The English word for "Germany"

>>And I do this?<<

You (not necessarily intentionally) imply it, though, by singling out the Netherlands rather than referring to the atrocities commited by the Nazis as something that occurred on a greater scale. Maybe you did not intend such, but that is how I had read such.

Come on lads, just agree that we all dislike the Frogs and the Krauts and let's be done with this.

And why? Because you imply I'm some nationalist who hates Germans just because I say that the dialect between Low Saxon (aka Travis' linguistic obsession) and Dutch is dieing and rapidly fading.

>>"The Dutch may dislike the Germans, but I think everyone does, really."

...a lot of people in Europe, that's true! But I don't think that the Germans are very unpopular in North America, and especially in South America. What about the Asian countries, they seem to really adore the Germans.<<

Here there really is no dislike of German or things German, with the closest thing to such being a general sense of quaintness to things associated with Germany at the time of German settlement of the region (but not with things associated with modern Germany alone). Even in the context of World War 2 there is a clear distinction made between Nazis and Germans in general, and Germans in general in the context of WW2 are really not viewed in a particularly negative light, all things considered, unlike the Nazis (SS included) themselves, to whom responsibility for things such as the Holocaust is primarily assigned. Yes, the Germans were the enemy in the context of WW2, but even then they are seen were the enemy because their country's government rather than because of anything more fundamentally personal. (Yes, the idea that the "clean" Wehrmacht and those who served in it were fighting out of loyalty to their country and those responsible for any atrocities were just the Nazis definitely exists here, even if it is rarely explicitly stated.)

At the same time one still gets things like Rammstein being called "Nazi music", albeit such things are really in no fashion serious even if they still indicate an underlying association between Germany and national socialism. Similarly, there is still an association of Germany with things, well, stereotypically German, for better or worse, persists, even if it is often perceived in ways that are not necessarily negative. Likewise, you may still hear middle-aged and older individuals use words like "kraut" to describe things seemingly overly overtly German, even though younger individuals practically *never* use such terms here; for example, my dad has used "Nazi" in reference to my learning German, even though that likely falls under the category of I-can-make-fun-of-my-own-ethnic-group, as my dad is an ethnic German, as well as being related to my dad's being a Hispanophile (he views learning Spanish as far more useful and modern than learning German, but then, he was forced to learn German as a kid) combined with viewing things German as quaint.

>>And why? Because you imply I'm some nationalist who hates Germans just because I say that the dialect between Low Saxon (aka Travis' linguistic obsession) and Dutch is dieing and rapidly fading.<<

The thing about such is that such implies a position that favors a monolithic, unitary Dutch language rather than Dutch just being one section of the Low German part of the non-Anglo-Frisian West Germanic dialect continuum, which is clearly a nationalist-type position. The matter is that the way you put things at least implies acceptance and legitimatization of the decline of things like Low Saxon while trying to subsume West Frisian and West Flemish as mere "dialects" of Dutch (you explicitly state that West Frisian is a different language, but at the same time you have said things to the effect of West Frisian being closer to Algemeen Nederlands than things which are accepted as being dialects of Dutch, which implies its being the same language all but in name).

Don't twist words, I don't care if you view Germanic languages in a dialectal way, eventhough Dutch has it's own subgroup of the Low German languages:Low Frankish (and Low German merely implies not taking part in the HGCS rather than being a linguistic ancestor), but do not deny facts.

>>Don't twist words, I don't care if you view Germanic languages in a dialectal way, eventhough Dutch has it's own subgroup of the Low German languages:Low Frankish (and Low German merely implies not taking part in the HGCS rather than being a linguistic ancestor), but do not deny facts.<<

I know that the Low German languages do not have a common ancestor separate from that of High German, but they still form a distinct dialect continuum separate from High German even if it has been severely impinged upon in many areas by High German. Note that, though, through shared developments they have features which distinguish them from High German outside of their consonant inventories, such as merging of the definite pronoun for both masculine and feminine genders, merging of verb endings for all persons in the plural, and merging for the accusative and dative cases, but these developments were not originally present in them (for example, Middle Dutch had separate accusative and dative cases).

