Summarizing Germanic grammar shifts: How the branch got to where it is today 

Great video. As a Swiss German native speaker living in Vienna, I would add that if you look at German as a dialect continuum rather than a standardized language, you still find some archaic features in different dialects. The pronouns and verb forms in the second person plural in most Bavarian dialects derive from the Proto-Germanic dual forms. E.g. "eank" instead of "euch" in Tyrolean or "es hobts" instead of "ihr habt" in Viennese. The interesting thing is that while the dual pronouns ("es", "eank") are considered dialectal, the verb ending "ts" (instead of "t", e.g. "ihr machts" instead of "ihr macht") is omnipresent in spoken Austrian Standard German (even though it would be considered a mistake in writing). The dialects of the Swiss canton of Valais (in a lot of respects the most archaic dialects of German) on the other hand still have different verb conjugation classes (including different infinitive endings) as well as the declension of predicative adjectives. (It also kept the third person plural verb ending "-nt".) I find it fascinating how these dialects have, in some instances, features of Old German or even Proto-Germanic that the standard variety lost more than a millennium ago ...

So much good info in this video (as in previous videos). But its sooooooo hard to follow when its goes so fast.

Great video and really interesting… but why speak so quickly and show those tables so fast we can’t even stop on time to look at each one? Because those coloured tables are fabulous - no, really they are. You’ve put in a lot of hard work into this! Þúsend þökk! Tusen takk! Det här är allt underbart! Du bist eine Legende.

1:00 Early Germanic, Early Ancient Greek, Tocharian, Anatolian, Hittite, all Indic, Avestan, Middle and modern Iranian are primarily S-O-V. Some languages were flexible (Latin, Sanskrit but primarily SOV), others like Greek and German changed to SVO as time went by. These are ancient languages, some going back to a split from Indo European as early as 6000 BCE (See Paul Hegarty et al , Science, 2023). Prevalence of SOV in ancient languages spoken in far away lands tells me PIE must have been SOV.

"niet een" always becomes "geen" and "uitgang" doesn't mean "outro". It means specifically exit, as in the exit of a highway for example. Also it means suffix in language context. as in "de uitgang in genitief nominaties is -us"

Standard Dutch still retains a masculine-feminine distinction when using pronouns to refer to nouns (Eenzaamheid; zij is wreed). But in modern Dutch it's very rare for speakers to do this and if it is used it's mostly by southern Dutch speakers or with abstract nouns with clear feminine endings (like -heid). There are still Dutch dialects with a three gender distinction in the articles, because when the case system collapsed, they preferred the accusitive form of the articles (den, de, het) so the gender distinction got maintained. Cases are also not completely gone from Dutch, the genetive in particular is still in use, either in titles (Woordenboek der Nederlandse taal) or when trying to avoid using "van"(of) too much (de zoon van de leider der voetbalvereneging)

I really appriciate that you transcribe Dutch words ending with 'en' as just [ə], for some reason a lot of people still insist that it should be transcribed as [ən], when this hasn't been the pronounciation for the majority of Dutch speakers for decades. Usually if I hear a person speaking Dutch (not a Low Saxon dialect, which have retained the final [n], like German just across the border) and they pronounce the final [n], I assume they're not native speakers, because it sounds very unnatural to me.

German "nicht" always goes before what is being negated, not "after the verb". However, when negating the V2 verb, "nicht" stays at the end of the clause as if the word order were verb-final. More generally, German word order is essentially this: lay out everything as if it were verb final, but in main clauses, after everything is positioned, move the topic and the finite verb to the beginning. Subordinate clauses simply stay verb final without any shifting around.

I think the use of the words "strong" and "weak" when talking about verb and adjective inflection comes from whether or not certain forms of the words tend to end in a "strong" (stressed) syllable or a "weak" (unstressed) syllable. "Strong" verbs have past tense forms where the final syllable (for singulars at least) is stressed, while the corresponding forms of "weak" verbs end with an unstressed syllable. Indefinite adjectives (unless formed with suffixes) also end "strongly" (in the singular), while all definite adjectives end with a "weak" (unstressed) syllable. Well, at least this holds for Swedish, Danish and Norwegian.

