Nations and Cultures that Role Playing as Other Cultures

During Dark Ages when Goth conquered and controlled Rome, a Gothic king once remarked "a wealthy Goth plays Roman, a poor Roman plays Goth". The meaning was that both Romans and Goth found each other's cultures appealing and actively tried to live as members of another's culture. Of course, such pretences had certain differences with how people of their own culture acted, but the point remains. Certain foreign cultures do appeal to people, and they strive to emulate them in their behavior, sometimes becoming a sort of tribute culture.

However, I can tell you more. What if most cultures we currently have are but an emulation of some other culture by a certain group of people. Shocking, isn't it.

I arrived at this conclusion, when looking at French I noticed that they are basically Germans, pretending to be Romans. Franks (a Germanic tribe) conquered Roman Gallia and liked it so much, they decided to emulate Romans in every way, including language. French technically is a Romance language, like say Italian or Spanish, but it's not mutually intelligible with other Romance languages. Its fancy but weird and kind of out of place. This proves that it did not evolve organically but rather a product of Germanic speakers trying to speak Roman Latin. Overtime it evolved into a direction that is neither Roman nor Germanic, as its speakers kept inventing new things.

French are by far not the only ones like that. Everyone heard of North Macedonia's dubious claims on being descendants of Alexander the Great. As much as this claim is clearly made up, Macedonians themselves want to believe it's true, not because it's some tourist advantage but rather because they simply like Alexander the Great and ancient Macedonians and want to be like them.

Dig a little further and you can notice that say Bulgarians are Turks who role play as Slavs. Their language is of Slavic language group but has a few peculiarities that are of clearly Turkic origin, including unusual for Slavic languages grammar, surnames and more.

Bulgarian neighbor to the north, Romania are basically Slavs who role play as Romans. Once again, the same traces give it away. Romanian is in Romance language group but has certain Slavic peculiarities. Romania's location, surrounded mostly by Slavic people and languages, but on Ancient Roman border also suggest that Romanians were Slavs who simply adopted as much of Roman culture and language as they could.

So how many more nations are role playing as something else. By my estimation a clear majority. Only a few people like Finnis, Hungarians, Germans, Norwegians and Ukrainians are just their own people, doing their things, not caring for much. Most others are role playing larpers.

Prussians and Austrians are Slavs, role playing as Germans.

Czechs and Slovenes are Germans, role playing as Slavs.

Montenegrins are Italians role playing as Slavs.

Croatians are Slavs, role playing as Italians.

Serbs are Slavs, role playing as Byzantines, ironically located west of Romanians who role play as (western) Ancient Romans.

Greeks are bunch of random people, role playing as ancient Greeks.

Turks are actually former Byzantines, role playing as Turks after they stopped role playing as Iranians.

Azerbaijanis are Turks roleplaying as Iranians.

Turkmens are Iranians, roleplaying as Turks.

Albanians are Turks, role playing as Italians.

Latvians are Balts, roleplaying as Germans

Lithuanians are Balts, roleplaying as Romans.

Poles are Balts, roleplaying as Slavs.

Estonians are Finns, roleplaying as Scandinavians.

Swedes are Scandinavians, role playing as Finns.

Danes are Scandinavians, role playing as Germans who role play as Romans or role play as French for short.

Belarussians are Slavs who role play as Lithuanians.

Russians are mix of Scandinavians, Tatars and Mongols who role play as Slavs who role play as Germans.

English are Celts, who role play as Saxons who role play as French.

Irish are Scandinavians who role play as Celts.

Portuguese are Swabians who role play as Romans.

This list might produce a plenty of heated debate, insults and the like. That however is not my intention. I want to shed light on this phenomenon of people imitating other people due to their love of their culture. I hope this article will shed light on this phenomenon and produce a serious discussion on the matter.