What I am criticizing here is the attitude favoring a monolithic Dutch language, where dialect groups close to but distinct from it are dismissed as mere "dialects" (in the pejorative sense of the term) of Dutch or as moribund and not worth preserving, rather than Dutch just being one section of a dialect continuum. Another example of this kind of attitude is the treatment of Oïl languages other than French from a French-speaking point of view, where they are generally dismissed in favor of a monolithic French language; such seems not all too different from the treatment of Low Saxon in the Netherlands and Germany (along with East Low German in the case of Germany).

Travis, your views on the attitudes towards the German people are pretty strange. Being in America (I think you are at least) would skew that: you didn't have the real threat of invasion, nor was the war truly on your doorstep. Plus being in Wisconsin (I may be wrong) you'd have a pretty pro-German sentiment. So yeah, here in England we are still very weary of the Germans, even though to an extent it is done humourously (at least to us); in the past however, the Germans were very much despised, not simply their leadership.

Oh, and even my generation (I'm only 18) seem to use kraut a fair bit, even if it is more jovially meant.

>>Travis, your views on the attitudes towards the German people are pretty strange. Being in America (I think you are at least) would skew that: you didn't have the real threat of invasion, nor was the war truly on your doorstep. Plus being in Wisconsin (I may be wrong) you'd have a pretty pro-German sentiment. So yeah, here in England we are still very weary of the Germans, even though to an extent it is done humourously (at least to us); in the past however, the Germans were very much despised, not simply their leadership.<<

For starters, yes, I live in and am from Wisconsin, which is in the US.

Note that the views I was speaking about are not my necessarily just my own; for instance, I don't believe that the Wehrmacht was "clean", so to speak, even if they still did not do the large portion of the deportation and killing of Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and so on, as in many cases Einsatzgruppen and like still operated not far from Wehrmacht units, which did not interfere with their activities one bit, and also the Wehrmacht did make use of slave labor to build things such as fortifications (for example, the Atlantic Wall was largely built with forced labor of one sort or another).

Of course, yes, the lack of any real threat of invasion or direct contact at home with the war definitely has affected attitudes here in the US, and such likely was even more influenced by the overall ethnic makeup of the population here in Wisconsin, especially at the time of WW2, combined with continued ties with Germany in some cases after WW2 (a good few Germans emigrated here in the years shortly after WW2). Note that such attitudes were in place even during WW2 in the US in general, as the Germans were generally thought of as a "worthy foe", in contrast to the Japanese, who were the targets of severe racial hatred and many of whom were thrown in concentration-uuhhh-internment camps in the western US; the image of the Germans did not really change at all until the general publics' learning of the concentration camps ran by the Nazis (which happened rather late in the war). Even then, such has been more associated with the Nazis than with the German population in general.

>>Oh, and even my generation (I'm only 18) seem to use kraut a fair bit, even if it is more jovially meant. <<

That's the thing - it is not really seen as "politically correct", you might say, to use that term these days.

That should be "not necessarily my own" above.

"Even in the context of World War 2 there is a clear distinction made between Nazis and Germans in general"

That's why you are more clever than the English will ever be...

Just trying to make a synthesis out of these two separate discussions:
How did the Nazis view Low German?

Weren't most of the Nazis Bavarian? I assume they'd have a low opinion of it then, but that's just a guess.

Guest, we English do make a distinction between Nazis and Germans, but it's still the most important chapter in recent German history, really, especially in relation to Britain. Anyway, these days we aren't really German-bashing, rather we're just poking fun in a more friendly manner.

"I think the english and the german word for Germany is better than Allemagne/Alemania or Saksa (is it Finnish?) because it reflects this nation as a whole, including all the major germanic tribes that took part in founding it."

I don't think that the word "Germany/Germanie" to call "Allemagne" is the best we could use, because, by definition "Germany/Germanie" would include all the germanic nations, England, netherlands and scandinavia included.
Even if I understand that it is the way it is used in English it is the equivalent if Italy was named under the name "latiny"

It's-a mi, Mário. Vat hapens if ei put "Ei leöve spam" in da lille box?