Talk:Germanic peoples

shouldn't afrikaners be on the list of germanic peoples? Gringo300 12:15, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

i went ahead and added them and several others myself. Gringo300 01:16, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Austrians

To the anonymous editor using the IP addresses 195.34.133.61, 195.34.133.68 and 195.34.133.69:

• Removing Austrians altogether borders on vandalism.
• Why did you insist on describing Austrians as "Austrian Germans" in previous edits? If you are Austrian, you should be aware that this designation is totally a minority position in Austria which can normally be found only on the right fringes of the Freedom Party of Austria and within right-wing extremist Studentenverbindungen. You should also be aware that most Austrians today strongly resent being called German.
• However, we know that this was not always historically the case. This is why I added the clarifying sentence in brackets in response to your first edit here. I was attempting to explain both the current and the past view on the "nationality"/"ethnicity"/whatever of Austrians.
• Personally, I do not think that ethnicity or nationality is a category that makes much sense. "Germanic languages" makes sense, but "Germanic peoples" does not, given all the mixing between neighbouring peoples that naturally occurred in the course of history, which makes categorizing people on grounds of ancestry complete hogwash. Martg76 08:53, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

by that logic, the ENTIRE concept of race doesn't make sense. Gringo300 00:55, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

See validity of human races. The arguments listed on that page in favor of the concept of "race" certainly don't apply to Germanic, Slavic peoples etc. who were never genetically separated from each other. Martg76 21:57, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

Scotland

I altered the section dealing with the culture of Scotland to reflect that the split culture referred to was a historical rather than contemporary fact due to the continuous regression of the Celtic language (Scottish Gaelic) to its current status of strength only in the Western Isles. Also inserted reference to the displacement of the Scandinavian language and culture of the Northern Isles by the language and culture of the Lowland Scots with settlers prominent.

User=anSiarach

the article mentions the interbreeding of germanic peoples with non-germanic peoples. the "technical" term for this is miscegenation.

there are DEFINITELY a lot people considered germans, for example, that aren't pure germanic.

while there are germanic people who are opposed to miscegenation between germanic and non-germanic peoples, and i'm sure there always have been, there is absolutely NO question that it HAS happened. Gringo300 09:06, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

I would rather say: There is not a single "pure Germanic" person in the world. The purpose of the paragraph is to point out that the concept of "Germanic peoples" is inherently problematic. Martg76 21:00, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

i don't see how anyone could possible know for sure that there isn't a SINGLE pure germanic person anywhere on earth.

ok, let's look at theoretically/hypothetically, or whatever is the proper term:

how could anybody possibly POSITIVELY determine that any person is absolutely pure anything?

even if there was, how would anybody ever know it? Gringo300 02:25, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Noone would ever know because it's impossible, there's no such thing as -the- germanic person. A group can show simular properties (or to be more precise, the individuals may show these), but genes and behaviour vary from person to person, it can produce funky statistics like 2.3 children or can blatantly contradict itself. This is, of course, because a group is an average, a simplification of a complex system, not a single undividable unit with a physical body) And remember, you can drown in a river with an average depth of 6 inches =p. -KraftwerK- June 18th 2005