Talk:Germanic peoples/Archive 8

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Scope of the article

The Tocharians, Illyrians, Thracians and other ancient peoples have disappeared from history, and the introduction to articles on these peoples on Wikipedia therefore states who these peoples were. Slavs, Balts, Iranian peoples and others are still around, so the introduction to their Wikipedia articles states who these peoples are. According to scholars, Germanic peoples are still around too, but this article treats them as an historical people á la Tocharians, Illyrians and Thracians. Here are some scholarly citations on the time frame of the subject of Germanic peoples:

  • Edward Arthur Thompson in Encyclopædia Britannica: "The Germanic, or Teutonic, peoples are a branch of the Indo-Europeans."[1]
  • Webster's New World Dictionary: "Germanic... a group of N European peoples including the Germans, Scandinavians, Dutch, English, etc., or the peoples from whom they are descended."[2]
  • Malcolm Pasley & Jethro Bithell: "In German we have the following terms at our disposal: Germanisch and Germanen ; Deutsch and Deutsche. It is not easy to find convenient equivalents in English for these terms. Deutsch and Deutsche are easily rendered as 'German' and 'Germans' and Germanisch as 'Germanic', but Germanen presents problems, since it lacks a precise single-word equivalent in English. It is a collective term referring to the peoples who speak the modern Germanic languages, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Icelanders, English, Frisians, Dutch and Germans, and to the ancestors of these peoples. 'Germanic', too, is a collective term signifying the older and the modern languages of these peoples and the languages of other Germanic peoples who have vanished from history."[3]
  • Francis Owen: "Only towards the end of the main phase of the Migrations the urban life of the Roman Empire begin to exercise any marked influence on the Germanic peoples. From that time on they began to acquire a knowledge of foreign cultures, the cultures of the Mediterranean and Christianity, From that time on they ceased to be purely "Germanic" and began the long process which has not yet been completed, of becoming European."[4]
  • William Witherle Lawrence: "The usual subdivisions are: North-Germanic, comprising the Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, and Icelanders; West- Germanic, mainly English (Anglo-Saxon), Dutch, and German; East-Germanic, Goths, Vandals, and Burgundians."[5]]
  • John Duncan Spaeth: "The main divisions of Germanic are: 1. East Germanic, including the Goths, both Ostrogoths and Visigoths. 2. North Germanic, including the Scandinavians, Danes, Icelanders, Swedes, "Norsemen." 3. West Germanic."[6]
  • Tomasz Wicherkiewicz: "The Germanic [peoples] still include: Englishmen, Dutchmen, Germans, Danes, Swedes, Saxons. Therefore, [in the same way] as Poles, Russians, Czechs, Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians belong to the Slavic [peoples]."[7]
  • Ioan-Aurel Pop: "[C]ontemporary Europe is made up of three large groups of peoples, divided on the criteria of their origin and linguistic affiliation. They are the following: the Romanic or neo-Latin peoples (Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, French, Romanians, etc.), the Germanic peoples (Germans proper, English, Dutch, Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, Icelanders, etc.), and the Slavic peoples (Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenians, etc.)."[8]
  • Nicoline van der Sijs: "Dutch quite often refers to German (because of the similarity in sound between Dutch and Deutsch) and sometimes even Scandinavians and other Germanic people."[9]
  • Jeroen Dewulf (Edited by Jeffrey Cole): "The Dutch (in Dutch: Nederlanders) are a Germanic people living in the Netherlands."[10]
  • Jeroen Dewulf (Edited by Jeffrey Cole): "The Flemish (Dutch: Vlamingen), also called Flemings, are a Germanic people living in Belgium."[11]
  • Chambers's Encyclopaedia: "The Teutonic peoples, as they exist at the present day, are divided into two principal branches: (1) Scandinavian, embracing Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Icelanders; and (2) West Germanic, which includes, besides the German-speaking inhabitants of Germany proper (see Germany) and Switzerland (q. v.), also the population of the Netherlands (the Dutch), the Flemings of Belgium, and the descendants of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in Great Britain, together with their offspring in North America, Australia, and other British colonies— the English- speaking peoples of the world."[12]
  • The New International Encyclopedia: "People of the Scandinavian group of the Teutonic stock, consisting of the Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, and Icelanders."[13]
  • John Paul Goode: "The Germanic peoples are the Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Germans, Dutch, English and the northern Swiss and Austrians."[14]
  • Edwin A. Grosvenor: "The Scandinavians, or the Danes, Norwegians and Swedes, Teutonic peoples, are so intimately related..."[15]
  • Philip van Ness Myers: "The Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes represent the Scandinavian branch of the Teutonic family."[16]

During the last couple of years, a number of IPs have launched a series of RfCs on this talk page, arguing in favor of purging this article of references to Germanic peoples of the present day. It has later been revealed that the initiator of these RfCs was the sockpuppeteer Freeboy200. The WP:DISCUSSED argument has since been applied with references to Freeboy200's RfCs to remove quality sources on Germanic peoples from this article.[17] No reliable sources have been provided for the WP:REDFLAG claim that Germanic peoples have disappeared. As per WP:NOR, original research is forbidden on Wikipedia, with or without consensus. As the claim of disappearance remains unsourced and contradicts a number of quality sources, it should be contested. Krakkos (talk) 16:53, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Carlstak - You have again reverted my insertion of Edward Arthur Thompson's definition of Germanic peoples. Your rationale in confusing:

  • You dismiss a source by Edward Arthur Thompson from 1983 as "outdated"[18] and then insert a source by Herwig Wolfram from 1988.[19]
  • You say that Germanic peoples do not exist anymore because Encyclopædia Britannica Online speaks of Germanic peoples "exclusively in past tense". [20] This is the argument from silence. Besides, the Encyclopedia Britannica Online article has no credited author, and is therefore grossly inferior in reliability to the earlier article credited to Edward Arthur Thompson, who was a prominent scholar on the subject.
  • You cite alternatively page 12 from Wolfram's History of the Goths (1988)[21] and The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples (1997) for your claim that "Germanic peoples no longer exist".[22] I have examined page 12 of both books, and they mention nothing of that sort.

As it stands now, the first sentence of the lead is thorough original research, not backed by any of the two sources cited. Krakkos (talk) 08:40, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

This is all a bit nonsensical, surely?

