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4. LINGUISTICS

Germanic Languages are subfamily of the Indo-European
languages. Germanic languages are spoken by more than 480 million
people in northern and Western Europe, North America, South Africa,
and Australia. In their structure and evolution they fall into three

branches:
East Germanic (extinct): the Gothic language and some other
extinct languages. Substantial information survives only for Gothic.

North Germanic or Scandinavian: western group-the Icelandic
language, the Norwegian language, and Faroese (intermediate between
Icelandic and western Norwegian dialects); eastern group-the Danish

language and the Swedish language.
West Germanic: Anglo-Frisian group-the English language and the
Frisian language; Netherlandic-German group-Netherlandic, or Dutch-

Flemish and the Low German (Plattdeutsch) dialects, Afrikaans, the
German language or High German, and the Yiddish language.
In terms of unwritten regional dialects, the Scandinavian languages
form a single speech area of high mutual intelligibility (except for

Icelandic, which was long isolated and retains many archaisms), within
which Danish has diverged the most. The Netherlandic-German dialects
form another speech area. In both areas, speech varies gradually from

one village to the next, although over wide distances greater differences
accumulate. Also, in both areas more than one literary norm arose,
corresponding to political and historical divisions. These norms are what
are usually meant by terms such as Swedish language.

5. INDUSTRIAL SAFETY

Introduction

Industrial safety is an area of safety engineering and public health
that deals with the protection of workers' health, through control of the
work environment to reduce or eliminate hazards. Industrial accidents

and unsafe working conditions can result in temporary or permanent
injury or illness or even death. They also take a toll in reduced efficiency
and loss of productivity. Annually in the United States, 1 of every 11
workers in private industry experiences a work-related injury or illness.

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