GERMANIC

 The term “Germanic” originated in classical times when group of tribes living in Lower,
Upper, and Greater Germania were referred to using this label by Roman scribes. These
tribes generally lived to the north and east of the Gauls. They were chronicled by Rome’s
historians as having had a critical impact on the course of European history during the
Roman-Germanic wars, particularly at the historic battle of the teutoburg Forest, where the
vanquishment of three Roman legions at the hands of Germanic tribal warriors precipitated
the Roman Empire’s strategic from Magna Germania.

 Germanic peoples were historical groups of people that once occupied Central Europe and
Scandinavia during antiquity and into the early Middle Ages.
- Germanic peoples, also called Teutonic Peoples, any of the Indo-European speakers
of Germanic languages.
- The origins of the Germanic people are obscure.
- The Germanic people were a diverse group of migratory tribes with common
linguistic and cultural roots who dominated much of Europe during the Iron Age.
When the Roman Empire lost strength during the 5th century.
- Germanic people migrated into Great Britain and Western Europe, and their
settlements became fixed territories

GERMANIC LANGUAGES
 Germanic languages are a branch of Indo-European language family spoken natively
by a population of about 515 million people, mainly in Europe, North America,
Oceania, and South Africa.

Proto-Germanic (also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the

Germanic branch of the Indo-European.
The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto- Germanic, also
known as Common Germanic, which was spoken in about the middle of the 1 st millennium
BC in Iron Age Scandinavia. Proto-Germanic, along with all of its descendants, notably has
a number of unique linguistic features, most famously the consonant change known as
“Grimm’s law.” Early varieties of Germanic tribes moved south from Scandinavia in the 2 nd
century BC to settle in the area of today’s northern Germany and southern Denmark.

Proto-Germanic eventually develop from pre-proto Germanic.

The Germanic Languages are traditionally divided into three groups: West Germanic, North
Germanic, and East Germanic Language.
 Three (3) Germanic Branches:
West Germanic include the three most widely spoken Germanic languages:
- English, with around 360-400 million native speakers.
- German, with over 100 million native speakers.
- Dutch, with 24 million native speakers.

North Germanic Language are Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian. Which are in part mutually
intelligible and have a combined total of about 20 million native speakers in the Nordic
countries and an additional five million second language speakers.

East Germanic branch included Gothic, Burgundian, and Vandalic, all of which are now
extinct. The last to die off was Crimean Gothic, spoken until the late 18th century in some
isolated areas of Crimea.

The total number of Germanic languages throughout history is unknown as some of them,
especially the East Germanic languages, disappeared during or after the Migration Period. Some
of the West Germanic languages also did not survive past the Migration Period, including
Lombardic. As a result of World War II and subsequent mass expulsion of Germans, the
German language suffered a significant loss of Sprachraum, as well as moribundity and
extinction of several of its dialects. In the 21st century, German dialects are dying out [nb 3]as
Standard German gains primacy.