  • It is insulting and obviously dishonest to imply that opposition to your modern Germanic peoples insertions has come only from a few IPS!
  • Concerning article scope, our sources would not need to constrict what editing decisions we make here. (If there was a big difference anyway, which there is not. They all focus on ancient peoples.)
  • The sentence you pick out of Edward Arthur Thompson from 1983, is (1) a tertiary source, so not a strong source at all for this and (2) clearly twisted completely out of context because the very title of the article where this sentence comes from is "Germans, Ancient".
  • The other sources you have cited previously and now on this talk page are obviously not suitable for all the various reasons which have been discussed many times: too old, tertiary, clearly intended to be mainly about languages and/or ancient peoples, passing remarks twisted out of context, etc.
  • Obviously when you only have one source cited (Thompson) for the "modern" Germanic peoples, but he only mentions ancient ones, and all good sources also treat them as ancient, as does the rest of our article, then it is obviously sophistic in the extreme to say that people are using an argument from silence. WP policy says the onus is on you, as the proponent of an un-sourced assertion, to find a source which positively and clearly asserts something notable and worth an article. You keep failing to do this. You have created no new consensus.
  • In any case this article is not about modern Germanic peoples so why call only the first sentence OR? I think the reason is clear: you know a separate article for supposedly real modern Germanic peoples (unless it was about language groups) could never pass WP rules, and so you are piggy backing this fringe material into a real article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:11, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
Replying point by point:
  • 1- The initiator of the RfCs which have resulted in the "consensus" you're referring to was Freeboy200.[23][24][25]
  • 2 - Our editing decisions must always be constricted by sources as per WP:COPO.
  • 3 - Edward Arthur Thompson was a leading expert on Germanic peoples and his article is published by a reliable publisher, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.. He is a WP:BESTSOURCE on the subject.
  • 4 - The vast majority of the sources presented above have never been discussed on this talk page before. They are both old and new, secondary and tertiary, and attributed to both historians, linguists, anthropologists and geographers. The sources are intended to be about Germanic peoples, which is the topic of this article.
  • 5 - My additions to the lead are sourced. Yours are not. You're the one making un-sourced assertions and it is rather your responsibility per WP policy to find a source "positively and clearly" stating that Germanic peoples do not exist anymore.
  • 6 - Since when did Edward Arthur Thompson, Francis Owen, Jeroen Dewulf and the other sources mentioned above become "fringe material"? Krakkos (talk) 10:09, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
Krakkos, this endless crusade of yours has long been tiresome, and you keep trying to weasel your viewpoint into the article without consensus. You say that the Encyclopædia Britannica Online article is not reliable, but as you very well know, it is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., which you inconsistently say is reliable. Andrew Lancaster has said most of what I would say, but you keep citing Edward Arthur Thompson as if he were the last word on the subject and he is not. Of course you conveniently ignore my edit summary that said, "...even in 1990, most historians writing in German understood that the Germanic peoples no longer exist...". I cited Herwig Wolfram's book because I wanted to show that even thirty years ago, not so long after Edward Arthur Thompson's book was published, that authoritative German-speaking historians understood that the Germanic peoples do not exist in modern times; and I would assert that Wolfram, who writes in German (his book was translated), not English, is a superior source to Thompson. Carlstak (talk) 14:34, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
Krakkos (talk) 15:45, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
You are again ignoring that the onus is on you to show the existence of a continuing German-ic nationality. Where is any good strong source which clearly says that they do still exist, clearly saying that they are not a language-speaking group in modern contexts? (The language group also has other articles.) The answer is that there is none. Thompson certainly does not do this, as already pointed out. You are simply twisting a single sentence out of context. His title even says "Ancient". Concerning the first sentence, are you saying there is no such thing as the ancient Germanic peoples, or what is your point? The article is full of sourcing for their existence and notability in reliable sources. Surely this is not controversial? None of these sources describe a modern Germanic nation.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:43, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
I have never claimed that there is a "Germanic nationality" or "Germanic nation". Germanic is a collective term for various tribes/ethnicities/nationalities that have existed from ancient times up to the present day. I have provided a large number of scholarly sources testifying to that. You have continued to ignore those sources. In his defintion of Germanic peoples, regardless of the title of his article, Edward Arthur Thompson tells us who the Germanic peoples are rather than who they were.[26] Per WP:NOR and WP:V, Wikipedia must base its content on sources, rather than the personal opinions of Wikipedia editors such as yourself. Krakkos (talk) 12:36, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
I have to reinforce that I agree with Krakkos, at least also that version should be mentioned he presented per weight and WP:NPOV in case there would not be and entire consensus of the two sides.(KIENGIR (talk) 12:51, 8 September 2019 (UTC))
Thompson was writing about "Germans, Ancient". So I still have not seen any reliable source mentioning a real modern version of the Germanic peoples, except in the linguistic sense. However, that there have been 19th/early 20th century ideas and popular beliefs about such things (eg among the Nazis) is touched upon in the article already and is indeed sourceable, though it is not the main topic of THIS article. Keep in mind that even if the concept of a modern Germanic folk becomes something serious scholars refer to positively again, the subject of this Wikipedia article is still something else. This article is about ancient peoples, who no longer exist.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:57, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
Agree with all that. Johnbod (talk) 13:05, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
We're not discussing how the topic is to the titled, but how it is to be defined. Thompson defines who Germanic peoples are rather than who they were. Anyways, i have listed a number of reliable sources below that of Thompson, and these are not just from linguists. Krakkos (talk) 13:25, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
It is up to Wikipedia editors finally to decide what each article is about, and there is no apparent controversy about the notability of the ancient peoples which this article has always been about. What you are trying to do is add an unsourceable fringe idea... "and they still exist" ...to a solid topic. Your sources don't justify this, just as they would not be sufficient to justify a stand alone article. (We also already have articles for Germanic languages and Pan-Germanicism.) Our sources about the ancient Germanic peoples make it clear that they do not still exist. There is no source saying that a new ethnic group came into being, and there is no modern Germanic culture or ethnos or nation or folk, only the language group, and the new nations which to some extent "descend" (in a complex and mixed way) from classical ones.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:26, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
Yes, and our decisions as Wikipedia editors must be guided by reliable sources, per WP:NOR and WP:V. The sourced provided above show that Germanic peoples have existed from ancient times up to the present day. Krakkos (talk) 14:46, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
I and others have explained why these sources do not justify the proposal that any classical Germanic people lived on and continues to exist today. The lists of modern peoples who supposedly belong to a Germanic people are clearly just lists of groups who speak a Germanic language. Serious scholars do not equate ethnicity purely with language.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:02, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
It so happens that your source, which you have misrepresented,[27][28] defines Germanic peoples as "any of the Indo-European speakers of Germanic languages."[29] The sources i have provided are lists of what it defines as Germanic peoples. It's not up you to redefine what they're saying. And they are clearly not' "just lists of groups who speak a Germanic language". Ioan-Aurel Pop states that modern Germanic peoples (like modern Slavs), are characterized by a common "origin and linguistic affiliation".[30]
The Frisian ethnos has existed since classical antiquity. When did they cease to be Germanic? Krakkos (talk) 08:38, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
In most cases we don't know the details of the splitting up of the old classical peoples. But split up they did, and the Frisians no longer belong to a single Germanic people, because there is no single Germanic people except in the linguistic sense. Concerning Pop, it seems he is an expert in medieval Roumania, but in any case he is clearly writing in a way we need to be careful of, writing "we could say that". Whatever we should make of this, for example whether it might be relevant for another WP article, I see no way to say that he is talking about a simple continuation of the classical ethnic group. He is playing with ways of splitting up the modern European people. I think we have many other articles on such subjects, and his comments might be relevant for some of them.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:04, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
Pop is a professor of medieval history and certainly a more reliable source than you. His source was introduced to support the fact that Germanic peoples share not only common languages, but also a common origin. The fact that there is a continuation of Germanic peoples from ancient times up to today is shown by the soures from Webster's New World Dictionary, Malcolm Pasley & Jethro Bithell, Francis Owen, William Witherle Lawrence and John Duncan Spaeth. This article is not about "a single Germanic people". It's about Germanic peoples. Frisians are classified as Germanic in a number of sources.[31][32][33][34] Where are your sources for the claim that Frisians are no longer Germanic? Krakkos (talk) 09:34, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
You are continually pretending you do not understand the real problem. You can't give any clear relevant source for saying there is any entity at all today called the "Germanic Peoples", except in specific senses covered by other articles in Wikipedia. This article here is about peoples in the classical period, and it was not a linguistically defined group. They were seen as one great single cultural entity containing many smaller nations. This perception of a single entity did not survive the middle ages, when peoples were divided up in different ways.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:02, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
For the nth time, the relevant sources are given here. Your own source defines Germanic peoples primarily as a linguistically defined group.[35] This article is not only about peoples of the classical period. It contains lots of information from the middle ages as well, when there was no conception of a Germanic "single entity". This article is not simply about the "Germani" (i. e. inhabitants of Germania) identified in Roman sources, but about the Germanic peoples of English-language sources. This is what you fail to understand. Krakkos (talk) 10:52, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Firstly, it is misleading and distracting to refer to "my" source, as I did not mention that source and indeed there is no controversy here anyway about the existence of the classical Germanic peoples as a subject worth an article. Secondly, the topic this article covers has been discussed many times and there is a pretty clear long-term consensus. You know very well that you are in a minority, and other active editors do not agree with your reading of the literature, nor about what this article should cover. This article is indeed about the Germani in Germania, though it touches related issues as well of course, such as Germanic languages and Pan-Germanicism, which have their own main articles. Attempts to add Afrikaners etc have always been controversial and stuck out like a proverbial sore thumb! FWIW both those articles (and others) discuss modern categories which do partly derive from accounts of the classical Germani.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:31, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I refer to is as "your" source because it is the source referred to for your claim that Germanic peoples are defined as the Germani of Roman-authors.[36][37] This article contains plenty of information about Viking Age Scandinavians and their culture, and they are not considered part of the "Germani". The intro as it currently stands is thus not only a misrepresentation of the sources, but fails WP:MOSLEAD by a wide margin. Krakkos (talk) 12:03, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
Andrew Lancaster, in your previous comment you considered "you" in single or plural from? Thank You(KIENGIR (talk) 12:10, 9 September 2019 (UTC))
I am certainly open to proposals for pruning the article and making sure it has a clear focus. That has been a long-run concern on this article. Scandinavians are not outside all classical concepts of Germania though, and what's more the post Roman Scandivians are sometimes used to help study earlier cultures because they are thought to have preserved certain myths etc. Perhaps this should be discussed in a new section.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:04, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
We already have an article covering the "classical concept of Germania". That article is titled Germania. We should not transform this article into a duplicate of the former. Krakkos (talk) 15:44, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
Nobody is suggesting that. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:29, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Just noting that there have only been two RfCs on this topic (that I can find in the archives at least), and both were initiated by Freeboy200 in 2018. That account is a sockpuppet of Ukrainetz1, which was blocked in 2017, so all of the account's edits were block evasion. Giving weight to those RfCs is rewarding the violation of policy on sockpuppetry. Hrodvarsson (talk) 02:52, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
More importantly, there is a good long run consensus among active editors that this article should continue to focus upon classical peoples. It gains nothing by having asides patched into it about Afrikaners and the rest. In general this is a topic which attracts OR, and the use of poor sources, not only Pan-Germanicism but also other topics, side discussions, speculations, 19th century theories.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:29, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

