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The English word for "Germany"
>>Confusion arises from only calling the land of the Alemmani "German". I like French "Allemagne", and Spanish "Alemania" much better.<<
Who told you that??
The main GERMANIC tribes in GERMANY were:
the Saxons
the Frisians
the Thuringians
the Franks
the Bavarians
the Alemanni
By the way, I wouldn't call the English a germanic people because the celtic people weren't outnumbered in England, just like the Celts in France! It is said that the germanic people only imposed their culture on them.
Frederik
>>Of course this is what it would mean in contemporary usage. But if the adjective "Dutch" had not been limited to mean the language or the people of the Low Countries, but instead had retained the same meaning as German deutsch, then Germany could have been Dutchland. <<
Yes, but this is a common misconception, "Dutch" in it's archaic sense meant "continental Europeans with a West Germanic language", so in fact ... it "retained" nothing.English just narrowed it down. And I'm glad they did, I wouldn't like to be called a "netherlander" or "hollander" , or maybe (if the English would have picked a latin loan) "batavian".
As for the GERMAN VS GERMANIC thing ... I think this section on wikipedia makes it quite clear:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German#Other:
Guest,
>>By the way, I wouldn't call the English a germanic people because the celtic people weren't outnumbered in England, just like the Celts in France! It is said that the germanic people only imposed their culture on them. <<
Is that said? So the Germanic people merely imposed their culture on them ... could I compare this phenomenon with , let's say, the destruction of native culture during the Spanish colonisation of the Americas?
<<Who told you that??
The main GERMANIC tribes in GERMANY were:
the Saxons
the Frisians
the Thuringians
the Franks
the Bavarians
the Alemanni>>
Why do we even have to say "Germanic". "German" and "Germanic" really mean the same thing. The only reason we have to even use the term "Germanic" in the first place, is to avoid the confusion that arises between modern day Germans of Germany, and the other "German" peoples. All of the modern day nations of Northern Europe which speak a Germanic language, are comprised of descendants of German peoples. All the people east of the Rhine frontier, were called Germans by the Romans, as they were related to each other in terms of ancestry, culture, language, and the Norse religion. They were different from the more refined, less savage Celts, and the Romans.
At the end of the Roman Empire, a great Germanic Migration took place, where many tribes, seeking more living space, invaded and settled within formerly Roman territory, or simply moved elsewhere. The Franks settled mainly in northern Gaul, which roughly corresponds the northern France and the low countries. The Angles, Jutes, and Saxons settled in Britain, the Visigoths settled in southern Gaul and Spain, the Vandals bypassed Spain and settled in North Africa, and so on and so on. One of the largest tribes to stay east of the Rhine was the Alemanni. Hence, the reasons the Gallo and Hispano-Romans called the land, "Land of the Alemanni", or Alemania. This was done so as to avoid confusion with other German peoples, which no longer lived in Germany. Otherwise, how would one differentiate between Germans living in Gaul or Britain, and Germans living in Germany?
That's why Fab is able to distinguish between the Germans of Allemagne and the Germans in France (the Franks).
En Français si on dit "la Germanie", on penserait à un grand ensemble de pays de langue et de culture germanique. De même si on dit "la Romanie", on penserait aux pays de l'Europe latine. En Français, le pays "Roumanie" est quand à lui, un pays latin d'Europe de l'est. Il n'y a pas de confusion possible grâce au "u".
Quand à l'allemagne, c'est un pays germanique parmis d'autres. au même titre que la Hollande, la Suede ou l'Angleterre.
" That's why Fab is able to distinguish between the Germans of Allemagne and the Germans in France (the Franks). "
Yes, but we could just precise that Franks were not only being living in France. They have ruled the frankish kingdom wich was partly over what is now France. The center of their kingdom was more around Netherlands and West Germany. I think Dutch people could claim quite rightly to be the hiers of the Franks, genetically and culturally.
In the village of my parents, the locals call a place of the town where a lot of northern Europeans, (mainly Germans, English and Dutch people) have bought houses for their retirement or holydays "La petite Germanie". But it could be wrongly interpreted, it doesn't mean "the little Germany" (in this case it would be "La petite Allemagne).
Can't say I disagree with anything you just said Fab. Keep those French examples coming, for the likes of our Norwiegan friend.
" Latin-Anglo-American and fab:
I think you both mean "Germanic"! "
The french word "Germains" doesn't mean the english "germans", but include all germanic poeples. In the reality it is mainly used for old germanic peoples. For modern day people we would say "germanique".
"German" is "Allemand"
"This was done so as to avoid confusion with other German peoples, which no longer lived in Germany."
This isn't actually true! Of course, some of the smaller germanic tribes moved elsewhere - but of course not all and not everybody of them!
