Term "Slav" itself is reffering to term "slovo", which mean "word". Slavic languages still pretty close to each other and term "Slav" also has mean "those who you can talk to". At least in Russia term "nyemets" was used to all foreigners somewhere until XVII century, later this term was attached to Germans, because Peter the Great brings many foreign nobility in country, and mostly it was Germans
@@Goran1138 'niemcy' or 'ot niemec' referred to the West abroad, or to Germanic-speaking Central Europe, if the land was not specified. Several terms coincided in this. Just like Germania was the land of the tribes living such and such way, and later the name was shifting between the geography, ethnic affiliation or linguistics. This is a complex topic. Not necessarily a dichotomy of "speaking" and "non-speaking" peoples. There were so many other non-Slavs which were not called 'niemcy', so there is no logical reason to call the Germans only "dumb". One of the umbrella terms was 'inii jazici' = "other languages (speakers)".
There’s no way someone could think slavs and germans look similar… maybe if they’re from Asia or Africa and they’re not used to recognize European facial features…
As a native Silesian I confirm. Also, we can call Germany “Rajch” (from ger. “Reich”), because last time we were part of Germany it was the Third Reich and it stays in our memory.
A lot of Navajo names for European countries were invented in ww2 by Navajo code talkers, who didn't want to use loanword names as then the enemy might be able to pick up on what they were referring to, so instead they made up descriptive names like that. Italy is "Land of people who don't speak clearly", France is "Moustache people land", and Sweden is "Land of people who wear horned hats".
In Turkish, there's even a pie called "nemçe böreği" or "nemse böreği", obviously a type of Austrian pastry brought to Turkey by the immigrants from the Balkans. They even call pastries "burek" in the Balkan countries.
Small correction (0:35): Hungarian is not a Slavic language, in fact it's not even an Indo-European one(it's Finno-Ugric, related to Finnish and Estonian among others), despite our word "Németország" sharing a root with the corresponding words in modern Slavic languages("német" refers to the people, while "ország" means country). Insightful video apart from that, I really enjoy your content. :D
The last point reminds me - I have heard that there's also varieties of sign language wherein the character for 'German' is mimicking a spike upon one's head, as derived from the Pickelhaube. I eould assume the navajo word to have the same origin.
In a similar fashion to Russian, in Romanian we call Germany Germania but the adjective can either be "german" or "neamț", the latter from Proto-Slavic
@@victoriaa.578not new but the difference between the words is that the name "Germany" means land, namely country. the word "немцы" came from the Proslavic “foreigner” and was assigned in the language to the germans who migrated to the Russian empire so “немцы” is a definition of nationality, and Germany is the name of country
Germany - Германия German - немец (a person) or немецкий (if we mean something inanimate related to Germany) For example немецкий язык - German language немецкий автомобиль - German car
Austria or Germany what’s a difference - Speaks german - speaks german, rest is detail 🤣🤣🤣 I’m joking but the ancient Slavs seriously thought like that. “There’re just many nations how many languages there are“ 🤷♀️
The Welsh term for Germany is '(yr) Almaen' . We call the English people 'Saeson' , from Saxon - so kind of a two for one from the different German tribe names used around Europe
That's interesting. I'd heard of the word Saes from my Welsh friend. In Irish the words for England / Englishman are Sasana / Sasanach from the same root of Saxon. I know Irish shares a lot of other words with Welsh (such as Carraig / Carreg and Aimsir* / Amser) but it seems that our words referring to the Germans all come from the Latin root instead. an Ghearmáin / Gearmánach. *Aimsir is kinda complicated because the meaning changed a lot more over time (ironically) in Irish than it did in Welsh, so it's usually used to mean "weather" now, it can also be used to refer to a time period or era it would be an archaic way of speaking.
Same in breton, we call the English people "Saozon" and the german "Alamaned" It seems like English are called Saxons in all Celtic languages. From the anglo-saxon tribes in Britain, only angles have remained in spirits, but it's the opposite with Celtic people, I don't know why.
English began using "Germany" and "German" in the 1500s, and these gradually replaced the older "Almain" which "Almaen" is probablly related to. I don't know this for sure, but I bet that "Germany" came to be prefered during the Renaissance in an attempt to emulate Latin writings e.g. Germania by Tacitus and Commentaries on the Gallic War by Caesar, where the people are Germani and the place is Germania.
interestingly, the words Welsh/Wales come from a Germanic word meaning "foreigner" and has cognate placenames found encircling much of Germanic Europe, including Wales, Cornwall, Wallonia (in Belgium), Gaul (France) and Wallochia/the Vlachs (in Romania). the names Walsh and Wallace are also cognate, as is walnut.
That’s true, from the late Latin “Teodiscus”, used by some people during the early Holy Roman Empire. I’ve come across that by studying Germanic philology at the university 😁 that’s probably why we call German people “tedeschi”
When Slavs entered the eastern part of Germany it was quite empty, nearly all tribes settled over to the southern and western Europe, just a few villages and towns were left behind and their citizens doesn't speak a slavic language, so they were called 'nemec' (the mute) and other slavic tribes called 'slav' (the speakers)! So in nearly all slavic languages Germans are still 'nemec' (the mute)
In Russia for long time “nemec” was referred to all who don’t speak Russian, that is, foreigners. as example “Nemeckaja sloboda” - Villiage of Foreigners
In Czech, the word Němci (German people) indeed is from the word němý, meaning mute, so it means the mute people. Similarly the Czech word for Slavs - Slované, comes from the word slovo, which means word, so it can be translated as "people who understand our word'
Serbo-Croatian: Njemačka (Germany) Nijemci (Germans) Slovo however means letter, not word in this language - riječ means word. Slaven/Sloven - may have been derived from slava meaning glory.