The way I see it, this covers what we need:-

  • In most of the sources being mentioned to justify the concept of modern Germanic peoples, it is clear that the term is being used in the sense of "speakers of Germanic languages", which of course is not an ethnic group anymore, just as there is no Indo-European ethnic group, because the languages have long ceased being mutually comprehensible or part of a single dialect continuum. The language family has it's own articles. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:05, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
  • The idea that language families represent races or biological populations is of course no longer accepted in any simple way by serious scholars and needs to be discussed in articles about the science and about the history of race theories.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:05, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
  • If the aim was to have an article which encompassed all successors (defined vaguely) of the classical Germanic peoples, then why are we not discussing Baltic and Slavic speaking populations. The answer is of course that the area was changed a lot in late antiquity. This is why this article can and should discuss what happened to the original Germanic peoples and what effects they had into post classical times. Various sub-regions are handled in other articles also already.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:05, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
The idea that language families represent races or biological populations -> As I recall, none of us argued like that.(KIENGIR (talk) 09:28, 11 September 2019 (UTC))
Arguably nothing has been argued very clearly by the proponents of the "Modern Germanic Peoples". But the way I see it, the critical area of disagreement, at least between Krakkos and several others including me, is that the classical Germanic peoples have a known modern continuation (singular) in some way which goes beyond language (although the lists proposed of modern peoples are always lists based on language). Krakkos calls it common "origins". If biological/genetic continuity is not "origins" then what are they? In all these proposals I have seen, Krakkos and others are keen to say it is not only about language, thus eliminating Indians and Nigerians for example. What's more, they consistently indicate that an Afrikaner is more "Germanic" than a Pole, Sorb or Czech. Right? And I am saying this is pseudo-science and folk wisdom, whereas the real biological ancestry of human populations needs careful articles drawing upon the latest real science. But if you can define another type of "Germanic Peoples" that I have not mentioned please do so, and then with all cards on the table we can discuss how/whether to handle on Wikipedia.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:39, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
whereas the real biological ancestry of human populations needs careful articles drawing upon the latest real science -> this we agree however just because you argue as per admixture just a part of Germanic element would be present on Germanic speaking folks, it may not be interpreted in an exclusive way, since so-called pure Germans, Hungarians, Slavs etc. have also experienced heavy admixture in the past millenia, we could even hardly speaking this context pure specimens/people/nations, IMHO. Beyond the scholarly and genetic (?) argumentation of this debate, Germanic people should be considered who share a common ethno-linguistic Germanic ancestry, with XOR conjuction at first glance, isn't it?(KIENGIR (talk) 13:27, 11 September 2019 (UTC))
Hard to be sure I follow, but I think you are somehow arguing that this supposed modern Germanic people can be defined by descent. I do not think this is a definition we can find in the specialist works. This makes sense too, because I also do not think this is a clear, logical, or useful definition. The only solid part of it is the linguistic part of it, but that is for a different article. The real modern diverse Germanic-speaking peoples are united by language, not ethnicity or descent.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:55, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
In case you don't undrstand anything I phrased, feel free to ask to specify. More shortly, now apart from anything else, I wanted to say we may hardly deny that there are some Germanic groups based on not just langauge affiliation, but common ancestry, shall it be in some cases distant and wanted to say in case both the linguistic and ethnic origin would hold, then we could by any means discuss about Germanic people beyond ancient Germanic groups, that shared as well these two qualifiers.(KIENGIR (talk) 19:57, 11 September 2019 (UTC))
But good sources don't support this, and we can deny it. In recent decades the understanding of scholars about "common ancestry" in European populations has completely changed, and this started before the DNA revolution. That situation has not settled down into any clear consensus which can tell us how to even identify what Germanic ancestry would look like. Only fringe scientists and amateurs enthusiasts on the internet claim to be able to identify Germanic genes. All the older cultures of classical times recombined, and also clearly had older connections. So you can't just assume that any European population who speaks a Germanic language must descend from Germanic peoples of classical times more than other populations. Similarly, the connection between Germanic languages and classical Germanic peoples is no longer assumed to be so clear, even though they share the old name due to 19th century scholarly categories. Classical authors clearly included speakers of several language families in the same large ethnic category, and people making these sorts of proposals always conveniently ignore this.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:14, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
So you can't just assume that any European population who speaks a Germanic language must descend from Germanic peoples of classical times more than other populations. -> it may be true at a certain degree, however given some special collateral conditons at the same time with other relevant degrees, especially regarding i.e. the admixture of the Scandinavian people that has been much less then especially on other regions of Europe. However, I understood your points cleary.(KIENGIR (talk) 10:40, 12 September 2019 (UTC))
Andrew Lancaster, as you mentioned earlier, Nigerians and Indians also speak Germanic languages. Jamaicans, Cape Coloureds and Ashkenazi Jews are even native speakers of Germanic languages. However, the sources above do not classify these as Germanic peoples. Therefore, your argument that the sources are simply referring to peoples speaking Germanic languages is flawed. If the sources intended to refer to peoples speaking Germanic languages they would be referring to Germanic-speaking peoples. Krakkos (talk) 20:40, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
Well yes we have discussed it, and you know the problems most of us see with this position you keep taking. The sources you refer to are either simply listing Germanic languages and their original speakers, or else implying an old-style racial theory. Both approaches are subjects for other articles, and/or covered under the "Later Germanic studies and their influence" section of this article already. Furthermore most of the sources you've found are individual sentences only, which need to be ripped out of context, whereas you want to promote a full blown theory of ethnic continuity from classical to modern times. You have no source which contain any extended proposal or discussion about such a theory. We have seen scholars sources pointing explicitly to the medieval discontinuities.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:15, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
The original speakers of Germanic languages so happens to be the topic of this article. The sources used are recent. These are not "old-style racial theories". If the sources were simply "individual sentences" that had been "ripped out of context" you would have provided examples of this by now. Here is a citation from Michael J. Bradshaw, Vice President of the Royal Geographical Society, showing the continuity of Germanic peoples from ancient times up to the present:
  • "During Roman times. Germanic peoples arrived from the east conquering whatever Celtic lands the Romans had not taken, namely the areas just north of the Danube and east of the Rhine. These tribes continually threatened the Roman Empire, sacking Rome itself for the first time in a.d. 410. By the end of the 400s. Gaul was taken over by the Franks, eventually to be renamed for them (France). The Burgundians lent their name to a province (Burgundy) that was eventually absorbed into France. The Visigoths and Lombards moved into the Italian peninsula. The latter name is found in the modern Italian provincial name of Lombardy. The Angles and Saxons moved into the British Isles, pushing the Celtic peoples farther into the fringes of Europe. Even today, the English are considered Anglo-Saxons. Other Germanic tribes moved north into Scandinavia. By the a.d. 800s, they developed a distinct Viking culture... Germanic culture is still prevalent today. Though the Franks, Burgundians. and Lombards adopted the Romance languages of the Roman provinces they conquered, other Germanic peoples, like the Vikings, maintained their Germanic languages through the centuries and are clearly seen on the map today (see Figure 3.4a). Germans. Austrians, Dutch, and the Scandinavians (such as Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes) are the most numerous of today's Germanic peoples. The Germanic peoples also converted to Christianity and later became the driving force behind the creation of the branch of Christianity known as Protestantism." Contemporary World Regional Geography, Michael J. Bradshaw (2007), p. 72
Krakkos (talk) 08:49, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