I think "Guest" already mentioned the main german tribes who predominantely made up the ancestors of the present-day Germans (togehter with some Celtic, Slavic and Roman blood):
"the Saxons
the Frisians
the Thuringians
the Franks
the Bavarians
the Alemanni"
Like fab already pointed out concerning the Franks...
"The center of their kingdom was more around Netherlands and West Germany"
I myself live in South-West Germany and speak a frankish dialect, which is called rheinfränkisch (which includes Hessisch and Rheinpfälzisch) but there is also Moselfränkisch and Ripuarisch as frankish dialects spoken in Germany today.
There wouldn't be those dialects if all those tribes settled elsewhere.
Moreover, the Alemanni wasn't the largest tribe after Roman times, but the Franks were!
>>I myself live in South-West Germany and speak a frankish dialect<<
No, you speak High German influenced (slightly) by Frankish.You don't speak a Frankish derived dialect.
The only language that derives from (Old) Frankisch, is Dutch.
Now that's an interesting question! Are the Dutch and only they speaking the "language of Charlemagne"?
Sander:
Well, I suppose you could say that the Germans too narrowed the term theodisc/dietsk/deutsch/duits down, from meaning any Germanic Volkssprache as opposed to Latin/Romance to meaning what we today understand as deutsch.
Something very interesting is that Icelandic and Faroese still use the North Germanic forms of theodisc, "Þjóð" or "tjóð" to mean nation!
As the Icelandic Wikipedia says:
"Þjóð er hópur fólks með sameiginleg menningarleg einkenni, t.d. sömu sögu eða tungumál og oft á tíðum sameiginlegt ætterni."
= A nation is a group (heap! :-))) of people with common cultural characteristics, e.g. the same history and language and sometimes common descent.
Afrikaans (and I presume Dutch too) makes the distinction between Germaans (Germanic) - for example "Germaanse tale" (Germanic languages) and "Duits" (German).
In Afrikaans one can call someone from the Netherlands a Hollander, though this has slightly pejorative connotations. I think the word might be used occaisionally in English too but I am not sure. Perhaps it is archaic.
Latin-Germania
Italian-Germania
Romanian-Germania
French-Allemagne
Spanish-Alemania
Portugues-Alemanha
Catalan-Alemanya
why Italian and Romanian is diferent, with the rest of the Latin langueges ?
>No, you speak High German influenced (slightly) by Frankish.You don't speak a Frankish derived dialect.
The only language that derives from (Old) Frankisch, is Dutch.<
I guess, this was you Jav/Sander!?!
No, this isn't true! It's not High German but Middle German - this is a difference because it didn't underwent the second sound shift as High German did - thus we don't say Pfarrer but Parrer, not Apfel but Appel; in Moselfränkisch it's dat and et, instead of das and es and so on.
on the other hand High German, i.e. the Standard form, retains a lot of features which are now lost, not only in my dialect but also in Dutch, for example the "b" in words like leben, lieben, geben,... (we say lewe, gewwe) or consonants at the end (i.e. "d" in und - we say "un") and so on, but...
...the main point is, it derives from Fränkisch! If you don't believe me, look it up on this website. I know that you understand German. ;-)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westmitteldeutsche_Sprache
Italians and Romanians use Germania because they have the word directly from Latin. Romans use to call Germania all the lands from North of the Alps. Romanians also use the Slavic word "neamţ, nemţi = German, Germans" but only for people living there and not for the land.
Also, interesting is the explanation of Slavic word "nemec". It's good to notice that in Latin, "nemica" ("nimic" in Romanian) means "nothing, non existing, non-understandable".
So, that Slavic word "nemec" could not be as Slavic as it is known now.
>>Now that's an interesting question! Are the Dutch and only they speaking the "language of Charlemagne"?<<
I actually gave that a lot of thought, and I've come to the conclusion that it is very much possible, not that the Dutch speak the language of Charlemagne of course, but that charlemagne spoke an ancestor of Dutch.
You see, it's impossible that Charlemagne spoke Old Frankish, the language of the migrating Franks, because that language went extinct around the 6th century.
Extinct? No, not really. It did two things, it evolved into Old Low Frankish/ Old Dutch, and it influenced certain High German dialects.
The point is however , is the fact that Old Frankish was never attested. So we don't know for absolutely sure that was "High or Low". But then again ... High German languages don't turn low ... so maybe, Old Frankish was "Old Low Frankish/Old Dutch" from the start ...
I think that because he was raised around Liege (Luik) Belgium, there is a more that average chance of him speaking Old Dutch!
Kuni,
If you speak any of these languages listed in these articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franconian_German
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Central_German
You speak High German (which includes Middle and Upper German)
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