Yes, I've seen the explanation for the etymology before. But, why would they adopt that name for themselves? When there's a clear etymological linked to one of their own words@@franmiskovic7630
To je jedna z teórií. Slovo Nemec môže pochádzať aj z názvu Keltského/Germánskeho kmeňa Nemetov. Slovo Slovan môže pochádzať zo slova Slovǫta - starý slovanský názov pre rieku Dneper.
0:56 As a german this confused me slightly so I looked it up For Context “Deutschland” is a composite noun of the adjective or noun “deutsch”/“Deutsch” (can be directly translated to the English word German) and a noun “Land” (Country or State, depending on context), so it is a German country or a country where you speak German, the exact meaning is up for interpretation, but i would go with first. The thing he is pointing to is the etymology of the word “deutsch”, specifically of its proto-Germanic ancestor “þiudiskaz” (translated to “part of the people/tribe, this meaning will however only be found rudimentarily or as a secondary meaning). I would argue however that using this Interpretation for the meaning of “Deutschland” is very weird, as most variations of “þiudiskaz” have three options (for their main meaning): 1. Identical to “Deutsch” (Mostly in Germanic languages, the guys in the UK just wandered a bit to the west with “Dutch”) 2. Speaks [Major Germanic Language] but not [own local Germanic language] 3. “Völkisch” - This is hard to translate so here is a description - based on a mix of dictionary and my own impressions, this is an adjective that describes attributes affiliated with the people, this means that a person cannot be “völkisch”, but behavior, tradition, music can. The issue still is, “Deutsch” is a perfectly valid German word, and shouldn’t be traced back into the years 100 BC and earlier, where the meaning you are referring to is found, just to say where the word “Deutschland” comes from, at least not without explaining what it actually means and how the word is constructed. My information comes from de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch_(Etymologie) This is a German source which I personally find easier to read, not because of the language, my English is relatively good I’d say, but because the table that contains different “mutations”, their respective language and their meanings.
@@D3rWischmoptedesco means German language or a German and Deutsch refers to the language and Deutscher refers to a person so i don't see how that's not what it means
@@gavinrolls1054 I am giving some insight into the etymology of "Deutsch", because I don’t really agree with the literal translation given for "Deutschland", as it essentially uses anachronistic meanings. At no point in time did I say the Italian "tedesco" isn’t related to the German "deutsch"
The Russian influence, kardashem. For us, Tatars, the official word is only “Almaniya”, but in spoken language almost nobody knows it, because the schooling is only in Russian
n Russia for long time “nemec” was referred to all who don’t speak Russian, that is, foreigners. as example “Nemeckaja sloboda” - Villiage of Foreigners
Preißn is a term Bavarians use for Northern and Easter n Germans. People in Luxemburg probably do that too. Preussen was the German state/kingdom that dominated the northern parts of Germany. The parts that now belong to Poland and Russia were in German referred to as Ostpreußen, eastern Prussia. The name of the football clubs Borussia Dortmund or Borussia Mönchengladbach derive from, that the area historically belonged to Preussen.
As a lithuainian just making a guess about the origins, it could be that it comes from the rulers interacting with the germans trough letters, because in lithuainian vokas means letter.
I think the fact that Navajo is “the people who wear metal pointed hats” is an interesting thing we get to see in real time. For most of history, people’s name for themselves and others were “the people” and “the warriors/the other people, etc”, and we see in Navajo that they only needed to get the word for Germany during WWI to talk about Germany, and from pictures, that’s what they called them. I wake up every morning with historical linguistics calling my name, from a dark, quiet, closet
There is also the variant from latin "german" which is the standard/modern way, "neamț" is more colloquial and used more by countryfolk. And also the country itself is called "Germania", still being of latin origin.
Kazakh is an interesting case, because not only did Germanya take Almanya's place, but the German people, language and etc. are called "nemis", originating from the Slavic word. So technically, Kazakhs has had 3 names for the Germans. Almanyans, Germanyans and the Nemis
But I haven't ever heard the word "Almanyans" in kazakh language. I meet only "nemis" when we describe a person and "Germania" when we talk about the country:/
In Latvian Vācija might corellate with word "Vēc" which means old, because German Knights were the ones who forcefully united Latvians, so "Vācija" might mean "predecessors". But that's just a theory. A LANGUAGE THEORY!
In Bulgarian we have a similar thing to Russian where the country is called Германия (Germania), but the language is called Немски (Nemski(slightly different form to other slavic languages)). However we also have the word Германски (Germanski), which is derived from Германия, so you could technically not use any slavic word for the country or the language
I’m half Japanese and I live in Canada. In English it’s Germany, in Japanese it’s ドイツ (doitsu) and in French it’s allemagne. Never new why they were all so different
@@barbar5822 America doesn't really count considering the actual name is United States of America. America is technically just the two continents. Oh and if it did America is still somewhat different in a few language.
The Korean name 독일 (dog-il), which at first listen seems to bear no connection to German, actually stems from the Korean pronunciation of the Kanji 独逸 that were used to denote the Japanese pronunciation of the word “Deutsch” (German - ドイツ)
In urdu, although nowadays "Jarmani" is more common, however, the arabic version of "Almanya" was used previously. Interestingly, Urdu doesn't have any fixed vocabulary, it's different for different dialects.
