By Germanic I mean anyone whose native language belongs to the Germanic branch of Indo-European languages: most Germans, Dutch, English, Danes, Australians, Americans, etc.
They live mainly in north-western Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Here is the family tree. It has all the living languages with at least a million native speakers. Those without numbers are dead but notable. Those in bold have at least 10 million speakers:
- Proto-Germanic – spoken in and near present-day Denmark from -500 to +250.
- West Germanic:
- German (90)
- Yiddish (2)
- Dutch (21)
- Afrikaans (7)
- English (365)
- Frankish – spoken by the Franks before they spoke French
- German (90)
- North Germanic
- Old Norse – Vikings
- Norwegian (5)
- Danish (6)
- Swedish (9)
- Old Norse – Vikings
- East Germanic (extinct)
- Gothic – Ostrogoths and Visigoths
- Vandalic – the Vandals
- Burgundian
- West Germanic:
Less than a million native speakers: Icelandic, Faroese, Frisian, Luxembourgish, Pennsylvanian Dutch.
All told that comes to more than 500 million people. Note that for English and Yiddish there are more people who know them as second languages than as first languages.
Religion: Most are Christians, mostly Protestants. Some are Jewish. Many practise no religion.
History: They appear in history as the Germani barbarians in Roman times and later as sea pirates in Viking times (700s to 1000s) and again during the European Expansion (1400s to 1900s). In time piracy received government backing and was called empire.
By the 1600s they had the best ships and banks in the world. Because of their banks, much of the silver and gold of the Aztecs and Incas fell into their hands. With their ships and guns they took over world trade and, in time, a fourth of the world’s land and people in the largest robbery in history, what we call the British Empire. They took and settled North America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, wiping out the native people in the first two cases. They practised race-based slavery, which provided money for the industrial revolution. They were the top power in the world in the 1800s and 1900s, the last 4% of history.
Dark blue = countries where most people speak a Germanic language as their first language. Light blue = countries where a Germanic language is an official language (mainly countries of the old British Empire).
In the -5000s they lived near the Black Sea. By the -2000s they had arrived in a region centred on Denmark. They brought horses, carts and the habit of drinking cow’s milk. There they learned about ships, swords, kings and sea trade from the people already living there. That led to the Nordic Bronze Age (-1700 to -500).
Red = Germanic settlement by -750, in and near Denmark. They spread to the orange by -500, the yellow by -250 and the green by -1. By 500 they will take over much of western Europe.
Later they became soldiers in the Roman army, then military commanders – and then generals who cut up the western Roman Empire and became kings in the 400s, bringing on the Dark Ages. Augustine in the 410s knew them as Goths. They wore trousers not robes, travelled in covered wagons and cooked with butter instead of olive oil. They believed in a false Christianity called Arianism. Those called Vandals burned down his city shortly after his death.
Contributions: the Dark Ages, the Second World War, the Industrial Revolution, air and space travel, cars, telephones, film, television, computers, Internet, global warming, nuclear weapons, Jim Crow, apartheid, and several genocides:
- Genocides: Australians, Tasmanians, Ashkenazic Jews, North Americans, Namibians.
See also:
- Guides:
- Germani – the Germanics of Roman times
- history viewed through languages:
- British Empire
- St Augustine
- genocides:
- Herero and Nama genocide – the Namibian genocide
- The Tasmanian genocide
- Languages:
- Proto-Indo-European – what Proto-Germanic came from
- English
- Yiddish
Abagond 
“Those called Vandals burned down his town shortly after his death.”
What town?
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In Vino Veritas: Hippo Regious, in Roman Africa (today’s Annaba, Algeria). The Vandals crossed the Rhine into the Roman Empire in 406 AD, first settled in Spain and eventually moved to North Africa.
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Oops, typo: Hippo Regius.
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@ In Vino Veritas
He lived in Hippo Regius, one of the main cities of Roman Africa (I should call it a city, not a town). It is now called Annaba, Algeria. It is on the coast not far from the Tunisian border.
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“Truganini” was considered the last full blood Tasmanian, and she died in 1876 — not all that long ago. An entire race of people gone, and very few people alive today are even aware that aboriginal Tasmanian ever existed, let alone that they were intentionally wiped out by British squatters on aboriginal land.
