Which language gave us the word 'Germanic'?
Germanic peoples the Germanic peoples. Use of the modern term German or Germanic is the result of 18th and 19th century classical philology which "envisioned the Germanic language group as occupying a central branch of the Indo-European language tree." Latin scholars of the 10th century used the adjective "teutonicus" (a derivative of Teutones) when referencing East Francia, which in their vernacular was connoted ""Regnum Teutonicum"", for that area and all of its subsequent inhabitants. Modern speakers of English still use the word "Teutons" to describe Germanic peoples. Historically, the Teutones were only one specific tribe, and may not even have spoken a
Proto-Germanic language merely present as an additional surface articulation. No Germanic language that preserves the word-final vowels has their nasality preserved. Word-final short nasal vowels do not show different reflexes compared to non-nasal vowels. However, the comparative method does require a three-way phonemic distinction between word-final "*-ō", "*-ǭ" and "*-ōn", which each has a distinct pattern of reflexes in the later Germanic languages: The distinct reflexes of nasal "-ǭ" versus non-nasal "-ō" are caused by the Northwest Germanic raising of final "-ō" to , which did not affect "-ǭ". When the vowels were shortened and denasalised, these two vowels no longer had