You could've put at asterisk clarifying that Hungarian is not a Slavic language. People conflate Central and Eastern Europe with "Slavic" all the time, and it's irritating. It's basically the same thing as when people conflate "Muslim" and "Arab," which you recently made a video complaining about. I'm not angry or super offended, but please do a quick google search on things like this before putting them out. That being said, yes, that word does come from a Slavic root word, as even "mute" in Hungarian is "néma".
I always thought the Slavic version was a derogatory term dating back to the world wars, being phonetically close to Nimitz, like we called them krauts or boches (fr) Thanks for the video, I definitely learned something !
We Indians usually use the English names of European countries, because we didn't have direct contact with them throughout history( it was mostly through Arabs). Only after colonization and trade, we came to know about different countries in Europe after the 1600s, although we knew about Europe. We only call Greece by a Sanskrit name, Yavana-desha, which is derived from Ionia province of Greece and we had contacts with Greeks for the last 2500 years. Turkey or Central Asia is called Turushka desha, but we mostly use the English names only.
Latvian and lithuanian words for german look suspiciously like transliterations of the german word “volk” which is a cognate of english “folk” But that’s mostly just speculation and my tendency to be irresistibly curious of things with unknown or mysterious origin.
And I think Latvian name "Vācija" is connected to word "Vēc" which means old, and German Knighthoods were the ones who forcefully united Latvia. So "Vācija" might be something like "Predecessors". But it is just a theory. A language theory!
As Kazakhstan was the part of Russia the most part of its modern history we've got a lot of names from them. For example if germans are called "немцы(nemtsy)" in russian, in kazakh we call them "немістер(nemister)" and I am sure other post soviet countries call it something similar in their languages. It is interesting considering the fact that kazakh for example is not even near close to slavic languages. It has most of asian languages grammar (verb in the end). Although Germany is "Германия" (Germaniya) and we usually call it also Германия rather than Алмания (actually I never hear call people it Almaniya)
my german teacher said that we call it Vokietija is because our people would look at germans and say "vo kiets" (so cool) and that turned into Vokietis (german) :D
En español, al pais lo llamamos 'Alemania'. Y el gentilicio que todos los hispanohablantes usan, habitualmente, es 'alemán', pero también existen otros sinónimos del gentilicio 'alemán' en el idioma español (al menos tres que yo conozca y yo haya usado alguna vez) lo que pasa es que se usan con mucha menos frecuencia. Esos otras formas de decir 'alemán' en español son: 'teutón', 'germano' y 'tudesco'
In Romanian it’s the same as in Russian. The country is called “Germania” while the people are called “Nemți”, and a German is called “Neamț”. Fun fact, a Romanian county in the North-East is called Neamț.
Silesia mentioned, I'm satisfied. Though, as someone else has already said, Mjymcy is the correct term in Silesian. Prusacy is what we Poles called people from Prussia.
About Slavic: Ancient slavs divided people into two categories - Sloveni (the word Slavic cones from it) or people who could speak the Word (Slovo). - Nemets - who couldn't speak The Word (from which zodiac word for Mute comes from). In other words, the Slavic words for German is similar to the word Barbarian.
Some used to say ashkenaz, as a name for people originated from the ancient man ashkenaz, mentioned in genesis . But it is probably because of the similarity to how arabs called Scandinavia
What's also interesting is that the word for "Slavs" in Slavic is related to the word "word" (slovo). I.e. Slavs are people you can understand, and Germans are people you cannot understand ("mumbling people"). Also it initially referred to all known Germanic tribes, not just Germans.
We poles called germany ,,Niemcy" because during Ostsiedlung when germans were settling in silesia the Poles living there couldn't understand their language so they called Germans ,,Niemcy" (like Niemy- mute)
To add a small detail: The name "Deutschland" is derived from the name of the language, "Deutsch". This in turn comes from a proto-germanic word meaning "of the (common) people", because the language of the clergy and nobility was Latin. The "ordinary" language didn't have a name so they just called it the language of the people.
In Romania is Germania for the country, and for the people either Germani or Nemți (similar to slavic languages), Romanian being 70% latin and 15-20% slavic.
Kazakh does it the same way as Russian: the way to say German as in the language is неміс тілі (nemis tili, with tili meaning language) but the way to say Germany as in the country is германия (germaniya)
In Romanian we call the people living in Germany as "germani" which is similar to "Germany" and also "nemți" which is closer to other Central European languages.
@@NotOliwiec Indeed! But pretty similar in scandinavian too. We say _vad är det_ = "what are that" (i.e. the word _är_ = "are" used for both singular and plural). English got the word "is" from so called west germanic tribes in the 400s and the word are" from the Danes later in the 800s. And a similar ethymology for many central basic words. So, although not the case, scandinavian often looks like a mix of German and English. Such as in this example (using Swedish): En: _I put the book on the little green table_ Sw: _Jag lade boken på lilla gröna bordet_ Ge: _Ich legte das Buch auf den kleinen grünen Tisch_ Just remember that scandinavian usually place the definite article as a word suffix! So _boken_ = "the book", and _bordet_ = "the board" = "the table".
It's so funny that slavs were like "huh that tribe across the river looks just look the same as us but they don't speak like us"
I tend to accept another version which refers to the Celtic tribe -- Nemetes.
Term "Slav" itself is reffering to term "slovo", which mean "word". Slavic languages still pretty close to each other and term "Slav" also has mean "those who you can talk to".
