A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2
John Stuart Mill · en
8. +The Group to which English belongs.+-- The Indo-European family of
languages consists of several groups. One of these is called the
+Teutonic Group+, because it is spoken by the +Teuts+ (or the +Teutonic
race+), who are found in Germany, in England and Scotland, in Holland,
in parts of Belgium, in Denmark, in Norway and Sweden, in Iceland, and
the Faroe Islands. The Teutonic group consists of three branches-- +High
German+, +Low German+, and +Scandinavian+. High German is the name given
to the kind of German spoken in Upper Germany-- that is, in the
table-land which lies south of the river Main, and which rises gradually
till it runs into the Alps. +New High German+ is the German of books--
the literary language-- the German that is taught and learned in
schools. +Low German+ is the name given to the German dialects spoken in
the lowlands-- in the German part of the Great Plain of Europe, and
round the mouths of those German rivers that flow into the Baltic and
the North Sea. +Scandinavian+ is the name given to the languages spoken
in Denmark and in the great Scandinavian Peninsula. Of these three
languages, Danish and Norwegian are practically the same-- their
literary or book-language is one; while Swedish is very different.
Icelandic is the oldest and purest form of Scandinavian. The following
is a table of the
GROUP OF TEUTONIC LANGUAGES.
[The table was originally printed in full family-tree form, using the
layout below. The full text is here given separately.]
T.
____________|_____________
| | |
LG HG Sc
______|____ __|__ _____|_____
| | | | | | | | | | |
Du Fl Fr E O M N I Dk Fe Sv
(Nk) (Sw)
TEUTONIC.
LOW GERMAN.
Dutch.
Flemish.
Frisian.
English.
HIGH GERMAN.
Old.
Middle.
New.
SCANDINAVIAN.
Icelandic
Dansk
(or Norsk).
Ferroic.
Svensk
(Swedish).
It will be observed, on looking at the above table, that High German is
subdivided according to time, but that the other groups are subdivided
according to space.