In Dutch, the masculine and feminine are not merged. Masculine and feminine words are still referred to with gendered pronouns in Standard Dutch and in many dialects there is inflection on the indefinite article, adjectives and possesive pronouns that differes between masculine and feminine.

9:55 the object pronoun also replace the subject in Dutch: Gij had u as an oblique form and this has become the new formal 2nd person subject pronoun, maintaining the T-V distinction as jij/je vs u

I think the consensus is that German is still mostly SOV, it just seems SVO in simple sentences because of V2. You can see this clearly in subordinate clauses (e.g. "I know not why *I this not understand can*.") I think I read somewhere that Dutch is too, but might be wrong.

1:35 Interesting seeing your recommendations recommend the RU-vidrs that I and other linguistics fans watch

I would have said that »ekki/ikke« etc were from enkein formerly nihein < nihw ainaz, where the final n in Old Nord got omitted just like the nasal befor h > k e(n)kki(n), that would also explain Frisian negative particle ek and also Swabian chei. 🤔 And it would explain to some extend Swedish inte.

18:48 It went from 'naught' and then to 'not'.

Thank you, great video! I was wondering how the "ge-" verb prefix came about for the past participles (e.g. in German "gemacht", "gegangen")

The great vowel shift is much discussed, but there are two things about middle english that I can hardly get any info on. I'd like to know when these features disappeared. 1. The silent e being pronounced 2. Infinitive verbs ending in -en

Thank you!!! I am trying to make a germanic conlang and this is very helpful!

1:36 you mentioned the k -> /x/ shift, and now it's really happening. edit. He said 'it seems most li/x/ely'

Your videos just bring me so much joy. 😊

omg FINALLY! Ive been waiting whole week for it. I believe in Watch your Language supremacy 🙏

I think Latin had a mostly SOV word order too. It's actually a very common word order worldwide. Also can you do your videos in segments and slow down? You do a good job explaining the subject but try to compress too much information in too little time.

The topic is interesting and I like the fact that there is no music in the background. :-) And the very fast speaking I can compensate by slowing down the speed.

Great video, but please don't switch slide all the time. Is really hard to watch it at full speed.

Didn’t know German had any grammatical evolution 😅😂 seems to have kept all possible features intact. As opposed to Scandinavian, Dutch or English.

Excellent video

Swiss German seems to keep old tense traditions: One past form (perfect), one present form, no future, that's it. A form with the auxiliary "werde(n)" exists, but it's not future tense, but rather a mood that means "I think it is like this": "es wird rägne" does not mean "it will rain", but rather, "it must be raining". Unfortunately, Standard German influence makes some people switch to using the auxiliary for future instead, nowadays.

German still has strong and week verbs, which still means ablaut and suffix. I got embarased at a Linguistics camp once, when I assumed strong and week meant the same thing, but apparently they're switched.

Fantastic video. I was curious as to why the Nordics used a negative word with K while English and German and dutch used one with N. My doubt was solved. Thanks.

9:55 Dutch has a distinction between formal u and informal je/jij or Gij for certain dialects. That in belgium they chose u as a non nominative form of gij is slighly confusing, but in dialects it usualy is an other vowel like oe in the Dutch part of Brabant or ou in some regions of Belgium.

The sequel we've all been waiting for

the legend is back

Look interesting, but I’m afraid I had to give up after two minutes. I just can’t follow somebody speaking at that speed about such a complex topic.

14:30 I might add that low german distuingishes adverbs from adjectives by hanging an final -e on them, if possible. Infact many german speakers in north germany still do that, for example "Das ist lang" vs "Lang*e* nicht mehr gesehen"

English did have words of Old Norse origin like knife, skill, from many others since the Vikings dwelled in England in the region called the Danelaw, some of Old Norse Words got into English

17:35 The conditional auxiliary is also 'mundi'. The form 'myndi' derives from 'mundi'.

İn my father tongue we often use OSV and the adjective genrally comes after the noun

what i never understand is how a word can be ended with its gendered form (-iz, -az and ô) and sometimes a noun is just "Spreki" instead of Sprekiz.

