{"id":97,"date":"2005-11-27T10:05:18","date_gmt":"2005-11-27T08:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cornelia.siteware.ch\/blog\/wordpress\/?p=97"},"modified":"2005-11-27T10:34:52","modified_gmt":"2005-11-27T08:34:52","slug":"the-meaning-of-deutsch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cornelia.siteware.ch\/blog\/wordpress\/2005\/11\/27\/the-meaning-of-deutsch","title":{"rendered":"The meaning of &#8222;Deutsch&#8220;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I was asked for the meaning of &#8222;deutsch&#8220; in a German class, I was confused. Even beginners ought to know that &#8222;deutsch&#8220; translates to German. However, my students were not after the translation at all. They had noticed that &#8222;deutsch&#8220; has many althogether different names in different languages.  It is <em>German<\/em> in English, <em>allemande<\/em> in French, <em>tedesco<\/em> in Italian, <em>tysk<\/em> in Swedisch, <em>duits<\/em> in Dutch, <em> alem\u00e1n<\/em> in Spanish, <em>n\u011bmecky <\/em>in Czeck, <em>niemiecki<\/em> in Polish and so on. <\/p>\n<p>Today the word <em>deutsch<\/em> refers to <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the language spoken mostly in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (and in some other countries). When refering to the language you write Deutsch with capital letter. <\/li>\n<li>everything, which has to do with Germany or German people.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>However, to answer the questions of my students, we have to consider the history of words, i.e. their etymology. <em>Deutsch<\/em> is derived from de indoeuropean root *&thorn;eud&#333;, which roughly translates to &#8222;people&#8220; as in nation (the letter &thorn; is pronounced like a voicelss th). This root has a lot of children in different languages. Those words refer to so called vernaculars, in opposition to Latin, which was the lingua franca.<\/p>\n<p>The Latin word for such vernaculars was <em>theodisce<\/em>. On the British Islands it was used as a name for Old English. In Old High German there was the term <em>diutisc<\/em>, in Middle High German <em>tiutsch <\/em>or <em>diutsch<\/em>. Therefore, &#8222;Deutsch&#8220; can be translated to &#8222;the language, spoken by  the (common) population&#8220;, in opposition to Latin. Later on, the term was used to differentiate between romanic and germanic languages.  In the 10th and 11th century <em>Diutisc<\/em> and <em>tiutsch<\/em> were used as a name for the germanic languages spoken on the continent. Even dutch dialects were called &#8222;Deutsch&#8220;. The Englisch word Dutch is a relict of those days.  Today German and Dutch are different but similar languages. <\/p>\n<p>But why are the words for German so different? In the list above you can discern four different groups. Some are related to the word deutsch. For instance Italian <em>tedesco<\/em>, Dutch  <em>duits<\/em> or Swedisch <em>tysk<\/em> . Those languages use a form of the self-designation german speakers use.<br \/>\nThe English word <em>German<\/em> comes form Latin. Julius Caesar used the word Germani to speak about tribes in the north-east of Gaul. The precise origin of the word is unknown. It might have been the name of a particular tribe.<br \/>\nThe French and Spanish words are derived from another group of tribes, called Allemanni. They lived in the region we call Alsace today.<br \/>\nThe forth group of words ( like Czeck n\u011bmecky and Polish niemiecki) might have been derived from the name of another germanic tribe. The Nemeter lived in the region of Lake Constance. But this explanation is not uncontested. <\/p>\n<p>Sources: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Kluge. Etymologisches W\u00f6rterbuch der deutschen Sprache, Berlin 1999.\n<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/\">Online Etymology Dictionary<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Duden, Deutsches Universalw\u00f6rterbuch<\/li>\n<li>Wikipedia: <a href=\"http:\/\/de.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Deutsch_in_anderen_Sprachen\">Deutsch in anderen Sprachen<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some languages use very different words for the German word &#8222;deutsch&#8220;. This article looks into the original meaning of the word as well as into the possible reasons for this difference. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,16,7],"tags":[157],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cornelia.siteware.ch\/blog\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cornelia.siteware.ch\/blog\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cornelia.siteware.ch\/blog\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cornelia.siteware.ch\/blog\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cornelia.siteware.ch\/blog\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/cornelia.siteware.ch\/blog\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2084,"href":"http:\/\/cornelia.siteware.ch\/blog\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions\/2084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cornelia.siteware.ch\/blog\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cornelia.siteware.ch\/blog\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cornelia.siteware.ch\/blog\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}