At least in Russia term "nyemets" was used to all foreigners somewhere until XVII century, later this term was attached to Germans, because Peter the Great brings many foreign nobility in country, and mostly it was Germans
@@Goran1138 'niemcy' or 'ot niemec' referred to the West abroad, or to Germanic-speaking Central Europe, if the land was not specified. Several terms coincided in this. Just like Germania was the land of the tribes living such and such way, and later the name was shifting between the geography, ethnic affiliation or linguistics. This is a complex topic. Not necessarily a dichotomy of "speaking" and "non-speaking" peoples. There were so many other non-Slavs which were not called 'niemcy', so there is no logical reason to call the Germans only "dumb". One of the umbrella terms was 'inii jazici' = "other languages (speakers)".
@@Goran1138'Slava' as in 'glory'?
There’s no way someone could think slavs and germans look similar… maybe if they’re from Asia or Africa and they’re not used to recognize European facial features…
Actually, Germany in Silesian is Mjymcy (Germans - Mjymce). Prusacy just means Prussians in Polish and means neither Germany nor Germans in Silesian.
As a native Silesian I confirm.
Also, we can call Germany “Rajch” (from ger. “Reich”), because last time we were part of Germany it was the Third Reich and it stays in our memory.
Germany came from Prussia 💀
@@marzan6561And Vatican from Roman Empire. So?
@@karczameczka It actually comes from the Papal State which was created by the Franks
Czynściej suchać jak sie godo ajnfach Rajch, ni Mjymce;)
A lot of Navajo names for European countries were invented in ww2 by Navajo code talkers, who didn't want to use loanword names as then the enemy might be able to pick up on what they were referring to, so instead they made up descriptive names like that. Italy is "Land of people who don't speak clearly", France is "Moustache people land", and Sweden is "Land of people who wear horned hats".
How can they say these words and not laugh
They really paid attention to hats 😂
Now that I know they called France "Moustache People Land", I can die happy
They didnt teach in class that the navajao were using stereotypes, hilarious
@@PlayerSlotAvailable I think it's a nod to the Vikings, who didn't actually have horned helmets but it's common belief
The slavic word nemeç is also used in arabic and ottoman turkish for austria.
In Arabic that would be the word for Austria not Germany
The word for Germany would be similar to French Almania.
@@MrTStatThat's what OP said?
@@ayymen I could swear I saw it Germany not Austria
But there is no edit
So my bad
@@MrTStat No problem. I often misread something like that 👍
In Turkish, there's even a pie called "nemçe böreği" or "nemse böreği", obviously a type of Austrian pastry brought to Turkey by the immigrants from the Balkans. They even call pastries "burek" in the Balkan countries.
Small correction (0:35): Hungarian is not a Slavic language, in fact it's not even an Indo-European one(it's Finno-Ugric, related to Finnish and Estonian among others), despite our word "Németország" sharing a root with the corresponding words in modern Slavic languages("német" refers to the people, while "ország" means country). Insightful video apart from that, I really enjoy your content. :D
But "néma" is mute also in Hungarian. A lot of Hungarian vocabulary is of Slavic origin.
Ország was a suffix for most countries
20% of the Hungarian languages comes from Slavic, so it was fairly right in my opinion.
Just like 🇵🇱kurwa♥️kurva🇭🇺 😊
They didn't say it was a Slavic language, they said that the words for Germany in most Slavic languages share the same root
The last point reminds me - I have heard that there's also varieties of sign language wherein the character for 'German' is mimicking a spike upon one's head, as derived from the Pickelhaube. I eould assume the navajo word to have the same origin.
That's definitely the sign in Irish Sign Language. The handshape is also that for the letter D, which may or may not be a coincidence.
That very interesting. I didn’t know that. 😮🙂
I guess "Metal Hat" refers to Stahlhelm, not Prussian helmet
That’s the sign in Hungarian Sign Language too! (Basically you point your index finger up and you place your hand to your forehead)
@@leanykakicsi6152 Neat!
In a similar fashion to Russian, in Romanian we call Germany Germania but the adjective can either be "german" or "neamț", the latter from Proto-Slavic
As for Russian, we use words "Немец" or "Немцы" (reads like "Nemets" and "Nemtsy") for naming germans
@@CoolBoy12099 both the video and the commentator already said that.
Romanians have so many Slavic loanwords, like 15%. For example, Vremea.
@@Prodavac da... ;))
Dude I’ve been learning Russian and I was so confused by the германия and немецкий thing. Thanks 😅
We are a little confused too lol. When I was a kid, I would refer to Germany as Немция 🙃
Word Германия is quite new to Russian language so…
@@victoriaa.578not new but the difference between the words is that the name "Germany" means land, namely country. the word "немцы" came from the Proslavic “foreigner” and was assigned in the language to the germans who migrated to the Russian empire so “немцы” is a definition of nationality, and Germany is the name of country
Germany - Германия
German - немец (a person) or немецкий (if we mean something inanimate related to Germany) For example немецкий язык - German language
немецкий автомобиль - German car
gooot it, so немецкий is still more related with the people of germany vs Германия is more of an offical title?@aleh112
0:42
Fun Fact:
In Arabic this word is the origin word for Austria (in Arabic: al-Nemsa).