I’ve known about the genocide of the Tasmanians since I was at least 12 years old. This knowledge was acquired by me, not in any classroom, but through my own efforts; as this is the sort of information which was conveniently skipped over in the schools I attended.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truganini
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Quick correction, “germanics” as you define them by language groups, didn’t take aztec/inca gold, the spanish did.
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Huh didnt know Dutch had 21 million speakers,( such an weird-sounding guttural language), is that counted together with Afrikaans? From what I know it isnt much diffrence but maybe im wrong
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Afrikaans is more similar to 17th-century Dutch – they’re mutually intelligible to a certain extent but separate languages by now. Dutch is spoken in the Netherlands and Flanders (north-western Belgium), but regional dialects can be quite different.
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There are linguistic groups and ethnical/cultural groups and, concerning Europe, everything is pretty much mixed up. Normans colonized sicily and nowaday you may find many sicilians with blond hair and blue eyes. I’m from north Italy, I speak a latin language but the most of the people here has german blood (longobards came here centuries ago). A part of English words have latin origin. It’s history… Full of conquest and suffering. It’s beatiful. You have Werner Von Braun, Leonardo, Dostoevsky, John Coltrane, Steve Jobs, Einstein, Nelson Mandela, Enrico Fermi…….. And the planet keeps going better and better despite all the differences and collateral damages…
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Bulanik writes:
“In commenting on Truganini’s life, it was said she was raped many times before her death.
Perhaps this important historical figure deserves her own post.”
– – –
Yes, I agree. Some here may eschew information they feel does not pertain to them directly or to their “race”. My feeling is that we should gather knowledge / information in general; not shun it.
Regarding Truganini: it is said that there were several full blood Tasmanians who outlived her by as much as 30 years; however, as there doesn’t seem to be much info available on the lives of these survivors, this must be the reason focus is placed on Truganini as “Last of the Tasmanians”.
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@Ahmadgoli
You are right, Iberians (I.e: Spaniards & Portuguese) raided most of the latin American gold (The French, English, Dutch -in Surinam & the Guyanas- had a little go too:), but both the Portuguese and the Spaniards were quite happy to leave the banking work to the English. On the whole, in both these countries, the power was in the hands of aristocrats who were only interested in possessing land and in agriculture (they cashed in while peones -peasants- did the real back breaking bone). This is why neither Portugal nor Spain developed much industry or banking sectors until recently. The conquistadores such as Cortes who raided Latin America were only interested in gold, the lion share of which went to their monarch, while they used their share to acquire land for themselves.
A few years ago, a study revealed that the wealthiest segment of the world population was white, male and protestant. I venture the theory that they probably spoke a predominantly Germanic language, but at the same time, we should not forget that Norway and Sweden were appallingly poor in the 19th century, with a proportion of the population in “serfdom” (leibeigene). Anyone wanting to know more about the dreadful conditions in large part of Scandinavia in those days should watch the film “Invandrarna” (the immigrants) based on Vilhelm Moberg’s novel, with Liv Ulman and Max Von Sydow. I believe that any country wanting to pull their way out of poverty should observe that Sweden and Norway achieved this by giving their citizens (male & female) more rights, increasing welfare provisions and education, and creating industries as well as researching their own history. However, poverty caused these countries to also lose a lot of their population (Minnesota). A similar phenomenon took place in Switzerland. We all know how rich this country is now and, oh yes, the largest linguistic chunk in Switzerland is Germanic (south German dialects).
At the same time: the Goths, Wisigoths and a couple more Germanic tribes were victims of genocide and disappeared in the sands of time.
The Vandals nearly did too but managed to leave their name to the Andalusia region of Spain. So yes, as a previous post pointed out: Europe is a mightily mixed area. Roman legions did not do racism, and names in cemetaries along Hadrian’s wall in England testify that there were a lot of black Africans who settled, lived and died in northern Europe. So, no, things are not necessarily getting better. There were times in the past when racism was less prevalent than it was 50 years ago or even now. Studying the ebb and flow of racism in history might also help us combat it as it is now.
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@ Abagond & Malte:
“his town/city”
thanks for the clarification. I missed the connection to Augustine.
@ Malte:
“Flanders (north-western Belgium)”
This is a tricky one. The historical Flanders could indeed be described like this but then you would have to include some parts in the north of France and the south of the Netherlands.
Contemporary Flanders would better be described as North-Belgium since Antwerp, Brabant and Limburg also belong to it.
This has a strange consequence. As you can see on the map above the province of East-Flanders is actually located in the western part of Flanders.
