West Germanic languages
The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic family of languages (the other being the North Germanic and the extinct East Germanic languages).
The three most prevalent West Germanic languages are English, German, and Dutch. The family also includes other High and Low German languages, Scots, Afrikaans (a daughter language of Dutch), the Frisian languages, and Yiddish.
History
Origins
The West Germanic languages share many lexemes not existing in North Germanic and/or East Germanic — archaisms as well as common neologisms.
Most scholars doubt that there was a Proto-West-Germanic protolanguage common to the West Germanic languages and no others, though a few maintain that Proto-West-Germanic existed. Most agree that after East Germanic broke off (an event usually dated to the 2nd or 1st century BC), the remaining Germanic languages, the Northwest Germanic languages, divided into four main dialects: North Germanic, and the three groups conventionally called "West Germanic", namely