Talk:Germanic tribes

message: That there isn't pre-germanic place names in southern Scandinavia I think is somewhat true. But there is rare exception. The name "Ismansdal" in Gotland has been claimed to have other origin, mostly related to basque language. The name Simrishamn, which is a town in southern Swedish province of Skåne has also been claimed to have non-germanic origins, some people claim that it's celtic, but I think that's hard to varify.
I'm under the impression that the word Volk is another word for Folk, but I'm not 100% positive.Gringo300 12:21, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Pre-Germanic place names

message: Talk:Germanic peoples redirects here. Why is there an NPOV warning on the Germanic peoples page? I agree that it is not really common to refer to the modern speakers of Germanic languages as "Germanic peoples", and it seems rather bad taste to speak of a "Germanic diaspora" (which I would just quietly rephrase instead of putting up the NPOV banner). But where are the objections connected with the boilerplate, and how have they been addressed? dab (ᛏ) 09:58, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. It would be much better to rephrase such statements, than to add an NPOV warning anonymously. Since there is no explanation why it is there, I guess it should be removed.--Wiglaf 10:16, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: dispute?

message: Removed following text. In my opinion very subjective and conflicting with "the existence of a common identity is testified by the fact that they had a name for non-Germanic peoples, *walha, from which the local names Welsh, Wallis, Walloon, and Wallachia have been derived."84.163.190.89
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Generalizing economical, social, religious, ethnic or political structures of Germanic people is impossible. The category 'Germanic' is a Roman and educated one; there had never been a Germanic identity. Peoples were classified by the date of their confrontation with Rome. Every 'gens' has to be discussed on its own, considering the specific historical circumstances. Latin gens, genealogia, natio and Greek ethnos refer to a community of biological descent. Our sources, however, show the complex polyethnic character of the gentes and equate the term with exercitus (army) so that its formation is not a matter of common descent but one of political decision. The development of ethnic identities is to be understood as a process strongly connected to the Roman Empire. Prehistoric sociological structures interacted with the urban, mediterranean culture and out of these processes of integration and confrontation lasting for centuries, the transformation of the Roman World, Medieval Europe emerged. 84.163.190.89
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:I support the removal.--Wiglaf 20:14, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Strange Paragraph

message: I do not think we can confidently say that the CW culture "probably" spoke IE. They were "kurganized", sure, but they may as well have  spoken Uralic with some early IE loanwords. It is certainly "probable" that IE had arrived in the area by 2000 BC, with the beginning of the "real" Bronze Age, and I would fully support as highly probable that pre-Proto-Germanic had its own, largely isolated development from 2000-500 BC. But the 3000 figure is basically guesswork and may be dismissed with a shrug as speculation. dab (ᛏ) 09:43, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure, but there's no way at arriving at the border between the possible and the probable other than writing it and discussing it.--Wiglaf 09:50, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

text: And AFAIK, the CW is the only "culture" that arrives in Scandinavia suddenly and with a lot of killings.--Wiglaf 09:58, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: really :o) how interesting; so they must have been IEans, I suppose. I'm really intrigued by the stone axes; are they really that prevalent, or are they an archaeological red herring? How do they spread, diachronically (the CW area is huge, but surely there must be some traceable spread of the axes over time; that would seem a pre-IE element, because surely the Indo-Europeans being so fond of Bronze would not innovate ceremonial stone axes? are the earliest axes in TRB territory? or further east?) dab (ᛏ) 10:56, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The stone axes appear as early as the Funnelbeaker culture, and they were "cheaper" copies of the copper axes further south. My own guess is that the Globular Amphora culture spread IE warlords into the Funnelbeaker culture of present Germany and Denmark, and kurganized it. The control of this fertile region galvanized the IE culture, creating the Corded Ware culture, (compare the mixed Normans and the mixed Kievan Rus') and exploded it in all directions. It appears that mixed cultures (come to think of the US) become especially dynamic.--Wiglaf 11:18, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: CW

message: The reorganization looks pretty good. This is getting to be a great article. You'd have to research for some time to get all this information. Do etymologies belong in Wiktionary? There are plenty of them in Wikipedia. Should names be treated differently from non-names? It seems a shame to split a people from its etymology.66.30.94.153 23:58, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well different people see it different ways. I just wonder if "Germanic tribes" is the correct place to include a lengthy etymology of "German". It's not the first place I would look. Perhaps German would be a better place to discuss the etymology of "German"? It could also be included in Wiktionary under "German" which is technically where all etymology should go. Stbalbach 02:53, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Etymology

message: Hi Wiglaf. You are right, the map is not reliable. However, few maps of ancient peoples are. The ancients did not have aerial photography and all the other tools for map-making. Maps based on Ptolemy are grossly distorted in areas. But, one needs something, so they did the best they could and used that. The ancients don't give us enough information to generate reliable maps of their locations. We might do better but I don't know of any modern maps of Germanic tribes based on the latest scholarship. Meanwhile we need something. The value of these older maps is that they tell us someone else encountered this problem before and here is what they came up with. This is only a starting point or a base reference. Maybe another precautionary note is needed. That's it! Another note. Thanks, wiglaf.Botteville 11:32, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: To precise why I think the map is unreliable: If you compare the two maps you'll see that the first one is correct when we can be relatively sure of the position, and it adds question marks when the position is uncertain. The map I consider unreliable has not even bothered to add question marks, and some names are obviously misplaced. Then again, I am not happy with either of the maps.--Wiglaf 11:42, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Maps

message: please note Talk:Germanic_peoples#merge. dab (ᛏ) 15:04, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: merge