germanic
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The Germanic languages are a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family spoken by Germanic peoples .
Germanic languages
Faroese [ 1 ] (in Faroese: føroyskt, pronounced [ˈføːɹɪst] ) is an Insular Nordic language spoken as a native language by about 70,000-75,000 people, 45,000 of which reside on the Faroe Islands and 25,000-30,000 [ citation needed ] in other areas, mainly mainland Denmark . It is one of four languages descended from the Old West Norse language spoken in the Middle Ages , the others being Icelandic , Norwegian and the extinct Norn , which is thought to have been mutually intelligible with Faroese. [ citation needed ] Faroese and Icelandic, its closest extant relative, are not mutually intelligible in speech, but the written languages resemble each other quite closely, largely owing to Faroese's etymological orthography . [ 2 ]
Faroese language
Icelandic ( íslenska ) is a North Germanic language , the main language of Iceland . It is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages . Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the colonisation of the Americas.
Icelandic language
Swedish ( svenska ) is a North Germanic language , spoken by approximately 10 million people, [ 2 ] predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland , where it has equal legal standing with Finnish . It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish (see Classification ).
Swedish language
Sranan (also Sranan Tongo or Sranantongo "Surinamean tongue", Surinaams , Surinamese , Suriname Creole , Taki Taki ) is a creole language spoken as a lingua franca by approximately 300,000 people in Suriname . [ 1 ] It was previously called nengre or in Dutch negerengels ("Negro English").
Sranan Tongo
English language
English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and is now the most widely used language in the world. [ 4 ] It is spoken as a first language by the majority populations of several sovereign states , including the United Kingdom , the United States , Canada , Australia , Ireland , New Zealand and a number of Caribbean nations. It is the third-most-common native language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish . [ 5 ] It is widely learned as a second language and is an official language of the European Union , many Commonwealth countries and the United Nations , as well as in many world organisations. English arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and what is now southeast Scotland .
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language , spoken natively in South Africa, Namibia and to a lesser extent in Botswana and Zimbabwe .
Dutch language
Dutch ( Nederlands ) is a West Germanic language and the native language of most of the population of the Netherlands , and about sixty percent of the populations of Belgium and Suriname , the three member states of the Dutch Language Union . Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second language for another 5 million people. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] It also holds official status in the Caribbean island nations of Aruba , Curaçao , and Sint Maarten , while historical minorities remain in parts of France and Germany , and to a lesser extent, in Indonesia , [ n 1 ] and up to half a million native Dutch speakers may be living in the United States , Canada , and Australia . [ n 2 ] The Cape Dutch dialects of Southern Africa have been standardised into Afrikaans , a mutually intelligible daughter language of Dutch [ n 3 ] which today is spoken to some degree by an estimated total of 15 to 23 million people in South Africa and Namibia . [ n 4 ]