What is Relatedness?

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu writes:

> How secure is East Germanic? Why is it not just an early form of N. Germanic?
>i.e. what are the points that distinguish it?

-- East Germanic is the earliest attested form of Germanic (the Gothic bible)
but it already shows innovations not present in the earliest form of North
Germanic, the runic inscriptions.

There's a very close similarity; the Germanic languages were probably still
one cluster of mutually intelligible dialects as recently as 0 CE.