The West Germanic languages represent the largest group of the Germanic
languages.
Modern West Germanic languages include:
English – native to Great Britain, Ireland, USA, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, the South African Republic, India and many other former British colonies.
English has several territorial varieties and a lot of dialects;
Scots – a language spoken in some parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland. Scots
is said to have many similarities to English
and Frisian
;
German – a language native to Germany, Austria, part of Switzerland,
Luxemburg and Liechtenstein. It has a lot of dialects and sub-dialects;
Dutch – de facto national language of the Netherlands. It is also spoken in
Belgium, Suriname, Curacao, Aruba, Sint Maarten and Caribbean Netherlands. Dutch
does not have any significant dialectal variations;
Afrikaans – the national language of the South African Republic. It is also
spoken in Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland, Malawi and Zambia;
Frisian – a language spoken primarily in the Netherlands; it is also spoken in
some parts of Germany and Denmark;
Yiddish – a language spoken in Israel and many other countries of the world.
Unlike all other Germanic languages Yiddish uses Hebrew script (other Germanic
languages use the Latin alphabet).
There exists one living Germanic language –
Hunsrik – that has not been
categorized by linguists: it does not belong to either the North or West Germanic
group. Hunsrik is a wide-spread language spoken in Brazil. Originally it derived
from a speech variety of Germany, but was later noticeably influenced by Portuguese.
The approximate number of native speakers of Germanic languages is more than
550 million people.