I wish there were videos like these about the Romance languages

at 13:58 you said your not a fan of the order of the cases but I just wondered why that was? since when talking about Polish we order N.G.D.A.I.L.V. and it works just fine.

Hi again. Probably not that much to say about Faroese in this video as we tend to be similar to the others. First off, the genitive is all but completely dead in Faroese, having merged with the accusative and dative. The exact rules for which is a bit complex but in general verbs and prepositions governing it switched to governing the accusative with a few using the dative instead. So the verb sakna which in ON takes the genitive now takes the accusative while the preposition til meaning also takes the accusative; although many constructions with the genitive still live on but these can be seen as frozen genitives. The loss of the genitive becomes especially clear when looking at adjectives and words that inflect like adjectives like pronouns and articles. Using eins (genitive of ein, a/one) would be so weird, so I would probably move Faroese over to the Yiddish column. You mention how in some forms of German wir becomes mir; well, as you mentioned it also happens in many dialects of Norwegian where me is the 1st person plural pronoun. Interestingly, in an early 15th century document in medieval Faroese, we can see this start to happen aswell but this must have died out quickly as in Faroese the 1st person plural pronoun is still vit. 13:29 In Icelandic AND Faroese. Those tables you see there? Yup, very similar story in Faroese. Again pardon for this not being in a table but here goes: 1st row: mjúkur [ˈmjʉu:kʊɹ], mjúk [ˈmjʉu:k], mjúkt [ˈmjʏʰkt], mjúkir [ˈmjʉu:tʃɪɹ], mjúkar [ˈmjʉu:kaɹ], mjúk; 2nd row: mjúkan [ˈmjʉu:kan], mjúka [ˈmjʉu:ka], mjúkt, mjúkar, mjúkar, mjúk; 3rd row: mjúkum [ˈmjʉu:kʊn], mjúkari [ˈmjʉu:kaɹɪ], mjúkum, mjúkum, mjúkum, mjúkum; 4th row (genitive so all are in brackets): (mjúks [ˈmjʏʰks]), (mjúkrar [ˈmjʉu:kraɹ]), (mjúks), (mjúkra [ˈmjʉu:kra]), (mjúkra), (mjúkra); 5th row: mjúki [ˈmjʉu:tʃɪ], mjúka, mjúka, mjúku [ˈmjʉu:kʊ], mjúku, mjúku; 6th row: mjúka, mjúku, mjúka, mjúku, mjúku, mjúku. You missed one adverb form; the cognate adverb form for English -ly is -liga in Faroese. It probably also exists as -lega in Icelandic. So the Faroese cognate to quickly is kvikliga. To indicate the future, in Faroese we know very often use the verb "at fara" which means to go. There is a tendency in Danish to use the word "komme" (to come) for future tense and it is spilling over into Faroese more and more. I am catching myself using it from time to time. Old Norse ekki becomes ikki in Faroese, and yes, with a preaspiration geminated affricate [ˈɪʰtʃ:ɪ].

Danish does use skal/skulle as an auxiliary verb though, for future tense and should. "Jeg vil spise is" is different from "jeg skal spise is" are both future tenses but vil has more of the sense that its a thing you want to do, but skal is more you have to or its set in stone

Really good video, very informative!

This is soooo good but really hard to follow at this speed 😭

The case situation with Yiddish is also reflected in many dialects of High German, to add some extra info. Pennsylvania Dutch is much the same, losing the genitive entirely, but also merges the nominative and accusative everywhere but pronouns. Within the language some varieties specifically those used by the sectarian speakers i.e. the Amish have lost the dative case as well and only have a nominative/accusative split in pronouns, and no other case distinctions outside that. (dative pronouns replaced by accusative pronouns, dative adjective endings no longer used, resulting in adjectives only being inflected for grammatical gender and number, of which they've 3 rather than 4 categories as other Pa Dutch varieties don't merge the feminine singular and plural like Standard German or these dative-less forms of Pa Dutch)

I didn't know of je lieden. We basically say 'yall' then

17:55 The imperative in Icelandic is also ‘ver’, as in ‘Ver þú góður’ ((literally) Be thou good), and ‘Ver góður’ when the personal pronoun is omitted . The form ‘vertu’ is enclitic and the suffix being ‘-tu’. Every Icelandic verb has at least two imperative singular forms. The enclitic suffixes are: ‘-du’, ‘-tu’ and ‘-ðu’ such as in: ‘hvíldu’, ‘gettu’ and ‘freistaðu’, while their non-enclitic forms being: ‘hvíl’, ‘get’ and ‘freista’.

