Tree Model of the Germanic Languages

Click this image to expand it. — *Click this image to expand the model.*

Art by Rim Baudey with text by Joseph S. Hopkins, February 2022.

Since the central focus of the present project is to provide resources for researchers interested in ancient Germanic languages and the people who spoke them, we at Mimisbrunnr.info provide the above tree model for use as a handy visual resource for readers confused by the site’s constant mention of languages and dialects.

The above model provides a simplified glimpse of the relationship between Germanic languages. The model is non-comprehensive: It by no means depicts every dialect or language identified among speakers of Germanic languages. Such a visual representation would require a much larger tree and would perhaps be better suited for branch-level illustrations. It also does not engage with potentially controversial branches, which require discussion beyond the scope of this resource.

Tree models such as as these are common to encounter in historical linguistics, the formal study of language change over time, and in philology, a closely overlapping (and sometimes synonymous) scholastic field. While tree models are useful for communicating change over time, such a chart generally does not provide detail about how groups of speakers may influence one another at any given time. For example, Old English saw significant influence from Old Norse during the latter periods of Anglo-Saxon England, leading to many loans into Old English from its northern linguistic sibling and today, of course, English influences languages across the world.

Employing a wave model (not pictured) alongside a tree model helps solve for these matters. Wave models display a relationship between speaker groups during a particular slice of time (a synchronic perspective) as opposed to change over time (a diachronic perspective).

Tree Model of the Germanic Languages

Further reading