And for the numbers: it’s actually 23 million people who speak it as their mother tongue (i’m one of them).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_language
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The names of the provinces aren’t visible on the map above.
You can see it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provinces_of_Belgium
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Just wondering if Bangladesh and Sri Lanka should be shaded light blue. Bangladesh was part of Pakistan before, but it looks like English is no longer co-official there. In Sri Lanka, English is designated as a link language in the constitution between the indigenous local languages, so it should definitely be included.
Would have been interesting to see the map 60 years ago. For example, Indonesia would have been coded light blue too.
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[…] By Germanic I mean anyone whose native language belongs to the Germanic branch of Indo-European languages: most Germans, Dutch, English, Danes, Australians, Americans, etc. They live mainly in nort… […]
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[…] See on abagond.wordpress.com […]
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Reblogged this on oogenhand and commented:
The main fault of the Germanics was that they took the Roman rule that children of a free man and an enslaved woman were considered slaves. That really screwed up race relations in America.
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All of the boring and/or ugly European languages. The Romance languages sound much, much better IMO
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Interesting stuff. When goths crossed over to the Roman territory they were a horde of refugees themselves running from the huns etc. It is good to remember this. The only reason they defeated the east romans in Adrianopoli was because the romans thoughed them as rubbish and trash to be slaved at will and did not realise how desperate they were at that time.
As for the vandals. They are pretty interesting, particulary when one thinks about their reputation. They were actually very small nation, some tens of thousands (those who crossed the Gibraltar numbered some 50 – 80 000 all together), and they were also refugees originally. Nobody knows for sure were they germanic or mixed or what, some have suggested that they were slavic or fennougric.
As for their reputation, it is interesting that despite of them being such vandals, somehow there are abundanance of roman stuff left in northern Africa. When they looted Rome, at the request of the daughter of the emperor, they did not destroy it to the ground like it has been told. Their king also forbade the troops from entering private dwellings and there is a story of a vandal knokcing on a door of a roman widow and asking permission to enter. Widow told him to f*#¤ off and he did. Interesting point too.
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This article is quite funny because this is probably the way most pictures the dark ages. “When you think of the Dark Ages/Middle Ages, chances are you picture gallant knights sitting astride brilliant destriers galloping through a sea of plagues, ignorance, and filth” http://www.cracked.com/article_20186_6-ridiculous-myths-about-middle-ages-everyone-believes.html
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@Sam About Slavonic vs Germanic. Sometimes it is hard to tell who was who. The words Prussian (for instance) which has come to be quite symbolic of Germanic because the Prussian tribes were absorbed by Teutonic tribes who spoke Eastern Germanic dialects, is the same as the word Russian. Old Prussian, while being related to Lithuanian, seems to have quite a few Gothic elements (I.e Germanic). Russian as we know is decidedly Slavonic.
Now to something completely different: @Abagond: Would it be a good idea to have a post about how the disappearance of white girls is treated completely differently compared to that of non-white as seen in Cleveland? Amanda Berry got way more coverage over the years than the other two girls. If you want, I will direct you to source materials.
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Ciao! Vorrei solo dire un grazie enorme per le informazioni che avete condiviso in questo blog! Di sicurò diverrò un vostro fa accanito!
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[…] A Guide to Germanics (abagond.wordpress.com) […]
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Regarding Germany (and England if you think about it):
I swear, but am not sure, that the complicated part of anti-bigotry is how to end it and what to do with the privileged.
But one thing (from the Herero and Nama Genocide post):
“Germany already proved itself to be a genocidal nation when Hitler was 15 years old.”
I agree with reparations, now that I have read and learned more upon the idea. I do think Germany has not done enough to repay Namibia
This is exactly what I mean by demonizing ethnicities. Even if you meant “state” when you said “nation”, that still makes Germany (nearly an exact nation-state) evil. I understand few states commit genocide, but genocide doesn’t come from tenants of an ethnicity and shouldn’t be a permanent mark on an ethnicity’s record.
What are Germans (for instance) supposed to do to be acceptable? Magically cure what their ancestors’ poisoned? Nobody deserves to be hated by non-awful people.
And yes, I personally think Ashkenazi Jews (at least), should forgive ethnic Germans for Nazi Germany’s parts in the Holocaust. Ashkenazi Jews are only oppressed in France, easily the whitest nation ever. They even once colonized England.
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