Did arabs get this word from slavs
@@craftah
Yes. (Through Ottomans)
Yup
Austria or Germany what’s a difference - Speaks german - speaks german, rest is detail 🤣🤣🤣 I’m joking but the ancient Slavs seriously thought like that. “There’re just many nations how many languages there are“ 🤷♀️
@@karczameczka
The funny thing is that Austria is called Австрия (non-slavic origin name) in Russian but "al-Nemsa" (Slavic origin name) in Arabic. 😁
In Japanese, it is also same. We say it as "ドイツ" Doitsu for Germany and ドイツ語 Doitsu-go for German
Yes! We do!
The Welsh term for Germany is '(yr) Almaen' . We call the English people 'Saeson' , from Saxon - so kind of a two for one from the different German tribe names used around Europe
That's interesting. I'd heard of the word Saes from my Welsh friend. In Irish the words for England / Englishman are Sasana / Sasanach from the same root of Saxon. I know Irish shares a lot of other words with Welsh (such as Carraig / Carreg and Aimsir* / Amser) but it seems that our words referring to the Germans all come from the Latin root instead. an Ghearmáin / Gearmánach.
*Aimsir is kinda complicated because the meaning changed a lot more over time (ironically) in Irish than it did in Welsh, so it's usually used to mean "weather" now, it can also be used to refer to a time period or era it would be an archaic way of speaking.
Same in breton, we call the English people "Saozon" and the german "Alamaned"
It seems like English are called Saxons in all Celtic languages. From the anglo-saxon tribes in Britain, only angles have remained in spirits, but it's the opposite with Celtic people, I don't know why.
English began using "Germany" and "German" in the 1500s, and these gradually replaced the older "Almain" which "Almaen" is probablly related to. I don't know this for sure, but I bet that "Germany" came to be prefered during the Renaissance in an attempt to emulate Latin writings e.g. Germania by Tacitus and Commentaries on the Gallic War by Caesar, where the people are Germani and the place is Germania.
interestingly, the words Welsh/Wales come from a Germanic word meaning "foreigner" and has cognate placenames found encircling much of Germanic Europe, including Wales, Cornwall, Wallonia (in Belgium), Gaul (France) and Wallochia/the Vlachs (in Romania). the names Walsh and Wallace are also cognate, as is walnut.
@@ryan5769I thought walnut came from walnut shells being thick like walls.
In Chinese we use 德國 with "國" meaning country and "德" pronounced dé /tɤ˧˥/ from "Deutschland"
德国? 我只听得懂简体中文
Tedesco is fascinatingly close to þeudisko which is the word with which the germanic people referred to themselves.
We also have a synonym, "Teutonico", which has the same origin, even though it is not used much today
@@m.m.1301 as in the teutonic knights?
@@bingusiswatching6335 Yes, teutonic knight literally means "German knight"
@@m.m.1301 ah wow nice
That’s true, from the late Latin “Teodiscus”, used by some people during the early Holy Roman Empire. I’ve come across that by studying Germanic philology at the university 😁 that’s probably why we call German people “tedeschi”
In China, Korea, and Japan, we borrow the German native term. Deguo(guo meaning country) (CN) , Dogil (KR), and Doitsu (JP)
same in Vietnamese, the word “Đức” is Han Viet for Deguo(without the guo)
Germany had actively participated in promoting military and other technologies to east Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Doitsu comes from Dutch.
@@tideghost
Which in turn came from German
德国 is how it's written in hanzi
When Slavs entered the eastern part of Germany it was quite empty, nearly all tribes settled over to the southern and western Europe, just a few villages and towns were left behind and their citizens doesn't speak a slavic language, so they were called 'nemec' (the mute) and other slavic tribes called 'slav' (the speakers)!
So in nearly all slavic languages Germans are still 'nemec' (the mute)
In Russia for long time “nemec” was referred to all who don’t speak Russian, that is, foreigners. as example “Nemeckaja sloboda” - Villiage of Foreigners
In Czech, the word Němci (German people) indeed is from the word němý, meaning mute, so it means the mute people. Similarly the Czech word for Slavs - Slované, comes from the word slovo, which means word, so it can be translated as "people who understand our word'
Serbo-Croatian: Njemačka (Germany)
Nijemci (Germans)
Slovo however means letter, not word in this language - riječ means word.
Slaven/Sloven - may have been derived from slava meaning glory.
@@someguy2744Well, the word riječ is newer than the word slovo, the meaning only became distinct later
Yes, I've seen the explanation for the etymology before. But, why would they adopt that name for themselves? When there's a clear etymological linked to one of their own words@@franmiskovic7630
@@franmiskovic7630No, the Latin word comes from Greek and the Greek word comes from Slavic.
To je jedna z teórií. Slovo Nemec môže pochádzať aj z názvu Keltského/Germánskeho kmeňa Nemetov. Slovo Slovan môže pochádzať zo slova Slovǫta - starý slovanský názov pre rieku Dneper.
the Slavs were like “if you ain’t speaking Slavic you ain’t speaking!”
Yep, pretty much. Every nation over centuries sooner or later got their own name in Slavic. Except for Germans. They're still mutes to this day.
I love that Navajo is always creative. 😊
0:56 As a german this confused me slightly so I looked it up
For Context “Deutschland” is a composite noun of the adjective or noun “deutsch”/“Deutsch” (can be directly translated to the English word German) and a noun “Land” (Country or State, depending on context), so it is a German country or a country where you speak German, the exact meaning is up for interpretation, but i would go with first.
