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From: William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.physics.relativity,sci.math
Subject: Re: "The Day The Earth Stood Still"
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2025 18:49:43 -0400
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Thomas Heger wrote:
> Am Sonntag000001, 01.06.2025 um 23:57 schrieb William Hyde:
>> Thomas Heger wrote:
>>> Am Samstag000031, 31.05.2025 um 23:28 schrieb William Hyde:
>>
>>>
>>> Dutch is actually relatively close to German 
>>
>> Indeed.  When in the Netherlands I found that my knowledge of English, 
>> combined with the decayed remnants of my German, allowed me to read 
>> most signage.   After a week or two I was able to read more complex 
>> inscriptions.
>>
>> I got through a page of "The Lord of the Rings" in Norwegian by 
>> similar means, though it probably helped that I'd already read it in 
>> English.
>>
>> and could also be regarded
>>> as proper English name for 'German'.
>>
>> It's an odd situation.
>>
>>
>> The English name you after one group mentioned by the Romans, the 
>> French after another, but the actual descendants of the Romans at 
>> least make a stab at the right name.
>>
>> The Irish use the same group as the English, but the Welsh follow the 
>> French model, as do the Spanish.
>>
>> You have the same situation as Greece, which foreigners have been 
>> misnaming since 500 BC.  And of course there are more such examples.
>>
>>  >
>>  > But the British
>>
>> Not all the British, see above.
>>
>>   used 'German' instead of 'Dutch' because 'Dutch' was
>>  > already in use for the language of the Netherlands.
>>
>> I wish I could believe they were  that rational, but I doubt it.
>>
>> I can find no Anglo-Saxon word for "Germany".  They had words for 
>> various tribes, for the Franks and the Burgundians, and "Denmark" was 
>> a word, but no word for the lands where German speaking people lived. 
>> Perhaps they just called it "the old country".
> 
> There was no country at that time, where all German speakers lived.
> 
> German was actually a language, which was spoken in many areas of Europe 
> and possibly beyond.
> 
> Modern Germany was founded in 1871 and was created by fusing together 
> about 1000 different mainly tiny entities.
> 
> Prior to that year there was no Germany and certainly also not at the 
> times of the Anglo-Saxons.

 >
 > So, the Anglo-Saxons had no need to name a country, which didn't exist.
 >


Actually the "Kingdom of Germany" dates from the breakup of 
Charlemagne's empire, formed in the Treaty of Verdun in 843.  It was 
later absorbed into the Holy Roman Empire, which was later renamed 
(circa 1500) "The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation". Which I 
presume is why the 1871 state was the second empire.

Naturally, the word used for "German" in the above varies from place to 
place - wikipedia is helpful here, giving:

"The Kingdom of Germany or German Kingdom (Latin: regnum Teutonicorum 
'kingdom of the Germans', regnum Teutonicum 'German kingdom',[1] regnum 
Alamanie "kingdom of Germany",[2] German: Deutsches Königreich)"

so the Anglo-Saxons really did need a name, and they went with Caesar's 
version.

> French took the 'Alemanes', which were a people or tribe, which possibly 
> stem from the south-west of Europe and settled in the south-west of 
> Germany.
> 
> Romans used a general term (like in many other cases), and called all 
> the people from the North of the limes 'Germanes'.
> 
> This word was, of course, not used by the 'Germanes', who also didn't 
> call their country 'Germany' (which, btw, hadn't existed at that time).
> 
> 
>> So by the time the English felt the need for a word describing the 
>> area, they probably just went with the Latin, the more so as most 
>> literate people at the time were in the church.
> 
> English is (in my opinion) actually closer related to Latin than current 
> Italian.

"This is not true".

"I do not believe this"

"This is not the case".

Only the  third of these remarks has a word arising from Latin.

And in that last one, only "Latin" is from Latin.  You can speak English 
all day without using a latinate word, though I don't see the point 
(search for "Uncleftish Beholding" for an example).

> 
> (possibly all the Romans went to England)

Britain experienced a bit of an economic resurgence in the mid 300s, 
when wealthy refugees from Gaul moved there.  That would possibly have 
increased the fraction of the population that spoke Latin.

William Hyde