this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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[–] [email protected] 225 points 4 weeks ago (26 children)

For anyone wondering, Deutschland, Duitsland and Tyskland all have the same latin root "theodiscus" that became "deutsch". "Allemagne" derives from a germanic tribe, the "Alemanni" who lived in modern day Germany and bordered modern day france. Niemcy and Nemetorszag both stem from old slavic "nem" (or something similar) meaning "mute". They called the Germanic tribes they interacted with mute because they couldn't understand them. "Saksa" is derived from the German region "Saxony".

Please correct me in case i got something wrong.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (2 children)

the “Alemanni” who lived in modern day Germany and bordered modern day france.

Alemans still live in Baden-Württemberg, parts of Bavaria, Switzerland and I think there's also a splattering in Austria. Basically, High Germans which aren't Austro-Bavarian (same culture, different kingdoms) are Alemans.

“Saksa” is derived from the German region “Saxony”.

That one can be a bit misleading: The modern state of Saxony has nothing to do with the Saxon tribe, the place the title was applied to slowly drifted over the ages. They're much more related to Prussians and Thuringians and even Franks, going all the way over to Flanders and Holland, than Saxons proper. (Holland, not Netherlands).

Here's a rough splotch of where Old Saxon was spoken, which you can consider "core Saxony". At least linguistics-wise it spread quite a bit especially during the days of the Hanse (becoming a minority language as far up as Estonia), but it definitely stops before arriving at a place where "goose meat" means "could you please". Utter gibberish.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago

The original saxons lived more or less in the area of modern day lower saxony, that is north west germany.

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