One of the branches of the Indo-European language family, spoken by the Germanic peoples who were settled north and east along the borders of the Roman Empire.
West Germanic languages:
- English, descending from Old English, Middle English, with the addition of French.
- Frisian
- Dutch and Flemish
- Afrikaans
- German and Low German
- Yiddish
East Germanic languages: All are extinct, but there are some records of Gothic.
North Germanic (Scandinavian) languages, descending from Old Norse:
Some Germanic dialects developed runic alphabets of their own.