A good example of a sentence ripped out of context, from a tertiary source not specialized in this subject and offering no sourcing or argumentation for what seem to be simple mistakes, not novel proposals. (This author thinks the Germanic peoples came from eastern Europe to Scandinavia for example.) Do you actually own copies of all these google books which you post snippets of? Showing a snippet-only quotation is not really a good way to prove you are not taking isolated sentences from google searches that suit your aims is it? In any case, in this case the snippet shows enough to show that the author is speaking of the classical Germanic peoples. Whether he knows it or not, the classical Germanic peoples are an ethnic designation for which we rely almost entirely upon classical authors, and we know for sure that for them this grouping was not based on language. We all know we should avoid tertiary sources in situations like this, and luckily we are able to because the editors of this article have long been looking at more specialized secondary sources. This has been discussed over and over.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:36, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Agree with all this. Readers may be interested that Krakkos is preparing for another campaign, on the usual lines, at Talk:Scythians#Some_issues_with_this_article. He should be resisted. Johnbod (talk) 14:44, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
The source is a summary by Michael J. Bradshaw of the history of the Germanic peoples from ancient times until the present day. As Vice President of the Royal Geographical Society he is certainly a reliable scholar. These are many sentences, and they are not "ripped out of context". Per WP:TERTIARY, tertiary are useful in cases where due weight is to be evaluated. This is one such case. Bradshaw says that the Germanic peoples lived east of the Celts. He does not say that "Germanic peoples came from eastern Europe to Scandinavia". Please stop misrepresenting the sources. Krakkos (talk) 17:55, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
For the record: I don't see anything certain about that qualification, at least for this topic. Also note once again my comments about the type of source this is (low quality tertiary) and the way that you use snippets to find sentences. Although I can only see snippets I note above that you quote(?) "Germanic tribes moved north into Scandinavia", so unless I misunderstand you, I am not misrepresenting the source, who clearly sees the Germanic people as having originated in continental eastern Europe. So: Clearly a low quality source, and clearly being used in an opportunistic way.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:22, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
The source is attributed to Michael J. Bradshaw, a distinguished scholar, and published by McGraw-Hill, a prominent publisher. It is therefore a reliable source per WP:RS. WP:TERTIARY states that tertiary sources are helpful when evaluating due weight. This discussion is about how much weight this article should give to modern Germanic peoples.
Bradshaw is correct that the Germanic peoples at some point migrated into Scandinavia. The Nordic theory of a Scandinavian origin of Germanic peoples and other Indo-European peoples has been discredited long ago. Regardless, we're not discussing the origin of Germanic peoples in Scandiavia, but whether there is a continuity between Germanic peoples of ancient times and modern times. The fact you're resorting to red herrings and the argument from fallacy, rather than sources, proves the weakness of your position. Krakkos (talk) 10:21, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
But you are not using good relevant tertiary sources, and you are leaving completely on them to supply an excuse for material not discussed in ANY good secondary sources.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:50, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
And you're not using any sources at all. My sources are good and plenty of them are secondary. Krakkos (talk) 12:57, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
Makes sense. I am not making a proposal. You are. WP:BURDEN--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:19, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
In April 2019, you made the radical change of changing this article from being about who the Germanic peoples are to who the Germanic peoples were.[38][39] This change contained no justification in its edit summary and it was inserted without providing any sources. In fact, what you did was just inserting your own personal views and then attributing it to a misrepresented source. There is an even bigger burden on you, and so far you've failed to live up to it. Krakkos (talk) 20:11, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
This article has always been an article about a classical ethnic category, as far as I remember. That is the only sourceable and uncontroversial topic, and in fact you have also consistently insisted that you want to write about modern Germanic peoples (who you can't find good sources for) as a continuation of the classical peoples (a completely uncontroversial topic). So not even you have ever really wanted to make this an article about a people who "are". Every now and then people have patched little badly sourced remarks about Afrikaners and Luxemburgers, and over many years as you know very well these have been controversial and removed.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:31, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
Replying point by point:
  • Large sections of this article have always been about post-classical peoples, such as the medieval Norsemen.
  • The continuation of Germanic peoples is sourceable to several quality sources. These are provided here.
  • If the idea of continuation of Germanic peoples from classical times up until modern times had been a controversial, you would have been able to provide sources testifying to such controversiality.
  • Even if an idea is controversial, it is not the policy of Wikipedia to censor information.
Krakkos (talk) 17:31, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
But the remarkable inadequacy of your sources have been pointed out to you over and over. And the medieval legacy is indeed discussed in the article as it should be, as indeed is the more controversial idea of a modern "continuation". In the end you know that the topic/focus/foundation of the article, which both of these can only add to, is the classical category - even in your preferred approach. Your whole "continuation" position would make even less sense if you would start to say that the classical Germanic people are not the base of this article! (Continuation of what?) Also please think about WP:BURDEN.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:20, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
You're not in a position to complain about the inadequacy of sources when you have yet to provide a single source yourself. You have your own WP:BURDEN to provide sources that back up your claim[40] of Germanic extinction. Krakkos (talk) 08:27, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
I am not proposing to add any remarks to the article about "extinction" either. The truth, as discussed in the article, is a bit more complicated. Are you honestly going to try to make the old trick argument that people have to find sources mentioning the non-existence of a non-thing? This used to be quite a popular game on Wikipedia in the early days, but I honestly don't think it works anymore. You know that not only myself, but other active editors, are not going to be tricked this easily?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:48, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
You have earlier stated here that you consider Germanic peoples extinct.[41] With the phraseology introduced by you in this article, Germanic peoples are referred to similarly to genuinely extinct peoples such as Illyrians, Thracians, Anatolian peoples and Tocharians. If an editor provides reliable sources mentioning the existence of a thing, and you still consider this a "non-existent non-thing", the WP:BURDEN is on YOU to provide a source backing this up. So far you have failed to live up to this burden. Krakkos (talk) 18:58, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
According to the sources we have the "extinction", or at least the fading away and splitting up, happened in a complex way. But that is just me reading the situation here on a talk page, and obviously other editors agree with me. OTOH It is the wording on the article itself which content policies apply to, and so there is no point arguing about the sourcing of word choices on a talk page. I am not arguing that we use the word extinction in the article, even though it is clear the sources we have talk about a classical people and describe no simple continuity, despite there being a "legacy".--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:20, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Was that April 2019 edit discussed on the talk page? If not, the least to be expected for such a fundamental change would be an edit summary. Looking through the article history, 'are' was stable for over five years. Hrodvarsson (talk) 02:37, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

So you are saying the change of one word which was fundamentally in conflict with the whole article was a fundamental change to the article? This seems to be clutching at straws. Of course there were many such little badly sourced (or unsourced) insertions being made and not always picked up, for example the mentions of Afrikaners and Luxemburgers. But the content of the article, and all of the properly verifiable parts, have consistently been about a historical subject. The supposed continuation of this historical grouping of people has continually been a source of controversy, and has consistently been shown to be badly sourced. I would compare it to the way climate change deniers or creationists also consistently attempt to slip bits into our articles on climate change and evolution.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:46, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
Changing the tense in the first line fundamentally alters the article, and the wording was stable for 5+ years. Did you forget to leave an edit summary or was it an intentionally unexplained edit? Hrodvarsson (talk) 02:32, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
I would say it is blindingly obvious that one word was itself in conflict with the whole long article, and no one noticed it for a long time.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:07, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
Hrodvarsson - His April 2019 edits[42][43] were made without any edit summary, and in the middle of this RfC (initiated by Johansweden27, a sock of Freeboy200). No justification was made at the talk for these drastic changes, which entirely changed the scope of the article, and both Florian Blaschke and myself expressed opposition to it. It must also be noted that Andrew's edit is in violation of the source used. He defines Germanic peoples as "a group of northern European tribes in Roman times", while the Britannica source used defines Germanic peoples as "Indo-European speakers of Germanic languages". The word "are" only became "in conflict with the whole long article" later, after Andrew, again without any justification, removed a large amount of sources from scholars such as Jeffrey Cole, Jeroen Dewulf and Steven L. Danver and replaced with yet more original research.[44] These April 2019 changes are going to be undone sooner or later. Krakkos (talk) 16:56, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
There has been a LOT of talk page discussion too, remember? Just as an example of how obvious it is that you know that, see this recent post by you, admitting that what you want in this article has no consensus, and that previous attempts by you to try to make a new article have resulted in speedy deletion. Will you please stop flogging a dead horse?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:56, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Note to editors of this article: See Germanic peoples (modern). I have posted on the talk page.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:29, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Not an ethnolinguistic group

The opening sentence states:

  • "The Germanic peoples [...] were an ethnolinguistic group of Northern European origin..." (emphasis added)

This is incorrect. The page title "Germanic peoples" refers to a plurality of ethnic groups/tribes, while the term "ethnolinguistic group" in correct usage denotes a single ethnic group which is defined – among other things – by a common language. There is to my knowledge no primary or secondary source which states that the ethnic groups (or tribes, confederations etc.) collectively called "Germani" by the Romans spoke a single language. To the contrary: we can safely assume that at the time of the Migration Period, and most probably several centuries earlier, Proto-Germanic had already diversified into distinct languages (which is also correctly reflected in the closing statement of the first paragraph in the lead).

Consequently, the designation of the Germanic peoples as an "ethnolinguistic group" is wrong. Anticipating potential objections: in Balts, Indo-Iranians, Iranian peoples we find similar opening statements, but in all those cases, the term "ethnolinguistic group" is equally misapplied. WP should stick to a correct usage of terminology.

I propose to change the opening sentence to:

  • "The Germanic peoples [...] were a collection of ethnic groups of Northern European origin..."

