You are about to learn what these things really mean.
So help me, you are going to learn.
During my brief time at WMU, it brought me great sorrow when people asked what I was studying. I would tell them "Germanic studies," and fifty percent of the time (no, really) they would think that I had said "dramatic studies." The other half of the time they would assume that "Germanic" meant the same as "German" (as if I had just added the -ic to amuse myself). In response to this phenomenon, I began saying "Teutonic studies," which at least drew a "what's that?" You'd be surprised, though, how many people had heard of the Teutonic Knights and thought that I was studying them...
If you paid attention to my previous post on the Aryans, you will recall that Germanic--more properly called proto-Germanic--was a Centum Indo-European tongue. It evolved into North Germanic, West Germanic, and East Germanic.
The word "Germanic" comes from "Germanii," a tribal designation first recorded in the work of Julius Caesar. By the time of Tacitus, the Romans commonly used it to refer to those barbarian tribes whom they perceived as being non-Celtic. Back then the Germanii--then as now--covered an area far more extensive than the place we call Germany.
English speakers referred to German (not Germanic) things as "Almain" (from Alemanni, an ancient Germanic tribal confederation) until the sixteenth century; in this they probably followed the lead of the French, who still use "Allemand." We also used the word "Dutch," which wasn't restricted to natives of Holland until the seventeenth century.
Speaking of the Dutch, that word ultimately derives from the name of the Teutones, another ancient Germanic tribe. It survives in German as their name for themselves, Deutsch. It just so happened that we began using "Dutch" exclusively for Dutchmen around the same time we began using "Teutonic" to mean things Germanic--and at the same time began referring to the Deutsch as "Germans."
So, in a nutshell, "Teutonic" and "Germanic" mean the same thing. "German," on the other hand, refers to: a daughter language of West Germanic; the speakers of that daughter language; and the land which those speakers occupy.
The Germanic--or Teutonic--languages living today include: English, Dutch, Frisian, High German, Low German, Afrikaans, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, Yiddish, Scots English, and Gutnish.
Wasn't that easy?
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