Concept
West Germanic languages
Related concepts (25)
Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law
In historical linguistics, the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law (also called the Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic nasal spirant law) is a description of a phonological development that occurred in the Ingvaeonic dialects of the West Germanic languages. This includes Old English, Old Frisian, and Old Saxon, and to a lesser degree Old Dutch (Old Low Franconian). The sound change affected sequences of vowel + nasal consonant + fricative consonant. ("Spirant" is an older term for "fricative".
Jastorf culture
The Jastorf culture was an Iron Age material culture in what is now northern Germany and southern Scandinavia spanning the 6th to 1st centuries BC, forming part of the Pre-Roman Iron Age and associating with Germanic peoples. The culture evolved out of the Nordic Bronze Age. 6th century BC, Jastorf A (Hallstatt D) 5th century BC, Jastorf B (La Tène A) 400–350 BC, Jastorf C (La Tène B) 350–120 BC, Ripdorf (La Tène C) 120–1 BC, Seedorf (La Tène D) The Jastorf culture is named after a site near the village of Jastorf, Lower Saxony ().
Lombardic language
Lombardic or Langobardic is an extinct West Germanic language that was spoken by the Lombards (Langobardi), the Germanic people who settled in Italy in the sixth century. It was already declining by the seventh century because the invaders quickly adopted the Latin vernacular spoken by the local population. Lombardic may have been in use in scattered areas until as late as 1000 AD. Many toponyms in modern Lombardy and Greater Lombardy (Northern Italy) and items of Lombard and broader Gallo-Italic vocabulary derive from Lombardic.
Franconian (linguistics)
Franconian or Frankish is a collective term traditionally used by linguists to refer to many West Germanic languages, some of which are spoken in what formed the historical core area of Francia during the Early Middle Ages. Linguistically, there are no typological features that are typical for all the various dialects conventionally grouped as Franconian. As such, it forms a residual category within the larger historical West Germanic dialect continuum rather than a homogeneous group of closely related dialects.
Chain shift
In historical linguistics, a chain shift is a set of sound changes in which the change in pronunciation of one speech sound (typically, a phoneme) is linked to, and presumably causes, a change in pronunciation of other sounds as well. The sounds involved in a chain shift can be ordered into a "chain" in such a way that after the change is complete, each phoneme ends up sounding like what the phoneme before it in the chain sounded like before the change.