Since this page is subject to heated debates, I refrain from doing a bold edit, and seek consensus for this small but necessary correction. –Austronesier (talk) 10:03, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Nobody has ever asserted that ethnolinguistic group means a single language or that any source claimed as much. In this case, as with others who speak Slavic languages for instance, they (Germanic peoples) spoke an Ursprache with some recognizable linguistic commonalities in their language. Why you want to make "ethnolinguistic" into some monolithic singular language is beyond me. Have you read the article in its entirety, as there is plenty in here on linguistics?--Obenritter (talk) 17:36, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
@Obenritter: You state that "nobody has ever asserted that ethnolinguistic group means a single language or that any source claimed as much (empahsis added)." Well, I am just humbly citing a textbook definition, which is also used in the article Ethnolinguistic group, with plenty of sources for this "monolithic" definition. In turn: can you provide a source which defines an ethnolinguistic group as a collection of more than one ethnic group, bound together by linguistic affiliation beyond the level of a single language? I am aware that the term is at times employed "popularly" in such a wider sense, including in a few WP articles. There is certainly also a handful of sources which employ the term in that wider sense, but this doesn't mean that such usage is correct. I am trained in linguistics, specialized in comparative historical linguistics, but also spent two years collecting data as a field linguist, so I am quite confident about what I am discussing here. "Group" in "ethnolinguistic group" means group of individuals (just like in "ethnic group"), which is common usage in sociology, ethnology, sociolinguistics (and that's where the term originates from). It does not mean group of ethnicities etc. however tempting it is to read it that way.
The speakers of Proto-Germanic (pre-diversification) may have fulfilled the criteria for an ethnolinguistic group in the proper sense, the collective of the historical Germanic tribes, however, do not. –Austronesier (talk) 05:23, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
"the collective of the historical Germanic tribes, however, do not" < Tell that to some of the foremost authorities within academia regarding the Germanic people, among them Walter Pohl, Herwig Wolfram, Peter Heather, Guy Halsall, Thomas Burns, Patrick Geary, and Walter Goffart just to name a few. They categorize the Germanic peoples along ethnolinguistic lines throughout their works. So if your argument holds (by the way, I am not some novice scholar myself--a historian by education), then what classifies ethnolinguistic precisely? It cannot be a single language, but a related language. If your line of reasoning were true then Slavic people (with their mutually intelligible dialects) are not related to one another through both ethnicity and language. Absurd and patently false.--Obenritter (talk) 14:59, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
@Obenritter: "They categorize the Germanic peoples along ethnolinguistic lines throughout their works." This is wishy-washy and misses the point. You avoid the actual question: Does any of the scholars you mention employ the technical term "ethnolinguistic group" (NB: not just the adjective "ethnolinguistic" plus whatever noun!) when talking about the Germanic people? This is about proper terminology, nothing more, nothing less. I do not dispute in any way the validity of the entity of the "Germanic peoples", but the sloppy use of a technical term with a rigidly defined scope. (Btw, have you actually bothered to look up the definition of "ethnolinguistic group" as it is employed in sociolinguistics and ethnography since the 1980s?) –Austronesier (talk) 15:51, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
This will be last post regarding this issue. Here is an official US Government map: https://www.loc.gov/resource/g8201e.ct001294/?r=-0.207,0.862,0.725,0.444,0 (from the Library of Congress) showing the ethnolinguistic groups within Africa. If you zoom in on the map contents and look at Bantu on the legend, you'll note the broad variety of tribes...take for instance the Bantu-designated Kota people (who speak iKota) and the Bantu-designated Makonde people (some of whom speak Yao). Both are classified under the same ethnolinguistic group Bantu, but you'll note they speak different languages. The Germanic people of antiquity are no different. Maybe you are operating from an outmoded definition of ethnolinguistic group? --Obenritter (talk) 18:53, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
@Obenritter: What you call "tribes" are in fact the very ethnolinguistic groups which the map intends to display: Kota is an ethnolinguistic group, Makonde is an ethnolinguistic group etc. "Bantu" etc. are the families that the languages spoken by the individual ethnolinguistic groups belong to. You are operating from a non-existent definition of "ethnolinguistic group" that is not supported by the map at all. –Austronesier (talk) 05:26, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
Wrong. Like I said...done with you. Way too qualified to waste my efforts further. Bantu defined VERBATIM by Oxford's dictionary: a large group of Negroid peoples of south and central Africa speaking some 300 languages (with 100 million speakers) within the Niger-Kordofanian family of languages including Bemba, Ganda, Kikuyu, Kongo, Lingala, Luba, Makua, Mbundu, Ruanda, Rundi, Shona, Sotho, Swahili, Thonga, Xhosa, and Zulu. Everything about this definition belies your interpretation not only of the map, but what constitutes an ethnic group of people speaking related languages. Stop feigning expertise.--Obenritter (talk) 19:21, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
@Obenritter: "Bantu defined VERBATIM by Oxford's dictionary: a large group of Negroid peoples...". Fine, it says "group". But: neither "ethnic group" nor "ethnolinguistic group". If Oxford's dictionary stated that the group of Bantu-speaking peoples were an "ethnic group" or "ethnolinguistic group", it wouldn't be worth a penny. But luckily it does not. Each of the Bantu-speaking peoples (e.g. Bemba, Kikuyu) is an ethnolinguistic group, as the CIA map you had provided earlier aptly illustrates. I advise you'd bring up counterexamples that actually prove your assertion that "ethnolinguistic group" is a valid designation for a set of diverse ethnic groups bound together by linguistic affiliation (this is at least what the faulty/sloppy usage in the lead of this article implies), contrary to the common definition of "ethnolinguistic group" ("an ethnic group defined by its language", Reid & Giles 2010, p.252)[1] in academia (and beyond). –Austronesier (talk) 09:35, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Reid, Scott A.; Giles, Howard (2010). "Ethnolinguistic Vitality". In Levine, John M.; Hogg, Michael A. (eds.). Encyclopedia of Group Processes and Intergroup Relations. Thousand Oaks: SAGE. pp. 252–254.

Perhaps one way to look at the current wording is that it is a bit vague about whether there was one or more groups. This might be appropriate for a few reasons. We are dealing with a subject that no longer exists and we have to use classical sources that were not even interested in explaining all the things we would need to know in order to even have a discussion about it. But for Romans and Greeks, our sources, it was no big issue to unite large groups into one. Do we suspect or even know that they were mixing up groups in ways which we would probably not do today? Yes. For one thing I think we can be certain they were not dividing people up in a linguistic way, or at least not purely so.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:29, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

@Andrew Lancaster: This is a very good point. The designation as an "ethnolinguistic group" depends on emic and etic perception. Especially for the former, we have little information about how the Germanic tribes perceived themselves, and no primary sources about the mutual intelligibility of the diverse Germanic lects in the first half of the 1st millenium. What we have, however, are documents in the Gothic language, and fragmentary attestations of other Germanic languages which strongly indicate that Proto-Germanic already had diversified beyond the language level (as described in Germanic languages#Diachronic). In such a case, we would have to talk about a plurality of ethnolinguistic groups. And of course – as you correctly note – all the more if the Roman and Greek sources most probably included non-Germanic speaking groups when referring to the Germani. Given the uncertainty, shouldn't we then refrain from using a sharply-defined term like "ethnolinguistic group" for the entity described in this article? –Austronesier (talk) 09:41, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
I do see a point in trying not to make statements which are "too clear". I think one of the problems here is that this subject is handled by different fields, so for historians the classical writers might perhaps speak of an ethnic grouping, whereas linguists (or people thinking in terms of languages) might rightfully say there is a linguistic grouping. Is there a way to neatly separate the two without making an unreadable opening sentence? Maybe it helps to reference the appropriate linguistic articles in a second remark, and first just say this is about a classical ethnic and geographical designation. (...that shared, to some extent, their use of Germanic languages). --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:31, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
I think the opening sentence already takes these two viewpoints sufficiently into account. I just intend to remove the discrepancy between taking about a single "ethnolinguistic group" and at the same time about "...peoples" (plural) that were speaker of "...languages" (plural), by rephrasing the start into "...were a collection of ethnic groups...". "Collection" is chosen rather arbitrarily (adopted from Turkic languages); there is probably a better choice, I just want to avoid something silly like "a group of ethnic groups" or "a grouping of ethnic groups". "Ethnic group" is a perfectly neutral term to designate the groups mentioned in classical sources; "tribes" would be too limiting (especially if understood in the modern non-suprematist sense), since many later Germanic groups like the Visigoths definitely had a social structure beyond the tribal level. –Austronesier (talk) 07:54, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Past tense?

So what is the R1b haplogroup? If R1a is Slav, and R1b L's and I's are traditionally called Germanic in ethnography and genetics. Why does this article only discuss the past term? 121.210.33.50 (talk) 04:09, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

I don't believe you can make such conclusions about Y DNA haplogroups. All large groups of human beings have many Y haplogroups. I suppose your suppose is amateur speculations around the internet?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:52, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Genetics, continuity of old ethnic groups, etc

@Andrew Lancaster: Just out of curiosity, what is your background? An academic, a hobbyist, someone with a political agenda? A religious official? I am very suspect of your intentions here.
...Says an anonymous voice from the internet. My editing record in a wide range of topics is clear and my concerns are based on reading the actual sources and trying to work according to the consensus rules we have developed as a community on Wikipedia. It is clear that this article has struggled with various types of problematic tendencies for a long time, and it has been mentioned many times over the years. The fact that an anonymous person takes the time to attack an editor like this already tells us all something.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:53, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
@Andrew Lancaster: No one attacked you. I'm not really sure what your so-called "concerns" even are. My issue is that you're pushing a baseless, and harmful conspiracy theory that Germans just disappeared one day, and no longer exist, as an ethnic group, which is disproved by a simple genetic test. This baseless conspiracy theory concerns me, because this kind of dehumanizing rhetoric is what leads to genocide, and human rights abuses. Please, I will ask again, what is your background? What are your intentions here?
If you have a real point to make which is relevant to Wikipedia and consistent with our policies, then name your sources and explain your editing proposals clearly (or which text you think needs to be kept unchanged). Giving good sources is the method we use on Wikipedia, and not trying to talk about who other editors are. (If you have a serious concern about an editor then that can be handled elsewhere; it is not a talk page issue.) For the time being I have no idea what you are talking about. No one has argued that any ethnic group just appeared in one day. Are you arguing for the opposite of that extreme position though, that distinct ethnic groups simply remain distinct?
In classical times, the Germanic peoples included relatively sedentary Celtic speakers in the west (probably the original Germanic people) and Finnish speakers in the north. It was not a linguistic term, and it certainly wasn't connected to DNA. What this article needs to do better is to explain how the classical sources broke up the Germanic peoples into (inconsistent) categories, and what scholarly hypotheses have been published about the reality of those, including their languages and descendants. It is within those categories, such as the Suevian, Norse, and Gothic groups, that we get groups where we can say something meaningful about language. Concerning the whole group of Germanic peoples, we can only generalize in a much more approximate way.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:19, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
@Andrew Lancaster: I am going to ask you again, what is your background? What are your intentions here? Are you in genetics, linguistics, history, archaeology? I'd appreciate an answer.

