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Re: Codename "de" (was Re: Country names in national languages)

From:Wesley Parish <wes.parish@...>
Date:Sunday, May 12, 2002, 7:22
On Sun, 12 May 2002 05:53, Philip Newton wrote:
> On 11 May 02, at 12:14, Walter Tsuyoshi Sano wrote: > > > I remembered that long ago we were trying to have a list of the > > > name of the countries in the official/national languages. I even > > > had a table with this names, but I lost it unfortunately. > > > > I wonder why 'Germany' has so many different names: > > > > de: Deutschland (/dOjtSland/; I know how to pronounce it, > > just not sure how to represent the diphtong) > > jp: Doitsu (from the german pronunciation)
Derived from teuto- the names of some of the germanic tribes around about the times of the Roman Empire.
> > dk: Tyskland (|y| being a high front rounded vowel, like german |ü|)
This would be from one of the North German tribes, I expect, probably dating from the Viking times.
> > en: Germany
Unsure. Though probably a formation based on the name Germania, and related names for some of the germanic tribes the Romans knew.
> > pt: Alemanha (Spanish, French and Italian have similar forms)
Not sure. I think it's probably something to do with our good friend Carolus Magnus, a.k.a. Charlemagne, and the confederacy of tribes he commanded. Anyone got any more accurate information?
> > > > What else? > > Finnish "Saksa" (from Saxony/Sachsen, presumably). > I think at least one of the Baltic countries (lt, lv, ee) has a > different stem for Germany as well. >
Then you have the Scottish sassenach, also derived from the same root; the Welsh Saesneg, etc, so evidently the Scots and the Welsh had a lot longer first contact with that branch of the North German/Baltic branch of germanic speakers than they did with the others.
> Then there's Russian, which calls the country Germaniya (regularly > enough) but the language nemets' (from a word meaning "mute", > apparently). > > Cheers, > Philip
-- Mau e ki, "He aha to mea nui?" You ask, "What is the most important thing?" Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata." I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."

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Lars Henrik Mathiesen <thorinn@...>