West Germanic language

Language classification
Indo-European languages Germanic languages West Germanic languages

West Germanic is the largest branch of the Germanic family of languages, inlcuding such languages as English, Dutch, and German.

The other families of Germanic are North Germanic and Gothic.

Family tree

Note that divisions between subfamilies of Germanic are rarely precisely defined; most form continuous clines, with adjacent dialects being mutually intelligible and more separated ones not.

• English (descending from Anglo-Saxon)
  • Modern English (with a significant influx of French vocabulary)
  • Lowland Scots
  • Cayman Islands English (not a creole)
  • Angloromani (with a significant influx of Romani vocabulary)
• Frisian
• Low German (descending from Old Saxon / Old Low Franconian)
  • Low Franconian
    • Dutch
    • West Flemish
    • Afrikaans (with a significant influx of vocabulary from Malay and native African languages)
  • Low Saxon
    • Several dialects in northern Germany and the Netherlands
    • Plautdietsch (Mennonite Low German)
• High German
  • German
    • Middle German
      • East Middle German
        • Standard German
        • Lower Silesian
        • Upper Saxon
      • Luxembourgeois
      • West Middle German
        • Several dialects in western Germany
        • Pennsylvania German
    • Upper German
      • Alemannic
        • Swiss German
        • Swabian
        • Alemán Coloneiro (spoken in Venezuela)
      • Walser
      • Austro-Bavarian
        • Bavarian
        • Cimbrian (with a heavy influx of Italian vocabulary)
        • Mócheno
        • Hutterite German (spoken by Hutterites)
    • Fränkisch (extinct in the 1800s)
  • Yiddish (with a significant influx of vocabulary from Hebrew and written in the Hebrew alphabet)