A *few* quotes from you

"Where is any good strong source which clearly says that they do still exist" "

"I still have not seen any reliable source mentioning a real modern version of the Germanic peoples"

"Our sources about the ancient Germanic peoples make it clear that they do not still exist. There is no source saying that a new ethnic group came into being, and there is no modern Germanic culture or ethnos or nation or folk"

"I and others have explained why these sources do not justify the proposal that any classical Germanic people lived on and continues to exist today. The lists of modern peoples who supposedly belong to a Germanic people are clearly just lists of groups who speak a Germanic language."

You are *explicitly* stating that Germans do not exist as an active, existent genetic ethnic group, that descend from those referenced in ancient sources.

However, this is patently false, and is backed up by the most elementary of research, using a simple Google search.

DNA was extracted from burials in Spain, identified as those of the Visigoths.[45][46][47]

This DNA has been processed, and, for quite some time now, has been available for public use, for comparing to living, contemporary humans, from a service such as MyTrueAncestry.[48]

In comparing DNA samples, extracted from yourself, or another living human/hominid you can compare to the, arbitrarily, previously referenced Visigoth samples, and determine the relative genetic relationship, and the closeness of the two specimens.

In doing so, you will see that there are plenty of Visigoths living, breathing, and walking around today. Including me!

Thus, your conspiracy-theory style, and dehumanizing assertions of there being no modern Germanic ethnos, or "folk" or Germans just disappearing one day, are baseless.

Which brings me back to my original question. What is your background? If you are, as I hope, a layperson, I think you should leave this subject to more educated individuals, as it seems that you aren't adequately informed.

I sincerely hope that you are here, in good faith, and are not here to dehumanize, and push dangerous rhetoric, that can, and does lead to human rights abuses, and genocide, among other things.

-Floyd

The sources you name, and the personal focus of this post are not compatible with Wikipedia policy, and clearly not going to help this article. I think you need to familiarize yourself with the how and why of Wikipedia content and talk page policy, and you need to avoid talking past people, and instead use these talk pages for focused discussions about real editing ideas.
For what it is worth I think your approach to human historical population genetics involves some misunderstandings. Probably this is making it hard for your to follow the discussion. Genocide is rare, of course. Ethnic groups rarely just disappear but they can and do fade away, merge, absorb others, divide, and change character. But DNA and genocide are of limited relevance. Proving that someone is descended from the Eburones or the Teutones would not make them an Eburone or a Teuton.
For example, all of the several connected peoples called Franks in 1100 were certainly successors of the peoples called Franks in 400, in many ways, but not especially much in terms of DNA or language. For this reason, as summarizers, we treat various types of "Franks" as separable subjects, with their own articles and sections. There are obvious practical reasons for this, but of course we also need explain the certain and hypothetical links between the different types of Franks. That is the difficult bit. We should be discussing how to get those details correct and well-balanced. Just equating all Franks, or equating all Germans, would be as a impractical as denying any links between them. I hope this helps explain the discussions you have been looking at.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:54, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
@Andrew Lancaster: Please cite the Wikipedia policy where academic, scientific papers, from established universities, are not compatible.

"Proving that someone is descended from the Eburones or the Teutones would not make them an Eburone or a Teuton"

This is, again, contradicted by my previously provided citations, containing scientific papers.[49][50][51]

Again, "This DNA has been processed, and, for quite some time now, has been available for public use, for comparing to living, contemporary humans, from a service such as MyTrueAncestry."[52]

You do not seem to understand that a people, such as the Visigoths, are identifiable, on a genetic level, in uniformity, and can be positively identified as being closely related, genetically, to other Germanic peoples, in opposition, to an arbitrary ethnic group, such as the Sami.

You also do not seem to understand that this is science, this is falsifiable, observable, material, science.

This is not conjecture. This is not "gossip," this is not semantics, which is what you seem to be concerning yourself with, relative to this article's contents, here.

I will ask again, what is your background, and what are your intentions here? Are you here in good faith?

If you are a layperson, why are you seemingly trying to play the role of a trained scientist, when it's evident, you have no understanding of the subject?

For the sake of human rights I will also provide a quote from my last post.

"I sincerely hope that you are here, in good faith, and are not here to dehumanize, and push dangerous rhetoric, that can, and does lead to human rights abuses, and genocide, among other things."

Best

-Floyd

I don't at first sight see anything I am saying disagreeing with those papers. I think you simply don't want to understand my point. Genetics can identify the interbreeding populations which are ancestral to a person. This is not the same as ethnicity, although it can be an indicator. It is in fact self-evident that people do not always belong to the same ethnic groups as their genetic ancestors. Ethnicity is not the topic of genetics. I have not seen any geneticist claim that because a modern population seems to be partly biologically descended from a specific ancient one, they have to be in the same continuous ethnic group? If you can quote a geneticist saying this in a peer-reviewed publication we can look into to it though.
Please also note that it is bad etiquette on a talk page to copy the large chunks of text several times over without ever coming to a point relevant to any specific editing proposal. It is also keep pushing things towards personal demands or inquisitions about personal information. It should not be relevant, and it is an important policy on Wikipedia that we work based on citing sources, not ad hominem debate. If you have an editing proposal to make based on sources, then please get to the point. Note that I have also placed this discussion into a new topic because it is clearly a distraction from the discussion you entered. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:42, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Does modern "Germanic" heathenism need to be mentioned in the lead

We have this:

Historical Germanic paganism, the indigenous religion of the Germanic peoples, ended with Christianization in the 11th century.<sfn|Germanic religion and mythology, Encyclopædia Britannica Online> Elements of Germanic paganism survived into post-Christianization folklore, and today new religious movements exist which see themselves as modern revivals of Germanic Heathenry.

I propose it is not suitable for the lead of this article? It is not about classical Germanic peoples.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:35, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

I oppose removal, since it starts with the historical Germanic paganism up to the whole or partial usage/claim today. Simply we should not regard every aspect of the article based on the debate above, there are undeniable (claims) of connection.(KIENGIR (talk) 09:02, 26 December 2019 (UTC))
It is not about denying all possible connections, but a question of whether it should be in the lead. We can not put everything which is connected indirectly to the subject in the lead? This article has too much repetition. The same things are sometimes being explained in the lead, and then in more than one section. Detailed discussions should be in the main body sections, or other articles. Surely we need to be allowed to clean that up?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:33, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
Well since there is spicy debate related, we are likely to wait also for other inputs...(KIENGIR (talk) 11:01, 27 December 2019 (UTC))
SUPPORT the deletion of modern heathanism--far too ancillary for the lead.--Obenritter (talk) 17:57, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
Support deletion: The introduction is a summary of the content of the following main sections. None of these sections covers the constructed faith "Heathenry", and definitely should not. As a fringe phenomenon of little notability, it would not deserve mention here even if (if – I do not endorse it) this article were to be extended to include the purported "modern Germanic peoples" (I only mention this since KIENGIR alludes to the dispute of Sept 2019). –Austronesier (talk) 13:01, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Merge proposal. Germani to be merged back to here (new split off article by Krakkos)

