Proto-Germanic language

Proto-Germanic (or Common Germanic) is the hypothetical common ancestor (proto-language) of all the Germanic languages, which include, among others, modern English, Dutch, German and Swedish. The Proto-Germanic language is not directly attested by any surviving texts, but has been reconstructed using the comparative method. However, a few surviving inscriptions in a runic script from Scandinavia dated to c. 200 are thought to represent a stage of Proto-Norse or Late Common Germanic immediately following the "Proto-Germanic" stage. Some loan-words from early Germanic which exist in neighbouring non-Germanic languages are believed to have been borrowed from Germanic during the Proto-Germanic phase; an example is Finnish and Estonian kuningas "king", which closely resembles the reconstructed Proto-Germanic *kuningaz.
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