Germanic-speaking Europe


Germanic-speaking Europe refers to the area of Europe that today uses a Germanic language. Over 200 million Europeans speak a Germanic language natively. At the same time 515 million speak a Germanic language natively in the whole world .

History

By the 1st century AD, most of what is today Germanic-speaking Europe was dominated by peoples speaking Germanic languages. These peoples were called Germani by the Romans, and the area they dominated was called Germania. In the preceding centuries, this area had expanded greatly through a series of Germanic expansions. By the 1st century AD, it stretched from the Danube in the south to the North Sea and Baltic Sea in the north, and from the Rhine in the west to beyond the Vistula in the east. The population of this area was however not entirely composed of Germanic peoples. Modern research has determined that much of the area was also inhabited by a non-Germanic indigenous population, who probably spoke a non-Germanic Indo-European language. For this reason, scholars sometimes use the term Germanic-dominated Europe for the region during this time.
During Late Antiquity, improvements in agricultural methods resulted a massive population expansion in Germanic Europe. During the Migration Period, the area of Germanic Europe was shifted towards the south and west as a result of a series of Germanic migrations. Most notably, there was the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, which placed this region into the orbit of Germanic Europe. In Medieval Europe, the settlement of Iceland and the German eastward expansion further expanded the size of Germanic Europe. During and after World War II, the widespread use of Yiddish and German in Eastern Europe came to an end through genocide and deportation, respectively.

Speakers

Independent European countries whose population are predominantly native speakers of a Germanic language:
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