The reasoning is given above and on the article talk page, and I think it is obvious. User:Krakkos has proposed such things before and has always been rejected and unable to explain a logical plan. Also in this case, as shown above, Krakkos is clearly aware that ALL responses to this new creation (once it was discovered) are negative. This article here needs to be improved and coherent, but removals of material, such as those also proposed by me, should be discussed here given the history. The creation of this section gives a place for adding any further comments.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:57, 18 January 2020 (UTC) BTW in order to work according to Wikipedia policy anyone wanting to keep two articles needs to explain what the difference should be between the two. If there is a large overlap that is a problem.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:02, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Venn diagram of overlap between Germani and Germanic peoples. Based on Guy Halsall, Gudmund Schütte and other reliable sources. WP:OVERLAP clearly does not apply in this case. Krakkos (talk) 17:37, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
Disputed interpretation of sources. I've seen no source which includes Aesti etc in top but not Goths etc.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:33, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
WP:SIZESPLIT states that articles larger than 100,000 bytes "almost certainly should be divided". This article is currently at 134,128 bytes. Merging Germani into this article will increase its size even more, and make it less readable.
WP:CONSPLIT states that articles with similar titles but covering separate subjects should be split. The nominator has himself admitted numerous times that the Roman term Germani and the English term Germanic peoples[53][54][55] (or Germanic-speaking peoples as he would like to call it), are separate subjects.[56][57] He has used this as an argument to remove quality sources, such as Francis Owen, Edward Arthur Thompson and others, from this article.[58][59][60] As explained in the sources at Germani, the term Germani was applied by the Romans to all inhabitants of Germania, including Balts, Celtic, Baltic Finnic and Germanic peoples.[61][62] Germanic peoples living outside of Germania, such as the Goths, were referred to as Scythians or Getae rather than Germani. As historian Guy Halsall says, the "modern definition" of Germanic peoples "does not equate with the classical idea of the Germani".[63]
The Roman term Germani is a notable subject in its own right. It easily passes WP:GNG. It is from the Roman term Germani that the name of Germania, Germany, Germans, Germanic languages, Germanic peoples and other important entities derive their name. Previously, all of these articles have contained largely duplicated information on the etymology of their name. Gathering this information in one article is a good way to avoid content forking. The origin of the term Germani is obscure and has been given much scholarly attention. It is an important term both from a linguistic and historical viewpoint. Krakkos (talk) 11:51, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
The controversies that have raged at this article in recent times are rooted in the campaign of the nominator to transform the scope of this article from being about the modern definition of Germanic peoples into being about the classical idea of the Germani. Having an article on the Roman term Germani will help mediate such controversies, and enable us to look forward and spend our energies towards building Wikipedia further. Krakkos (talk) 11:51, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
The longer term plan for this article should be discussed in the section above, where I am trying very hard to get discussion, NOT in this merge discussion. What would be in the COMPLETELY NEW version of this article for example? Concerning the merge proposal though, article length was clearly never the reason for your new article, and POVFORK creation is not a solution.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:00, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
Just to point to what I explain in other sections: What Halsall means by ["Linguistically [...] we can justify [...] Such a"] "modern definition" is, when written out less ambiguously "Germanic (language) speaking peoples". There is no mystery about that, and splitting that topic off in a less ambiguously titled article has always been a possibility, though it seems most editors have not liked that idea. Indeed there are several language-based articles. OTOH, if your new Germani article is an article MOVE, then you should certainly have proposed it properly and clearly.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:07, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
And to be clear, no, WP does not need a special article to discuss speculations about the unknown etymology of "Germani".--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:13, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Merge, obviously. The new article has taken the core of this article, and Krakkos has given no explanation about what this article will be about in the future. There are already WP articles about Germanic languages. So it is effectively a "tricky" way to move/re-title this article using a WP:POVFORK. Krakkos knew when he started that this idea was opposed.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:00, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Split My vote is for a split, as it relates to the Germans that lived during, and around antiquity, including those refereed to by Romans as being "Germani," who might not have been genetically German, and contemporary Germans,
I, also, hereby request that the "were" in this article, is changed to "ARE" as Germans still exist, and never stopped existing like @Andrew Lancaster: has tried so hard to make everyone here, and on this website think, even going so far as to gaslight, and alter definitions, as if this is Soviet Russia.
I have provided substantial evidence, genetic, linguistic, historical documentation, ect. that the Germans of today are descendants of Germans from Antiquity, as well as pre and post-antiquity.
I have also provided substantial evidence to declare Germans a genetic group, with a shared mono-matrix.
I acknowledge that the "Germanii" were not all of this genetic group, yet were still referred to as being Germanic, by those of Antiquity.
Which is why I support a split.
-Benjamin N. Feldenstein
User:Benjamin N. Feldenstein This answer gives the problem that it is difficult to see how you avoid the present article not being a simple copy of the other one which would certainly be against Wikipedia policy, so can you please explain what would be different about the two articles. They would overlap a lot? 99%?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:06, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
@Benjamin N. Feldenstein: In case it has escaped your attention: the contemporary Germans are not the topic of this discussion. Krakkos is talking about the contemporary Germanic peoples as defined in some sources as comprising the contemporary ethnic groups speaking Germanic languages. This would include the contemporary Germans, but is a much larger entity. –Austronesier (talk) 08:35, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Merge Per reasons put forward by Andrew Lancaster. I repeat parts of a comment I have made earlier in a section above: I think it is very "unhealthy" to make-size splits and to hold an RfC about the article topic at the same time. This creates unnecessary content forking and an imbalance between the core material (e.g. information about "Germani" is relegated to a split article) and circumstantial material (e.g. the concept of speakers of contemporary Germanic languages as "modern Germanic peoples" is pushed into the lead) which remain in this article. For the duration of the RfC, I recommend to leave the article as is (or better, restore a less-forked version), and stop moving out material to secondary articles. Some of the latest edits leave a bad aftertaste and reek of tactics. –Austronesier (talk) 08:36, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
FWIW the parallel editing disputes show that size reduction was never the real concern. This article's size can easily be reduced by removing or reducing the distorted and poorly sourced side discussions about topics which can be better handled in other articles, but Krakkos is opposed to those efforts and indeed started rushing to secretly split the article as a reaction to them - despite having first called for efforts to shorten the article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:25, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
Indeed. This article used to cover "topics which can be better handled in other articles". There was a discussion one month ago in which it was generally agreed that the article was too long. As a result, Early Germanic culture was created. That discussion is located at Talk:Germanic peoples#Article length. You have previously stated that Germanic-speakers (Germanic peoples) and Germani are separate topics.[64][65] I agree with that. The fact that these topics are separate has been the source of intense edit-warring in this article for a long time. By creating an article for each topic, we may get an end to the edit warring and find a way forward to building Wikipedia. Krakkos (talk) 11:19, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
But the two articles would have to contain 99% the same information, and that is clearly against WP policy WP:OVERLAP. Our reliable sources also have to mix their discussions of the two subjects, because they are so intertwined, and they give us no clear authority to make some of the distinctions you want to make. It is, as discussed, easier and more policy consistent to shorten this article or split it in many other possible ways (which you've attempted to block!). The second policy problem is that it seems pretty clear that if there is a difference between the articles it will be to do with inserting controversial materials such as lists of modern Germanic peoples. So it would be a clear case of a WP:POVFORK. I think you have to admit these two policy problems are clear.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:34, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
I think we also need to take a step back and think about what Krakkos has now written. He is now saying his actions in creating the secret duplicate article WOULD make sense if we knew the rest of his plans, which clearly include major changes to THIS article. So that is what we should be discussing, and this duplicate article should be put off until we hear the REAL plans. User:Krakkos mentions my own comments about possible but he should reply to those in a proper place, here. This section here is simply about re-merging the secret new article which is a duplicate of the current article. If it only makes sense as part of a bigger plan, then agreeing a bigger plan comes FIRST.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:15, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Merge per Andrew Lancaster and Austronesier. Johnbod (talk) 15:32, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Merge per same. Krakkos's underhanded tactics are disruptive. Carlstak (talk) 16:01, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment Could editors in favor of merging please cite a relevant paragraph of WP:MERGEREASON rather than resort to attacks on me? This discussion should be decided by policies and sources rather than personal animosities. Krakkos (talk) 16:32, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
Given @Andrew Lancaster: and his repeated abusive gaslighting, unsubstantiated claims, and doubletalk, at this point, I have no idea what he even wants, believes, or thinks the article of "Germanic Peoples" ought to be about.
Celts and Celts_(modern) both have two separate pages.
@Andrew Lancaster: Are you open to having two pages, like Celts and Celts_(modern) but for Germans, or are you not?
@Krakkos: you are for creating two distinct articles, one for the Germanic peoples, and the "Germanii," of which include the peoples of antiquity, correct?
I just want to get a clear representation of what is going on, but @Andrew Lancaster: is making that incredibly challenging.
-Benjamin N. Feldenstein (talk) 21:08, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
This really doesn't address the issues here - we have always had Germans (for people from Germany, mostly), which is not involved here. You may have noticed how Celts (modern) spends much time explaining how dubious and nebulous the concept is, which would be even more the case here. Johnbod (talk) 21:23, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
Benjamin N. Feldenstein - This discussion is not about Germans or other modern Germanic peoples. It is about whether the Roman concept of Germani and the modern concept of Germanic peoples are equivalent. Andrew Lancaster wants to merge both concepts into this article and transform this article into being exclusively about the Roman concept, thereby excluding any information or sources on the modern concept.[66][67][68] Krakkos (talk) 21:44, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
That is quite dishonest. The event we are dealing with is not the merge of two old/different articles, but that Krakkos has created a new article which has the same topic as this one currently does, built from the same materials, and since that was discovered he has made comments indicating that this is part of a bigger plan which will also involve changing other articles including this one. I am like other editors open to various approaches, as long as they are logical and consistent with Wikipedia policy and the sources, but Krakkos does not want to make any clear proposals to discuss. But the new article is currently a mirror of this one and that is against policy for obvious reasons. Step one for Krakkos has to be making a proposal, not making a new duplicate article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:03, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
