From: Richard Wordingham
Message: 70007
Date: 2012-08-30
> a) German is attested in runic inscriptions from 2nd century A.D. Is it true that nobody knew or interacted with German speakers prior to 2nd century A.D?No. Caligula had a German bodyguard, and Tacitus's Germania was completed at the end of the 1st century A.D. Caesar wrote a bit about them in the 1st Century A.D.
> b) We hear of Proto Germanic being the ancestor of Germanic. Won't it be a better possibility that Germanic descended from an existing language prior to 2nd century A.D rather than being a branch in itself?There was plenty of room for unattested languages, especially as the Greeks and Romans weren't interested in foreign languages.
> c) How is it determined that a language is a separate branch?By observing that it doesn't fit. This can be tricky - Slavic may turn out to be a branch of Baltic!