Germanic languages

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 and [Middle English]?
• Frisian
• Dutch
• Afrikaans
• German and Low German
• Yiddish

East Germanic languages: Extinct, but there are some records of Gothic.

  Burgundian extinct

North Germanic (Scandinavian) languages, descending from Old Norse:

• Danish
• Swedish
• Icelandic
• Faeroese
• Norwegian

Some Germanic dialects developed runic alphabets of their own.