The Germanic peoples (also called Teutonic in older literature) are a historical ethno-linguistic group, originating in Northern Europe and identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Common Germanic in the course of the Pre-Roman Iron Age. The descendants of these peoples became, and in many areas contributed to, the ethnic groups of North Western Europe: the Germans, Norwegians,Swedish, Finland-Swedes, Danish, Faroese, English, Icelanders,Austrians, Dutch and Flemish, and the inhabitants of Switzerland,Alsace and Friesland on the continent.
The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European (IE) language family. The common ancestor of all the languages in this branch is Proto-Germanic, spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe.
Germanic peoples moving down from northern Europe in the second century BC, to settle in northern central Europe, along the boundary of Celtic civilisation, in the northerly lands of the future Roman Empire.
Migrating Germanic peoples spread throughout Europe in Late Antiquity (300-600) and the Early Middle Ages. Germanic languages became dominant along the Roman borders (Austria, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and England), but in the rest of the (western)Roman provinces, the Germanic immigrants adopted Latin (Romance) dialects. Furthermore, all Germanic peoples were eventuallyChristianized to varying extents. The Germanic people played a large role in transforming the Roman Empire into Medieval Europe.
The most widely spoken Germanic languages are English and German. The group includes other major languages, such as Dutch and Afrikaans; and the North Germanic languages including Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic and Faroese . The SIL Ethnologue lists 53 different Germanic languages.
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