The thing he is pointing to is the etymology of the word “deutsch”, specifically of its proto-Germanic ancestor “þiudiskaz” (translated to “part of the people/tribe, this meaning will however only be found rudimentarily or as a secondary meaning). I would argue however that using this Interpretation for the meaning of “Deutschland” is very weird, as most variations of “þiudiskaz” have three options (for their main meaning):
1. Identical to “Deutsch” (Mostly in Germanic languages, the guys in the UK just wandered a bit to the west with “Dutch”)
2. Speaks [Major Germanic Language] but not [own local Germanic language]
3. “Völkisch” - This is hard to translate so here is a description - based on a mix of dictionary and my own impressions, this is an adjective that describes attributes affiliated with the people, this means that a person cannot be “völkisch”, but behavior, tradition, music can.
The issue still is, “Deutsch” is a perfectly valid German word, and shouldn’t be traced back into the years 100 BC and earlier, where the meaning you are referring to is found, just to say where the word “Deutschland” comes from, at least not without explaining what it actually means and how the word is constructed.
My information comes from de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch_(Etymologie) This is a German source which I personally find easier to read, not because of the language, my English is relatively good I’d say, but because the table that contains different “mutations”, their respective language and their meanings.
Thank you for this. As a German myself i was like: "what the heck is he talking about, thats not what 'Deutsch' means"
@@D3rWischmop 🫡
i don't really understand what you're trying to say. he's saying tedesco is related to deutsch and it is. it's even a cognate.
@@D3rWischmoptedesco means German language or a German and Deutsch refers to the language and Deutscher refers to a person so i don't see how that's not what it means
@@gavinrolls1054 I am giving some insight into the etymology of "Deutsch", because I don’t really agree with the literal translation given for "Deutschland", as it essentially uses anachronistic meanings.
At no point in time did I say the Italian "tedesco" isn’t related to the German "deutsch"
I'm glad that you mention kazakh variant. However in Kazakhstan the Russian one is more popular, I don't know why
The Russian influence, kardashem. For us, Tatars, the official word is only “Almaniya”, but in spoken language almost nobody knows it, because the schooling is only in Russian
@@honsuaman8743 Өте өкінішті. Мен телеграммда кейбір қазақша Germanyны білмейтін адамдарды көрдім.
In Kazakh we use the Russian variant only. Maybe author confused with other Turkic languages like Turkish or Azeri.
In Hebrew we call it Germania (גרמניה)
but it’s interesting because historically hebrew also had a unique name for germany! אשכנז (ashkenaz)
I thought you guys called it "hell", given history
Mfw I see Latvia and Lithuania mentioned (We are literally invisible and tiny as hell):
As Polish person I still consider germans beig unable to speak
n Russia for long time “nemec” was referred to all who don’t speak Russian, that is, foreigners. as example “Nemeckaja sloboda” - Villiage of Foreigners
Japanese borrowed the name from Dutch: ドイツ [Doitsu]
and Tagalog borrowed the name from Spanish: ᜀᜎᜒᜋᜈ᜔ᜌ [Alemanya]
What's with the Luxembourgish flag and the word "Preisen"? Because the Luxembourgish word for Germany should be Däitschland.
Asi si spletol nemecko s pruskom
Preisen is either Prussia or used as a light degoratory term for a german. We used it alot more as the second.
Indeed we call germany Däitschland.
Preißn is a term Bavarians use for Northern and Easter n Germans. People in Luxemburg probably do that too.
Preussen was the German state/kingdom that dominated the northern parts of Germany. The parts that now belong to Poland and Russia were in German referred to as Ostpreußen, eastern Prussia. The name of the football clubs Borussia Dortmund or Borussia Mönchengladbach derive from, that the area historically belonged to Preussen.
This video is just full of mistakes 😅
Nimeččyna 😍💙💛
As a lithuainian just making a guess about the origins, it could be that it comes from the rulers interacting with the germans trough letters, because in lithuainian vokas means letter.
It means envelope. They didn't use them in Gediminas' time
Navajo has crazy country names. Japan is "Land of the Narrow-eyed People". and Korea is "Little Japan".
In Russian, we integrated the Germany with Niemcy, and got Germania as the name of the country and Nemci is the name of the folk living there
Да не, вьі просто пиздите всего много, вот и запизделись ))
Deutschland , doesnt mean „Land of the People“ , It means „Land of the German people“
it's better to say just people because the deut- root just means people or tribe.
Correction:Indian languages took the word Germany/जर्मनी from English.
I think the fact that Navajo is “the people who wear metal pointed hats” is an interesting thing we get to see in real time. For most of history, people’s name for themselves and others were “the people” and “the warriors/the other people, etc”, and we see in Navajo that they only needed to get the word for Germany during WWI to talk about Germany, and from pictures, that’s what they called them.
I wake up every morning with historical linguistics calling my name, from a dark, quiet, closet
In Romanian, the word for German is "neamț"
So the unable to speak, same as slavic
@@Wild.Beaveryea Romanians got some Slavic words
There is also the variant from latin "german" which is the standard/modern way, "neamț" is more colloquial and used more by countryfolk. And also the country itself is called "Germania", still being of latin origin.
While Romanian has a huge Slavic vocabulary it has lost almost all of the paleo-balcanic words. Only a few shared words with Albanian remain
In nahuatl, the aztec language, Germany is called "Teutotlan", or land or the teutons
Que lo tomó prestado de teutón, en español, que es otra de las formas de decir "alemán" en español
In Spain we can say also teutón. Which comes from the latin and the tribe the romans refered to.
