North Sea Germanic

North Sea Germanic
Ingvaeonic
Geographic distribution:	Originally the North Sea coast from Friesland to Jutland; today, worldwide
Linguistic classification:	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic North Sea Germanic
Subdivisions:	Anglo-Frisian Low German
The distribution of the primary Germanic languages in Europe in around AD 1:   North Germanic   North Sea Germanic, or Ingvaeonic   Weser-Rhine Germanic, or Istvaeonic   Elbe Germanic or Irminonic   East Germanic

North Sea Germanic, also known as Ingvaeonic /ˌɪŋviːˈɒnɪk/, is a group of West Germanic languages that were first spoken in what is now northern Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark. They were also spread to the British Isles in the Migration Period. The languages were Old Frisian, Old English and Old Saxon. They have become other languages since then and spread worldwide, especially the modern English language.

The grouping was first proposed in Nordgermanen und Alemannen (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 assumed the existence of a special Anglo-Frisian group. The other groupings are Istvaeonic, from the Istvaeones, which developed into Franconian, and Irminonic, from the Irminones, which developed into Upper German.^[1]

1. ↑ Hans Frede Nielsen, Nordic-West Germanic relations, in: The Nordic Languages: An International Handbook of the History of the North Germanic Languages, volume 1 (series: Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft or short HSK 22.1), 2002, p. 558ff., here p. 558f.