The Runic alphabets were used for Germanic languages from AD 100 to the late Middle Ages.

Some of the French dialects spoken in the French and Swiss Alps derive from Old Provençal ; the German dialects derive from Germanic tribal languages.

Before the 16th century, harvest was the term usually used to refer to the season, as it is common in other West Germanic languages to this day ( cf.

The alternative word fall for the season traces its origins to old Germanic languages.

* In Germanic languages, except English, East Sea is used: Afrikaans ( Oossee ), Danish ( Østersøen ), Dutch ( Oostzee ), German ( Ostsee ), Icelandic and Faroese ( Eystrasalt ), Norwegian ( Østersjøen ), and Swedish ( Östersjön ).

There are cognates in other Germanic languages.

This group of languages ( Welsh, Cornish, Cumbric ) cohabited alongside English into the modern period, but due to their remoteness from the Germanic languages, influence on English was notably limited.

However, the degree of influence remains debated, and it has recently been argued that its grammatical influence accounts for the substantial innovations noted between English and the other West Germanic languages.

Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo-Frisian core of English ; the later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core of a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance branch of the European languages.

Historical expansion of the usage of Slavic languages in the South and East, and Germanic languages in the West reduced the geographic distribution of Baltic languages to a fraction of the area which they had formerly covered.

The word borough derives from common Germanic * burg, meaning fort: compare with bury ( England ), burgh ( Scotland ), Burg ( Germany ), borg ( Scandinavia ), burcht ( Dutch ) and the Germanic borrowing present in neighbouring Indo-european languages such as borgo ( Italian ), bourg ( French ) and burgo ( Spanish and Portuguese ).

A number of other European languages have cognate words that were borrowed from the Germanic languages during the Middle Ages, including brog in Irish, bwr or bwrc, meaning " wall, rampart " in Welsh, bourg in French, burg in Catalan ( in Catalonia there is a town named Burg ), borgo in Italian, and burgo in Spanish ( hence the place-name Burgos ).

In the Germanic and some Slavic languages, the word kyriak-ós /- ē /- ón was adopted instead and derivatives formed thereof.

Additional cognates of the same word in other Germanic languages include the German Schürze and Dutch schort ( apron ).

Therefore, English and German are considered to belong to a different subgroup, the Germanic languages.

In publications of 1647 and 1654, Marcus van Boxhorn first described a rigid methodology for historical linguistic comparisons and proposed the existence of an Indo-European proto-language ( which he called " Scythian ") unrelated to Hebrew, but ancestral to Germanic, Greek, Romance, Persian, Sanskrit, Slavic, Celtic and Baltic languages.

In 18th and 19th century Germany, several thousand local languages of the continental west Germanic dialect continuum were reclassified as dialects of modern New High German although the vast majority of them were ( and still are ) mutually incomprehensible, despite the fact that they all existed long before New High German, which had at least in part been shaped as a compromise or mediative language between these local languages.

* The Danish tongue or Old Norse, the parent language of all North Germanic languages

Standard Danish has two genders and the definite form of nouns is formed by the use of suffixes, while Western Jutlandic has only one gender and the definite form of nouns uses an article before the noun itself, in the same fashion as West Germanic languages.

The common name alder is derived from an old Germanic root, also found to be the translation of the Old French verne for alder or copse of alders.

Both the Latin and the Germanic words derive from the Proto-Indo-European root el -, meaning " red " or " brown ", which is also a root for the English words " elk " and another tree: " elm ", a tree distantly related to the alders.

The word comes from Old English " bōc " which ( itself ) comes from the Germanic root "* bōk -", cognate to beech.

The Batavi ( the name is believed to derive from a West Germanic root also present in " better " ( possibly meaning " superior men ")) moved into the Betuwe in the late 1st century BC.

Noting that the modifying component in Germanic compound words can take the form of a genitive or a bare root, he points to behavioural similarities between genitive determinants and the modifying element in regular Old Norse compound words, such as the fact that neither can be modified by a free-standing ( declined ) adjective.

These words are cognates derived from Germanic rīdan " to ride ", derived from the Proto-Indo-European root reidh -.

Germanic Schnake " ring snake ", Swedish snok " grass snake "), from Proto-Indo-European root *( s ) nēg-o-" to crawl ", " to creep ", which also gave sneak as well as Sanskrit nāgá " snake ".

A romanticised picture of Vikings as Germanic noble savages began to take root in the 18th century, and this developed and became widely propagated during the 19th-century Viking revival.

The English word week continues an Old English wice, ultimately from a Common Germanic, from a root " turn, move, change ".

The word itself, Old English bread, is common in various forms to many Germanic languages, such as Frisian brea, Dutch brood, German Brot, Swedish bröd, and Norwegian and Danish brød ; it has been claimed to be derived from the root of brew.

The word is from a Common Germanic *, ultimately from a PIE root with a closely related meaning, * " white, bright ".

The original location of stress was often retained in Greek and early Sanskrit, though in Germanic stress eventually became fixed on the initial ( root ) syllable of all words.

The word " flood " comes from the Old English flod, a word common to Germanic languages ( compare German Flut, Dutch vloed from the same root as is seen in flow, float ; also compare with Latin fluctus, flumen ).

The common name " birch " is derived from an old Germanic root, birka, with the Proto-Indo-European root * bherəg, " white, bright ; to shine.

According to the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, the Germanic root is probably related to the modern English " stark ", in reference to the stiff or rigid posture of a European species, the White Stork.

The name Nuada probably derives from a Celtic stem * noudont-or * noudent -, which J. R. R. Tolkien suggested was related to a Germanic root meaning " acquire, have the use of ", earlier " to catch, entrap ( as a hunter )".

The name Nodons probably derives from a Celtic stem * noudont-or * noudent -, which J. R. R. Tolkien suggested was related to a Germanic root meaning " acquire, have the use of ", earlier " to catch, entrap ( as a hunter )".

In the North Germanic ( Scandinavian ) languages, the word Karl has the same root as churl and meant originally a " free man ".

The name Waas was given to this area by the Romans from the Germanic root Wasu meaning “ marshy land ”.

The Proto-Indo-European root is * wert-" to turn, rotate ", in Common Germanic * wirþ-with a meaning " to come to pass, to become, to be due " ( also in weorþ, the notion of " worth " both in the sense of " price, value, amount due " and " honour, dignity, due esteem ").

Wyrd is a feminine noun, and its Norse cognate urðr, besides meaning " fate ", is the name of one of the Norns ; urðr is literally " that which has come to pass ", verðandi is " what is in the process of happening " ( the present participle of the verb cognate to weorþan ) and skuld " debt, guilt " ( from a Germanic root * skul-" to owe ", also found in English shall ).

Archeological finds in the area point to iron-age settlements, but the name of Geel, from a Germanic root meaning “ yellow ”, dates from the early Middle Ages.