Kazakh is an interesting case, because not only did Germanya take Almanya's place, but the German people, language and etc. are called "nemis", originating from the Slavic word. So technically, Kazakhs has had 3 names for the Germans. Almanyans, Germanyans and the Nemis
But I haven't ever heard the word "Almanyans" in kazakh language. I meet only "nemis" when we describe a person and "Germania" when we talk about the country:/
@@yukinakiu739 сөйлемді дұрыстап жазу керек еді. Has емес, has had🤔
In the beginning you had the word from Turks almanya. Later you took the Russian word Germaniya
Sounds like, in English, the Dutch, i.e. people from the Netherlands
Same in Romanian as in Russian, we use Germania for the country, Germană for the language, and Nemți for the people.
In Latvian Vācija might corellate with word "Vēc" which means old, because German Knights were the ones who forcefully united Latvians, so "Vācija" might mean "predecessors". But that's just a theory. A LANGUAGE THEORY!
Hungary is not a Slavic country nor is the language but wr did interact a lot with the Slavs. Thus the name Németország.
0:02 Bro really used a Montenegrin flag 💀
What's wrong with that, isn't it a Slavic language?
It's an example of a Slavic country, what's the problem?
....are you Serbian?
Because Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian are all dialects of Montenegrin
is it like portugese being replaced with Brazil?
In italia you could also call the land Allemania, but It's a very refind and rare term
In Middle Enɡlish and Early Modern Enɡlish, the word "Almain/Almayne" was also used, taken from Middle French
In Bulgarian we have a similar thing to Russian where the country is called Германия (Germania), but the language is called Немски (Nemski(slightly different form to other slavic languages)). However we also have the word Германски (Germanski), which is derived from Германия, so you could technically not use any slavic word for the country or the language
In Mandarin / Standard Chinese , the also get their word (德意志 、 pronounced Déyìzhì )from deutschland (⁎⁍̴̛ᴗ⁍̴̛⁎)
Off topic, but I like how you showed the traditional characters for Vietnamese.
Ah yes, with either the pickelhaubes or Stahlhelm
I’m half Japanese and I live in Canada. In English it’s Germany, in Japanese it’s ドイツ (doitsu) and in French it’s allemagne. Never new why they were all so different
But what place has exactly only one name, agreed around the world? That would be exceptional
America? Canada? Mexico? Israel? Kosovo?
@@barbar5822 America doesn't really count considering the actual name is United States of America. America is technically just the two continents. Oh and if it did America is still somewhat different in a few language.
Ayy thanks for this vid! Waited long for you to finally talk about the country I‘m from :D
Now I'm interested in the Navajo word for different countries
The Korean name 독일 (dog-il), which at first listen seems to bear no connection to German, actually stems from the Korean pronunciation of the Kanji 独逸 that were used to denote the Japanese pronunciation of the word “Deutsch” (German - ドイツ)
In urdu, although nowadays "Jarmani" is more common, however, the arabic version of "Almanya" was used previously.
Interestingly, Urdu doesn't have any fixed vocabulary, it's different for different dialects.
Small correction
Hungarian is a Finno-Uralic language, not a Slavic language.
Yes, you're correct. But Hungarian derived its word for Germany from the Slavics.
You could've put at asterisk clarifying that Hungarian is not a Slavic language. People conflate Central and Eastern Europe with "Slavic" all the time, and it's irritating. It's basically the same thing as when people conflate "Muslim" and "Arab," which you recently made a video complaining about. I'm not angry or super offended, but please do a quick google search on things like this before putting them out.
That being said, yes, that word does come from a Slavic root word, as even "mute" in Hungarian is "néma".
I'm speak a slavic language (bosnian - Sandzak/Montenegro) and didn't know this.
Here in Balkan we don't call Germans "Njemci" we have another, more colloquial term; "ŠVABE" lol
And the origin of švabe is Schwaben in German. It is a German tribe and region in South Germany. I live here too
bubaŠVABE
In Slovak that's an offensive word for Germans and it also means a cockroach lol
@@craftah Oh that's kinda funny to hear haha
@@craftahpoles goes further and have name “Prusaki” for some insects lol.
Nemsa is the Arabic (maybe Turkish as well) for Austria😂
Native Greeks call Their country Hellada but Turks and Arabs call Greece 'Yūnan' from the ancient Ionian
In italy we also use the words "Crucchi" o "Crauti"
Sounds like the slang word "sourkrauts" in Britain
hungarian is not a slavic language
who cares ye still stink
he did not say it was
I always thought the Slavic version was a derogatory term dating back to the world wars, being phonetically close to Nimitz, like we called them krauts or boches (fr)
Thanks for the video, I definitely learned something !
We Indians usually use the English names of European countries, because we didn't have direct contact with them throughout history( it was mostly through Arabs). Only after colonization and trade, we came to know about different countries in Europe after the 1600s, although we knew about Europe.
We only call Greece by a Sanskrit name, Yavana-desha, which is derived from Ionia province of Greece and we had contacts with Greeks for the last 2500 years.
Turkey or Central Asia is called Turushka desha, but we mostly use the English names only.
Every time I hear the word "dutch," I think of "Dutchland(🇩🇪)"
This is very interesting! I had wondered this but never knew.
Latvian and lithuanian words for german look suspiciously like transliterations of the german word “volk” which is a cognate of english “folk”
But that’s mostly just speculation and my tendency to be irresistibly curious of things with unknown or mysterious origin.
