Elbe Germanic

Elbe Germanic, also called Irminonic or Erminonic, is a proposed subgrouping of West Germanic languages introduced by the German linguist Friedrich Maurer (1898–1984) in his book, Nordgermanen und Alemanen, to describe the West Germanic dialects ancestral to Lombardic, Alemannic, and Bavarian. During late antiquity and the Middle Ages, its supposed descendants had a profound influence on the neighboring West Central German dialects and, later, in the form of Standard German, on the German language as a whole. While most scholars accept the existence of an Elbe Germanic archaeological group, the existence of a linguistic group remains controversial.