What is Relatedness?

[petegray]

Rick said:
> How secure is East Germanic?
> Why is it not just an early form of N. Germanic?

W Walker Chambers & J R Wilkie "A short history of the German language"
(1970) page 23 say "The older way of accounting to the development of these
Germanic dialects was to assume the Primitive Germanic divided in to three
branches:  North ... East ...  and West.   This family tree is is still
useful as a classification of the Germanic dialects, but it cannot explain
their growth."
  They then go on to outline a theory - which they admit is not universally
accepted - that Germanic should not be seen as a primitive unity which broke
apart, but as a collection of at least five major groups which drew together
as the common political and cultural life shifted and changed.

The reality is that the various forms of Germanic are interrelated in
complex ways, and a simple family tree does not do justice to the
complexity.   Nonetheless, East Germanic cannot be seen as an early form of
North Germanic - it shares too much with Allemanic and Bavarian, for a
start.

Peter