Proto-Germanic language is not directly attested by any coherent surviving texts; it has been reconstructed using the comparative method.
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17 Facts About Proto-Germanic language
3.
The first coherent text recorded in a Germanic Proto-Germanic language is the Gothic Bible, written in the later fourth century in the Proto-Germanic language of the Thervingi Gothic Christians, who had escaped persecution by moving from Scythia to Moesia in 348.
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4.
The Germanic languages form a tree with Proto-Germanic at its root that is a branch of the Indo-European tree, which in turn has Proto-Indo-European at its root.
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5.
Whether it is to be included under a wider meaning of Proto-Germanic language is a matter of usage.
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6.
The final stage of the Proto-Germanic language included the remaining development until the breakup into dialects and, most notably, featured the development of nasal vowels and the start of umlaut, another characteristic Germanic feature.
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7.
Term substrate with reference to Proto-Germanic language refers to lexical items and phonological elements that do not appear to be descended from Proto-Indo-European.
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8.
Table below lists the consonantal phonemes of Proto-Germanic language, ordered and classified by their reconstructed pronunciation.
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9.
Sometime after Grimm's and Verner's law, Proto-Germanic language lost its inherited contrastive accent, and all words became stressed on their root syllable.
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10.
Proto-Germanic language had four short vowels, five or six long vowels, and at least one "overlong" or "trimoric" vowel.
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11.
Diphthongs in Proto-Germanic language can be analysed as sequences of a vowel plus an approximant, as was the case in Proto-Indo-European.
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12.
Proto-Germanic language allowed any single consonant to occur in one of three positions: initial, medial and final.
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13.
Proto-Germanic language had six cases, three genders, three numbers, three moods, and two voices .
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14.
Several sound changes occurred in the history of Proto-Germanic language that were triggered only in some environments but not in others.
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15.
Proto-Germanic language originally had two demonstratives which could serve as both adjectives and pronouns.
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16.
Verbs in Proto-Germanic language were divided into two main groups, called "strong" and "weak", according to the way the past tense is formed.
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17.
Proto-Germanic language verbs have two voices, active and passive, the latter deriving from the PIE mediopassive voice.
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