Andrew Lancaster - You're calling Germani a "duplicate article" of this one. The Germani article is defined as being about an "exonym used by the ancient Romans for a diverse group of peoples living in the areas north of the Danube and east of the Rhine in classical antiquity." You believe that this is the scope of this article (Germanic peoples) as well? Krakkos (talk) 22:13, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
Of course it is. You have in the last day even blamed for being the cause of this being the topic. The new duplicate article which you made secretly on your own, without pre-discussion, was made by reworking the opening of this article, making a few wording changes here and there. I don't consider to be a real article yet, because it is so obviously made in conflict with your fellow editors and likely to be deleted. On the other hand if you want this article here to be about something else, or (as it seems) to effectively move it to another title you must make a full proposal, before beginning work. You know there were serious concerns about previous proposals like this. You keep hinting that your new article would not be a duplicate if you were allowed to make changes to this article, but you have never made any proposal on this talk page about what these plans are. That is a big problem with the way you are working. Your past uncoordinated mega-schemes have a long history of ending up a mess, and there is no reason for other editors to allow you to make Wikipedia worse. If you have a proposal, first propose it. All these other discussions are just details for now until we have clarity about your big secret mega plan.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:14, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
Andrew Lancaster - For thirteen consecutive years (2005 to 2019), this article was about peoples identified as speakers of Germanic languages.[69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82] In April 2019 you changed the scope completely into being about peoples "identified by Roman-era authors as distinct from neighbouring Celtic peoples".[83][84][85] When was it decided by the community to make this drastic change of scope? Krakkos (talk) 23:36, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
You keep making these inaccurate good old days accusations, so that is not new or interesting. (I would say I worked with the other editors to get a consensus about what this article, which had different bits about different subjects, was about.) The strange thing is that you flick between blaming me for "changing" the topic to what it is now, and pretending you've never heard that this was what the article was about, and you can't understand why anyone would say you've gone out and made a sneaky duplicate article without any pre-discussion in a way you knew would be controversial. You are not very good at play acting.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:44, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
Could you provide us with a link to the discussions were you gained a consensus for the change of scope? I have provided a large amount of sources for the fact that Germanic peoples are primarily defined as speakers of Germanic languages. For almost a year you have failed to provide a single source veriyfing your claim that Germanic peoples are primarily characterized as being "identified by Roman-era authors as distinct from neighbouring Celtic peoples." Are you still unable to find a source? Krakkos (talk) 23:50, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
You should stop changing subjects in circles now. (I don't recall that line being a big concern for anyone so no I was not looking for that. If you are interested in the archaeology of the article check the archives.) But you aim to delete it all anyway right, because you are already writing the new version of this article? So I think this article is facing much bigger changes according to the unclear plan you started to put into action already before I called for discussion, and it is time for you to explain the whole plan and see what other think. You've spent several days trying to throw up smoke screens. As people can see on your talk page archives, those of us who have tried to work with you before know that you have a history of starting massive un-discussed projects which are not well planned or executed. That is the last thing this article needs. Make your proposals and let's have the real discussion. This is Wikipedia not your personal website.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 00:14, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
Asking yet again. Could you please provide us with evidence that your change of scope of this article was supported by the community, and provide us with a source justifying this change of scope? The subject of this discussion is Germanic peoples, not my talk page archives. Krakkos (talk) 00:20, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
Last discussion was a few hours ago? [86] and the history of such discussion is far lower priority than explaining what you would prefer and propose should happen in the future. Please explain that now. This is high priority because you already tried to start making massive changes before I forced discussion, and you're clearly rearing to go again. Your tendency to make massive undiscussed changes is very relevant. Make proposals for discussion. We can come back to any necessary details, but I suspect they will interest no one once we get the bigger questions out of the shadows. In the best case scenario, if we have a good plan everyone can accept, then most smaller questions will then fall much more easily into place. The big questions need to come first. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 00:37, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
Since you've repeatedly refused to provide evidence that your change of topic was backed by consensus, and failed to provide sources for this change, it's safe to assume you have neither. That settles this discussion. Krakkos (talk) 10:03, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
Groan. Please stop changing subjects and start being constructive in discussions - in the sections about those topics. This section is about a merge proposal. The article topic has been what it is for years now and it has been unifying into one topic in steps, not from one small edit. There are years of discussion in the archives and if you want to talk more about them use the section above which was about that! Also note that WP is not based on democratic voting but also policies and reliable sources. But anyway, for you there was clearly something "settled" when you started the new article, but what have you been planning and what do you intend to do? On Wikipedia it is not enough for one editor to tell fellow editors "I have now decided what is going to happen"? What have you decided? Is it a secret? (Please answer in the section about the article topic controversy.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:25, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
The merge proposal of this article is determined by your interpretation of the topic of this article. The topic of an article is determined by sources and community consensus. You have so far refused to refer to any sources or previous consensus for your interpretation of the topic of this article. Plain and simple. This is the last time i will reply in this thread. Krakkos (talk) 10:47, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
Actually you have yourself agreed with me concerning what this article is about for the last few years (even though you apparently don't like it). And you yourself have explained above (in this section) that your reason for this new article, your argument against merging, depends upon understanding your ideas to change THIS article, which you refuse to explain publicly. So to justify your new article you also need backing for major changes to this article. This is what you are saying yourself, over and over. So by your own account the articles should be merged unless your bigger plans are first proposed and accepted. Otherwise we simply have two articles covering the same topic, and a silly stand-off, created by you artificially. There are clearly already strong clear concerns about how your ideas can be policy consistent, and you can not deny that you will be fully aware of that, just as you were already when you started this duplicate article secretly. You need to explain how articles will be titled, how redirects will work, how the articles will not have high overlap, what they will contain and not contain, etc. Who knows, maybe everyone will agree. Why are you working in such a silly way?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:40, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
@Krakkos: if this is the case, I unequivocally support a split.
@Johnbod:Your depiction of The Celts (modern) page is distorted, and is not representative of material reality, as such, I cannot respond to this assertion.
The identity of a people, or peoples is only dubious, and nebulous if you ignore evidence, with immediately flashes RACIST AGENDA, to me. Thankfully, combating a racist agenda, of this nature, is simple because we have plenty of evidence, topped off with genetics, so as to paint a clear picture, as it relates to Germans, and Celts.
Germans is primarily concerns itself with national identity, not the Germanic peoples, of which include, but are not limited to, the Dutch, English, the Frankish French, Danes, Icelanders, and Americans.
So, unfortunately, that article won't be of much use here, I'm afraid.
Benjamin N. Feldenstein (talk) 22:03, 19 January 2020 (UTC)Benjamin N. Feldenstein
Benjamin, this concept of modern Germanic peoples has been discussed here many times it some detail. There are two possible ways to understand you: (1) there are still modern Germanic speaking peoples, defined in a purely linguistic sense (2) there are today Germani, a national/ethnic group, defined by more than just shared language (or indeed shared ancestry). There are various articles touching upon different aspects of (1) including this one, and different approaches can of course be discussed. Concerning (2) we don't find acceptable published sources to show there is any nation today called the Germani. We don't see nations of people growing up calling themselves Germanic peoples, or being seen by outsiders as Germanic peoples. No one writes scholarly books about such a people, and what their institutions are. (We do find small clubs and societies who design their own new Germanic clubs etc. but that is another matter.) The controversy about (2) won't go away by creating new articles. It needs better sources. If (1) is your concern then there might be new ideas worth discussing. But who is proposing anything about that? In the past, editors seeming to be concerned about 1 ended up having to admit that linguistic definitions were not enough for them because they really wanted to be able to say, for example, that Austrians are Germanic, but not Nigerians, Kenyans or Indians. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:30, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Note - Having considered the arguments of Austronesier, i have now reached the conclusion that the creation of the article Germani was made prematurely, given the fact that there was already an ongoing RfC at this page. I have therefore made Germani a redirect to Germanic peoples. Krakkos (talk) 22:56, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Krakkos! I have only noticed this now, since comments are still plastered all over place (sigh!), so it's easy to miss even the important ones. –Austronesier (talk) 10:06, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Split Merging them makes the article confusing to read. Furthermore, the Roman sources state that there was an original tribe called Germani. Julius Caesar specifically identified them as a homogeneous people with their own characteristics. Succeeding Roman authors would echo this such as Dio Cassius who distinguished them from Gauls. According to Rhiannon Ash, the term was a tribal name applied to an entire gens and has been used to inspire fear among tribes it conquered (which also denotes aggressive assimilation among the conquered, thus the association with other peoples such as the Celts and the Belgae - my perspective). The Roman world view that Germani is composed of different peoples emerged later assuming a more stereotypical nature as it included a broad swath of people - even those from Scandinavia (Halsall, 49-51). These were perpetuated by Roman authors who had little concern for the material culture of the Germanic tribes. I feel that by merging, we are dismissing Germani's history and identity. My apologies, if I have misunderstood something, somewhere due to the length of discussion. Darwin Naz (talk) 00:15, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
@Darwin Naz: I agree that the current article is confusing, and this has been a long term problem we are still trying to get beyond. Different parts of the article have been written without looking at whether they duplicate, or disagree with, or handle the same topic as, other parts of the article. However, I still haven't see any clear proposal for how the Germanic peoples should be split into two topics in any way based upon published sources. There are different imperfect and disputed ways of defining and describing the Germanic peoples, but they all purport to cover the same topic and can not be understood in isolation. It should be understood by the way that this merge proposal concerned a new split-off article which has now been turned back into a redirect. Instead I have been focusing on a draft article which tries to unite the necessary themes in a coherent way.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:32, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
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