Meen Kopp deit weh😅

There’s some Dutch dialects that have 3 genders although since Dutch is debatably just a Low Germanic dialect and the what counts as Dutch vs Low German can be very unclear it’s why it could be said to have the 3 genders remaining. Standard Low German and Limburgish however keep Der/Die/Dat. Same can be said about the case system which exists in Limburgish and the Groningen accent.

Wow this video is packed with information. If don't have prior knowledge about cases, and gender, you'll completely be lost 😂😂😂

2:22 Yes, speak personally I this way.

-weise is an adverbial suffix in Standard German, but not mandatory and only applied to certain words. When applied however, the word cannot act as an adjective anymore.

good we should research

can u do the same thing you have done with the sound and grammar shifts for slavic languages?

Personally I totally buy the idea that English lost its grammatical fussiness so that Aethelwulf could say to Olaf, "HELLO OLAF, I HAVE PLOUGH, YOU CAN USE MY PLOUGH WITH YOUR BULL. MY SON ALFRED LIKE YOUR DAUGHTER HILDEGARD." The only question is why the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles maintain all the complex grammar, and my answer for that is, it was something like how there was the Latin of the churches and then there was the Latin of the people that became Romance languages like French. Speaking of French, one might wonder why German didn't get extra-simple out of contact with neighbors, and my speculation is, French served as the lingua franca (literally) that people spoke with visitors. Thus, German wasn't changed.

At 10:18 you say: "Je is still used casually for all second-person pronouns," but I can't imagine not using 'jullie'. Did I misunderstand?

I guess from a Graeco-Latin comparative perspective, Germanic strong verbs are more regular than weak verbs.

19:17 "inte" is not an alteration for "icke", it's a replacement for it, a sloppy prounciation of "intet" which is an old fashioned word for "ingenting" ... Replacing "not" with "nothing" is sth English did too, since "not" = "naught" ... Replacing "nothing" with "not a thing" is also a thing, like "intet" replaced by "ingenting" and "naught" replaced by "nothing" ... the forms that are similar to and etymologies of the negation are in both languages considered archaic and solemn.

Didn't proto germanic have 3 numbers? Anglo Saxon and Gothic both have the dual number. So it had to have a dual in proto germanic for that to happen.

I thought Proto Indo European was believed to have an SOV word order. Where did you read it was SVO? I'm really curious.

I wonder how Afrikaans would fit in here? Would it be redundant as an example of 'simplification' considering that English is far more well known?

9:21 Icelandic also has the plural pronouns nom. 'vér', acc. 'oss' dat. 'oss' gen. 'vor', which were sometimes used in the 19th century, especially in patriotic speech. The plural pronouns are rarely use nowadays.

My dialect of North Frisian "Sölring" actually still has dual pronouns. SG: ik, dü, hi/jü/hat DU: wat, at, jat PL: wü, i, ja

English still has a subjunctive, but it is rarely used.

Nice video, but I don't think your long and short vowels in the final sample were very distinct.

Hey i have some questions. You've probably stated this before, but you are studying linguistics right?. What literature would you recomend to me in order to deepen my knowledge about the topic? I really like your videos but sometimes the concepts and definitions of certain gramatical elements go way over my head. Thanks in advanced.

Oh my God Dutch then why did you contract it in the first place??!?!

9:32 The 'þ-' in 'þér' and 'þit' might have come from '-ð' such as in hafið. This is a pervasive sandhi effect.

To borrow a word construction from other Germanic languages, "forlongsume" - slow down! This is very interesting but it is difficult to absorb both what you are reading and the beautiful charts you make.

