East Germanic language
- noun
- Specialized
:
idioma germánico oriental
- Gothic is the best-known East Germanic language preserved in written texts.
Examples
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The East Germanic language family includes Gothic.
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The decline of the East Germanic language group began around the early Middle Ages.
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Scholars have reconstructed aspects of the East Germanic language family from surviving documents.
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Many scholars study the East Germanic languages for historical insights.
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Gothic is the best-known East Germanic language preserved in written texts.
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Scholars have reconstructed aspects of the East Germanic language family from surviving documents.
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The decline of the East Germanic language group began around the early Middle Ages.
Synonyms
A group of old languages like Gothic once used in eastern Europe and no longer spoken
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly built from the constituents: 'East' (direction/region) + 'Germanic' (the Germanic group) + 'language' yields an eastern branch of the Germanic languages. This is a literal, compositional compound following common cross-linguistic patterns (direction + language-family + language) with no idiomatic shift, so a B1 learner who knows the parts can infer the meaning.
Etymology
East Germanic language names a group of old Germanic languages that were once spoken by people who lived east of modern Germany, like the Goths. Those languages later died out, so today the phrase refers to a now 'extinct' family we know mostly from a few old texts.
