Franks who occupied what is now the southern Netherlands, northern Belgium, part of northern France, and parts of the Lower Rhine regions of Germany.
A process of standardization started in the Middle Ages, especially under the influence of the Burgundian Ducal Court in Dijon (Brussels after 1477). The dialects of Flanders and Brabant were the most influential around this time. The process of standardization became much stronger at the start of the 16th century, mainly based on the urban dialect of Antwerp. The 1585 fall of Antwerp to the Spanish army led to a flight to the northern Netherlands, where the Dutch Republic declared its independence from Spain. This influenced the urban dialects of the province of Holland. In 1637, a further important step was made towards a unified language, when the Statenvertaling, the first major Bible translation into Dutch, was created that people from all over the new republic could understand. It used elements from various, even Dutch Low Saxon, dialects but was predominantly based on the urban dialects of Holland of post 16th century.
In the Southern Netherlands (now Belgium and Luxembourg), developments were different. Under subsequent Spanish, Austrian and French rule, the standardization of Dutch language came to a standstill. The state, law, and increasingly education used French, yet more than half the Belgian population were speaking a variety of Dutch. In the course of the nineteenth century the Flemish Movement stood up for the rights of Dutch speakers, mostly referred to as "Flemish". However, the dialect variation was a serious disadvantage in the face of the standardized francophones. Since standardization is a lengthy process, Dutch-speaking Belgium associated itself with the standard language that had already developed in the Netherlands over the centuries. Therefore, the situation in Belgium is essentially no different from that in the Netherlands, although there are recognizable differences in pronunciation, comparable to the pronunciation differences between standard Anglo-Saxon and standard American Anglo-Saxon. In 1980 the Netherlands and Belgium concluded the Language Union Treaty. This treaty lays down the principle that the two countries must gear their language policy to each other, among other things, for a common system of spelling.
=== Normandic (late 1100's-present) ===
Normandic has developed since the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Normandy in 1188, it is closely related to Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Saxon is what Normandic has borrowed quite a lot from. Normandic is debated between being a Romance language or a Germanic one. Normandic doesn't have nearly as much understanding between it and Norse and German as Anglo-Saxon does, but Normandic and Anglo-Saxon are pretty understandable.
=== North American Anglo-Saxon (1700's-present) ===
North American Anglo-Saxon is spoken in Canada and the USA and is not understandable to a German, except very select and oddly random words (like Cheese), but Anglo-Saxons from England can understand most of what North American Anglo-Saxons are saying and Norse and Normandic speakers can get around 40% of what's being said.
=== The Swiss Language (1600's-present) ===
The Swiss Language is very heavily influenced by the Romance languages and is not Mutually Understandable to any other Germanic Language. Very few words are even the same as Swiss has either made up it's own words or just uses French ones. It's assumed that from it's first divergence in around 510 to about the late 1500's-early 1600's that there was (although deteriorating throughout this time) at least some understanding between Swiss and other Germanic languages and that Swiss just took a distinctly different route over the millennia.
=== Modern Day Intelligibility between Germanic and Celtic languages ===
Over the thousands of years there has, of course, been quite a divergence between the Celtic and Germanic languages. However these groups of languages are still semi-understandable, particularity Welsh and Anglo-Saxon, where speakers can even sometimes get over 70% of what the other is saying, however if a speaker of one group of languages doesn't want a speaker of the other to know what they're saying, it's easy to use unique words and throw off the other speaker.
Category:Germanic Languages Don't Diverge