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Germanic Europe
| Population | 200 million |
|---|---|
| Countries | Official language: 7 Co-Official: 7 Total: 14 |
| Most populous country | Germany |
| GDP | $?? Trillion (exchange rate) $?? Trillion (purchasing power parity) |
| Largest GDP by Country | Germany |
| Largest country | Sweden |
| Dependencies | ?? |
| Languages | English, German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, Faroese, Frisian and Luxembourgish |
| Time Zones | GMT -1:00 (Reykjavík, Iceland) to GMT +2:00 (Helsinki, Finland) |
| Largest Cities | London Berlin Vienna Hamburg Stockholm Munich Copenhagen Cologne Amsterdam Manchester Dublin Oslo |
Germanic Europe is the part of Europe in which Germanic languages are predominant. Countries or areas in which such language is officially recognized and/or de facto spoken as a minority language are sometimes included ; this entire area corresponds more or less to North-Western Europe and western parts of Central Europe.
In its widest sense, this region consists of Iceland, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the Faroe Islands, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Swedish-speaking municipalities of Finland, French Flanders and Alsace-Moselle in France, Flanders and the smaller German-speaking Community in Belgium, the German-speaking part of Luxembourg, Germany, the formerly German parts of Poland as well as in East Prussia and the Baltic States Estonia and Latvia, Liechtenstein, the German-speaking part of Switzerland, Austria, and the province of Bolzano-Bozen in Italy.
The Republic of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, whilst actually belonging to Celtic Europe, are considered (here) to be partially Germanic because of the dominance of the English language in these areas. Similarly Finland is included because of the existence of a minority of Swedish-speakers in certain areas. However, the vast majority inhabitants of these countries do not consider themselves Germanic.
The predominant religion in the majority of the region is Protestantism; the national churches of the United Kingdom, the Nordic countries, the Northern Netherlands, northern Germany, and parts of German speaking Switzerland are Protestant. At the same time, some parts of the region are Catholic: Ireland, Austria, southern Germany (particularly Bavaria), Scottish Highlands (and Glasgow), Northern England (also London and Norwich), Belgium (Flanders), the southern regions of the Netherlands, and central and southern German speaking Switzerland.
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Germanic Europe is politically divided into the following Countries, Dependent territories or Autonomous area:
| Independent Countries | United Kingdom dependencies | Norwegian dependencies | Netherlands dependencies | Danish dependencies | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The historical Germanic peoples originated in Northern Europe during the Iron Age and migrated into the territory of the failing Roman Empire during Late Antiquity. They were Latinized in some parts (Burgundy, Lombardy, Western Francia, Visigothic Kingdom), but in other parts their intrusive Germanic dialects persisted, in medieval England and much of the Holy Roman Empire (including the Netherlands and the eastern Alpine region), so that Germanic Europe extends beyond Northern Europe into Central Europe.
About 200 million Europeans (27%) speak a Germanic language natively.
Germanic languages are a group of related languages constituting a branch of the Indo-European (IE) language family. The common ancestor of all languages comprising this branch is Proto-Germanic, spoken in approximately the latter mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age Northern Europe.
The largest Germanic languages in Europe in terms of speakers are the German and English languages, with approximately 95 and 65 million native speakers respectively. Both belong to the West Germanic group, together with Dutch (22 million speakers) and Frisian (0.5 million).
The North Germanic languages include Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese with a combined total of about 20 million speakers.
German is an official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Denmark and it\'s one of the 23 official languages of the European Union.
English Influences of Germanic Origin on the English lexicon are to be at around 25%
English is a West Germanic language originating in England, and the first language for most people in Australia, Canada, the Commonwealth Caribbean, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States (also commonly known as the Anglosphere).
One of the consequences of the French influence due to the Norman Conquest in the Middle Ages is that the vocabulary of the English language contains a massive number of non-Germanic words, i.e., Latin-derived words that entered the lexicon after the French invasion.
One can say that English vocabulary is to a certain extent divided between those words which are Germanic (mostly Old English) and those which are "Latinate" (Latin-derived, either directly from Norman French or other Romance languages). For instance, pairs of words such as ask and question (the first verb being of Germanic origin whereas the second is Latin-derived) show the division between Germanic and Latinate lexemes which compose the Modern English vocabulary.
Dutch is spoken in the Netherlands (96%), Flanders - the northern part of Belgium (58%) and French Flanders.
The Frisian languages are a closely related group of Germanic languages, spoken by about half a million members of Frisian ethnic groups, who live on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany.
Approximately 20 million people in the Nordic countries have a North Germanic language as their mother tongue,Holmberg, Anders and Christer Platzack (2005). "The Scandinavian languages". In The Comparative Syntax Handbook, eds Guglielmo Cinque and Richard S. Kayne. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Excerpt at Durham University. including a significant Swedish minority in Finland.
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| Nations and regions of Europe speaking Germanic languages | ||
|---|---|---|
| Nordic | Denmark (including the Faroe Islands) · Finland (Swedish-speaking areas) · Iceland · Norway · Sweden |
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| German | Austria · Belgium (German-speaking Community) · Denmark (North Schleswig) · France (Alsace-Moselle) · Germany · Italy (Province of Bolzano-Bozen) · Liechtenstein · Luxembourg · Switzerland (German-speaking areas) | |
| Dutch | Belgium (Flanders) · France (Westhoek) · Germany (Lower Rhine) · Netherlands | |
| English | Gibraltar · Guernsey · Ireland · Isle of Man · Jersey · Malta · United Kingdom | |
| Frisian | Germany (North Frisia • Saterland) · Netherlands (Friesland) | |
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