In a context of antiquity (pre AD 500), "Germans" is used in the sense of
Germanic tribes. Germans are defined as an
ethnic group, in the sense of sharing a common
German culture,
citizenship, speaking the
German language as a
mother tongue and being born in
Germany. Germans are also defined by their national
citizenship, which had, in the course of
German history, varying relations to the above (
German culture), according to the influence of
subcultures and
society in general (also refer to
Imperial Germans,
Federal Germans etc. and
Demographics of Germany). Out of approximately 100 million native speakers of German in the world, about 75 million consider themselves Germans. There are an additional 70 million people of German ancestry (mainly in the USA, Brazil, Argentina, Kazakhstan and Canada) who are not native speakers of German but who may still consider themselves
ethnic Germans, so that the total number of Germans worldwide lies between 75 and 160 million, depending to the criteria applied (native speakers, single-ancestry ethnic Germans or partial German ancestry). In the
USA, 15.2% of citizens identify as of
German American according to the
United States Census of 2000, more than any other group.
See more at Wikipedia.org...
Free Download Now!
