Ingvaeonic languages

Ingvaeonic /ˌɪŋviːˈɒnɪk/, also known as North Sea Germanic, is a postulated grouping of the northern West Germanic languages, comprising Old Frisian, Old English, and Old Saxon, and their descendants.

Ingvaeonic is named after the Ingaevones, a West Germanic cultural group or proto-tribe along the North Sea coast. It is not thought of as a monolithic proto-language, but rather as a group of closely related dialects that underwent several areal changes in relative unison.

The grouping was first proposed in Nordgermanen und Alemanen (1942) by German linguist and philologist Friedrich Maurer, as an alternative to the strict tree diagrams which had become popular following the work of 19th century linguist August Schleicher and which assumed the existence of a special Anglo-Frisian group. The other groupings are Istvaeonic, from the Istvaeones, including Dutch, Afrikaans, and related languages; and Irminonic, from the Irminones, including the High German languages.

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