Which Germanic language is the most conservative?
While German is the most conservative among the West-Germanic languages (the others being English, Dutch, Afrikaans, Yiddish and Frisian), Icelandic has a strong reputation as the most conservative North-Germanic language and is probably the most ‘Germanic’ of the Germanic languages overall.
What is the second most spoken Germanic language?
German is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the major languages of the world, German is a native language to almost 100 million people worldwide and the most widely spoken native language in the European Union.
What is the second most widely spoken Germanic language in Europe?
German
German is the second most widely spoken Germanic language after English.
Why is Icelandic so conservative?
There are a number of explanations for this. The geographical isolation of Iceland (being an island) means that speakers of Icelandic had less direct contact with speakers of other languages, and therefore there were fewer competing influences from other languages.
What is the most conservative language?
Classical Arabic and Hebrew are both highly conservative as well, and are again, liturgical languages. Lithuanian is sometimes cited as the most conservative living Indo European language maintaining many of the morphological features from PIE, along with the phonology.
What is the most spoken Germanic languages?
The West Germanic languages include the three most widely spoken Germanic languages: English with around 360–400 million native speakers; German, with over 100 million native speakers; and Dutch, with 24 million native speakers.
What is the second most widely spoken Germanic language in Europe quizlet?
) What is the second-most widely spoken Germanic language in Europe, with roughly 60 million speakers? Your native language is Danish. Which language will likely be the easiest for you to understand?
What are the only two tenses of Germanic language?
The reduction of the various tense and aspect combinations of the Indo-European verbal system into only two: the present tense and the past tense (also called the preterite).
Is Swedish a Germanic language?
Swedish belongs to the East Scandinavian group of North Germanic languages. Until World War II, it was also spoken in parts of Estonia and Latvia.
Which Slavic language is the most conservative?
Standard Bulgarian is much more conservative than Standard Macedonian. Considering the vowels, Standard Macedonian is the least conservative than every other Slavic language.
What is the most conservative Indo-European language?
Lithuanian is the most conservative Indo-European language. Closely related to Sanskrit it happens to be one of the oldest languages in the world, one of the least commonly spoken in Europe, as well as one of the biggest prides of Lithuanian culture.
What are the similarities between Icelandic and English?
As Icelandic shares its ancestry with English and both are Germanic languages, there are many cognate words in both languages; each have the same or a similar meaning and are derived from a common root. The possessive, though not the plural, of a noun is often signified with the ending -s, as in English.
Is the Danish language mutually intelligible with other Germanic languages?
It is not mutually intelligible with the continental Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish) and is more distinct from the most widely spoken Germanic languages, English and German, than those three are.
Did the Dano-Norwegian rule of Iceland affect its language evolution?
The Dano-Norwegian, then later Danish rule of Iceland from 1536 to 1918 had little effect on the evolution of Icelandic (in contrast to the Norwegian language), which remained in daily use among the general population.
Can you read Old Norse literature in Iceland?
Since the written language has not changed much, Icelanders are able to read classic Old Norse literature created in the 10th through 13th centuries (such as the Eddas and sagas) with relative ease. Icelandic is closely related to, but not mutually intelligible with, the Faroese language.