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East Germanic tribes

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Florian Blaschke (talk | contribs) at 21:22, 4 July 2011 (Groups: The classification of the Lombards as East Germanic is traditional, but linguistically unjustified.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Expansion of early Germanic tribes into previously mostly Celtic Central Europe:[1]
   Settlements before 750 BC
   New settlements by 500 BC
   New settlements by 250 BC
   New settlements by AD 1
Some sources also give a date of 750 BC for the earliest expansion out of southern Scandinavia and northern Germany along the North Sea coast towards the mouth of the Rhine.[2]

The Germanic tribes referred to as East Germanic constitute a wave of migrants who may have moved from Scandinavia into the area between the Oder and Vistula rivers between the years 600 and 300 BC. Later they went to the south. Unlike the Northern and Western tribes, they did not successfully preserve their ethnicity and were primarily assimilated into Western Germanic tribes and Romans.

According to some theories, the east Germanic tribes, related to the North Germanic tribes, had migrated from Scandinavia into the region east of the Elbe River (Vandals, Burgundians, Goths, Rugians and others).[3]

Groups

Groups identified as East Germanic tribes include:

Territories inhabited by East Germanic tribes between 100 BC and AD 300.

Language

The East Germanic languages are contrasted with North and West Germanic. However, the East Germanic languages shared many characteristics with North Germanic, perhaps because of the later migration date.

All the East Germanic languages are extinct as living languages. However, there have been recent attempts by Germanic tribal polytheists to reconstruct a form of neo-Gothic as a common community language.[citation needed] This is primarily based on the academic publications of a small number of scholars who have studied what remains of the written records of the Gothic dialects within Italia, the Iberian peninsula, and old Anatolia.

See also

Notes and references

  1. ^ Kinder, Hermann (1988), Penguin Atlas of World History, vol. I, London: Penguin, p. 108, ISBN 0-14-051054-0.
  2. ^ "Languages of the World: Germanic languages". The New Encyclopædia Britannica. Chicago, IL, United States: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 1993. ISBN 0-85229-571-5.
  3. ^ The Penguin atlas of world history / Hermann Kinder and Werner Hilgemann ; translated by Ernest A. Menze ; with maps designed by Harald and Ruth Bukor. Harmondsworth : Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-051054-0 1988, Volume 1. p.109.
  4. ^ This is a traditional classification. The Lombardic language is now considered by many specialists to be close to Old High German, especially its Upper German dialects, which would make a classification as West rather than East Germanic more sensible.