What really defines a people?

There will always be the exception, but even then, we can see that Jews have their native language, Hebrew, and we can tell from there that they're a Afro-Asiatic and so can see what peoples they are related to. We can also see what Jews should be most means be regarded as they are locally. Like many of the Jewish communities that fully assimilated into their host lands.

>Even groups as politically divided as say Slavs and Koreans can all still be seen as Slavic and Korean by their languages.
'Slavic' is not a real cultural group, or at least it hasn't been for the last thousand years or more. Individual languages are one thing, but using language families to define cultures is just 19th century garbage, usually made up by some group as a way to 'claim' other groups. Same shit with Pan-Turkism.

There is no single way to define all cultures in some unified framework; they're all different and simplifying it into a single factor while ignoring everything else just breeds bullshit.

The Irish and Jamaicans aren't English, Azeris aren't Turks, Mexicans aren't Spanish, etc.

Anglo-Saxons weren't fans if the Normans. That didn't stop 1066 and the French influence on Anglo culture.

Fair point.

Ethos. The founding idea/myth and the underlying spirit of a nation that is built upon it. Look at a map and ask yourself about each nation: what really keeps them going spiritually? For Germans it is discipline. For Froggies it is the appreciation of culture. For Britbongs it is being the scum of this earth. So on and so forth.

maternal tradition is more important than language.

Observe immigrants, blacks, and literally anyone who is different than you for this one. See how their mores reflect their mother's.

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking but Czechs and Slovaks speak a language that is more or less mutually intelligible (at least in their standardized dialects) and share many customs, belonged to the same nation for the majority of the 20th century yet they are considered distinct peoples. One point of interest is that while historically both groups were majority Roman Catholic, the Czechs have become majority atheist/non-religious and the Slovaks have had something of a revival in Roman Catholicism.

That's still just an accidental property of each group, however. I'd say what distinguishes different groups of people is not necessarily language, religion, ethnicity or nationality. It's something much simpler than that: a shared sense of identity.

While I agree that language is both reflective of cultural experience, and the method by which people from thoughts and decisions, language isn't everything. Language certainly means more than anything genetic, but it also matters where you're raised and what your personal experiences are.

>What say you, Veeky Forums?
Fuck off to

>The Irish and Jamaicans aren't English, Azeris aren't Turks, Mexicans aren't Spanish, etc.
Many would call these "Anglo", "Turkic", "Hispanic" especially. You could certainly say they have, sadly, become less of what they originally were; Celtic, Amerindian (specifically Uto-Aztecan) and Taíno. For the Jamaicans, the natives are all but gone and they speak a Creole language with African Bantu influences, the Bantu that they came from.

>implying i will ever get real answers on /int/
rude m8

This is like asking what keeps humans alive. Is it their heart? Lungs? Brain? Food? Water?

In the end they all contribute, just because one is the most noticable doesn't mean it's the only denominator.

to be fair we can confirm that the brain is what regulates the rest of the body. something similar can be said about cultural things, language in my opinion being one of them.