At 4:15 we see pair of lorries from Scania leaving the inflected Italian pronoun behind at a merger. Brilliant.

I don't know nearly as much as you do about these languages but is there a possibility that english he and she came from Latin? They are exactly the same.

Subjunctive mood is "archaic" in English??? Do you say "if I was," cause that sounds like nails on a chalkboard to my ears. Not trying to be a prescriptivist, maybe it's just surviving to a greater extent in Northern US dialects

9:25 In early Old Norse the second person dual pronoun was 'it' and the second person plural pronoun was 'ér'.

🙂

5:16 strictly seen dutch does not have a common gender. Although in the very dominant randstad area and some parts of the north there is no distinction, in standard dutch words of that so called common gender still have to be called by he or she and a very large part if not the majority of the dialects makes the distinction in conjugasions, although the ways they do are different. It has to do with the murging of the nominative and accusative case. The north and west started usung only the nominative, the south only the accusative and the east kept the old distinction.

P3?

Luxembourgish uses “Mir” instead of “wir”

2:44 That sentence does not make sense. uitgang means exit as in a door to exit or ending in the context of conjugation.😂 Also niet een has to be geen, but I would suggest something slightly different. "Ik kan het einde niet in deze taal doen." (I can not do the end in this language) Would not have the exact same meaning, but would be a way better translasion and actually be understood.

Who is Sanchez?

the only way to really understand every sentence, is to slow down the speed of the video. Too bad, otherwise interesting.

The advantage of recording a video so fast is that you can be hard to understand at 1x speed for being too fast, while also being hard to understand at 0.75x speed due to slowing artifacts. Congrats. But interesting video otherwise.

There are dialects of english with thou and thee, there are dialects of mainland scandinavian that still have cases and gender (in fact it is the norm outside of standard languages). Wish you'd be more nuanced. Also utgång is not an outro, it's an exit in a building

9:45 Polish doesn't use the T-V distinction, it's actually a russicism that commies had imposed on our language after WW2

about adverbial suffixes. German does have one -lich. i mean i am no linguist so might just not getting it, but i feel like all german word ending in -lich are adverbs. or at least are used in sentences in combination with "sein" (to be) and its various versions. "Ich bin glücklich" (i am luck/happyness-ly) for example. also another thing i found intereisting a friends daughter during her early life often made constructions with "-lich" to discribe how she did things, which suggests to me that her brain somehow associated a adverbial feeling to -lich. again maybe this is just my lack of linguistics knowledge speaking.

Yo mah dude, been a whole!

Th German future auxiliary is wird, not wirt.

BABE WAKE UP WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE IS TALKING ABOUT PROTO-GERMANIC AGAIN

In Norwegian, 'utgang' means exit, when you walk out from a building or similar. If you drive out, it would be ' utkjørsel'. Not outro.

Hello

im pretty sure some english dialects still have thou pronouns

Way too fast! I switched to 0.75 speed, but there are no pauses in your script reading, so still almost impossible to learn anything. I think you have been told this before? You know so much, and have made so much visual content, but unfortunately you keep throwing it all at us, and then instantly remove again, instead of presenting it. Why? Please slow down, present the visual content, explain things, don't just rush through a script! And put in breathing pauses!

uh proto germanic didn't have 3rd person personal pronouns? what about *iz?

3:30 no dual? Both Ancient Greek and Sanskrit as well as older Vedic have dual. Avestan as well.

Slow down!

I'd consider myself a prescriptivist but i think 'y'all' is actually a natural and good development

This video would be good if it was 10 times slower.

Bro no offense but your REALLY have to pay attention to the inflection and rhythm of different languages. The words might be exactly the same as in English but when you hear a bunch of them spoken from a native speaker you basically won't understand much unless you know the language... Like I've noticed you have the exact same flat, rapid, accent and intonation when reading literally any language. No doubt you understand each word, the grammar etc. but it just sounds so off. Also work on dem Germanic and French Rs, and Semitic ר , כ/ח! Just a bit of feedback, don't take it to heart.

ê_õ 🤨

Ahh I set the speed to 0.75 and I see it now.

Slow down! I heard an American medicine advert.