And I think Latvian name "Vācija" is connected to word "Vēc" which means old, and German Knighthoods were the ones who forcefully united Latvia. So "Vācija" might be something like "Predecessors". But it is just a theory. A language theory!
As Kazakhstan was the part of Russia the most part of its modern history we've got a lot of names from them. For example if germans are called "немцы(nemtsy)" in russian, in kazakh we call them "немістер(nemister)" and I am sure other post soviet countries call it something similar in their languages. It is interesting considering the fact that kazakh for example is not even near close to slavic languages. It has most of asian languages grammar (verb in the end). Although Germany is "Германия" (Germaniya) and we usually call it also Германия rather than Алмания (actually I never hear call people it Almaniya)
That was really interesting thank you!
my german teacher said that we call it Vokietija is because our people would look at germans and say "vo kiets" (so cool) and that turned into Vokietis (german) :D
En español, al pais lo llamamos 'Alemania'. Y el gentilicio que todos los hispanohablantes usan, habitualmente, es 'alemán', pero también existen otros sinónimos del gentilicio 'alemán' en el idioma español (al menos tres que yo conozca y yo haya usado alguna vez) lo que pasa es que se usan con mucha menos frecuencia. Esos otras formas de decir 'alemán' en español son: 'teutón', 'germano' y 'tudesco'
In Romanian it’s the same as in Russian. The country is called “Germania” while the people are called “Nemți”, and a German is called “Neamț”. Fun fact, a Romanian county in the North-East is called Neamț.
Nemetes was a Germanic tribe around 1st century BC from whom the Slavic names possibly originate.
Old Bosnian term is ŠVABIJA or ŠVAPSKA and even today every German is Švabo.
+ tyskland in scandinavia. Or in swedish at least. Greetings from a german learning swedish✌️
Silesia mentioned, I'm satisfied. Though, as someone else has already said, Mjymcy is the correct term in Silesian. Prusacy is what we Poles called people from Prussia.
About Slavic:
Ancient slavs divided people into two categories
- Sloveni (the word Slavic cones from it) or people who could speak the Word (Slovo).
- Nemets - who couldn't speak The Word (from which zodiac word for Mute comes from).
In other words, the Slavic words for German is similar to the word Barbarian.
Some used to say ashkenaz, as a name for people originated from the ancient man ashkenaz, mentioned in genesis . But it is probably because of the similarity to how arabs called Scandinavia
What's also interesting is that the word for "Slavs" in Slavic is related to the word "word" (slovo).
I.e. Slavs are people you can understand, and Germans are people you cannot understand ("mumbling people"). Also it initially referred to all known Germanic tribes, not just Germans.
Very interesting. Thank you.
We poles called germany ,,Niemcy" because during Ostsiedlung when germans were settling in silesia the Poles living there couldn't understand their language so they called Germans ,,Niemcy" (like Niemy- mute)
The translation of Tyskland is just straight up insulting lol
in welsh germany is called yr almaen, which is weirdly similar to spanish
probably it's through latin
In Brazilian Portuguese, Germany is "Alemanha".
I think that's the case for Portuguese in general
To add a small detail: The name "Deutschland" is derived from the name of the language, "Deutsch". This in turn comes from a proto-germanic word meaning "of the (common) people", because the language of the clergy and nobility was Latin. The "ordinary" language didn't have a name so they just called it the language of the people.
Term „Prusacy” means people that lived in Prussia, we have another therm for Germany that is „Niemcy”
in Romanian it's just like russian
Germania = country
Neamț = person from Germany
As a German, I can comfirm im a person who wears a metal hat
In Romania is Germania for the country, and for the people either Germani or Nemți (similar to slavic languages), Romanian being 70% latin and 15-20% slavic.
It's such a slav thing to do, to hear someone speak some other, uknown, foreign language and just designate those people as mute 😂
In our dialect, it's "Ahk Kok" which is the closest pronunciation for Deutschland 😊
There is perfect word for that already in english - dutch
Already used for the Netherlands.
Kazakh does it the same way as Russian: the way to say German as in the language is неміс тілі (nemis tili, with tili meaning language) but the way to say Germany as in the country is германия (germaniya)
Is that Ojibwe? If it is, I'm not surprised because I actually learned how to say "apple pie" in that language.
Portuguese:
A) Germânia
B) Alemanha
C) Alemania
D) Germanic
B?
In Romanian we call the people living in Germany as "germani" which is similar to "Germany" and also "nemți" which is closer to other Central European languages.
In Bulgarian too is the country Germania (Германия), but the language Nemski (Немски) 🇧🇬❤️
"The land of the people who wear metal hat" seems just about right
Germani is not a tribe, it was just the name of caesar for the germanic tribes that lived on the other side of the rhine
"Tedesquia", anyone?
Tedeschia*
@@didonegiuliano3547 Thx
France: La Tedesquie
Spanish/Portuguese: Tedesquia
Italian: Tedeschia
In Romanian we can call germans “german/germani”, but have also adopted the slavic term “neamț/nemți”
For me German is like English but with accent and some complicated word (but made smartly)
The grammar is pretty darn different though. English is closer to the scandinavian languages.
@@herrbonk3635 but common sentences are very familiar
Like "Was ist das" (what is that)
@@NotOliwiec Indeed! But pretty similar in scandinavian too. We say _vad är det_ = "what are that" (i.e. the word _är_ = "are" used for both singular and plural).
English got the word "is" from so called west germanic tribes in the 400s and the word are" from the Danes later in the 800s. And a similar ethymology for many central basic words.
So, although not the case, scandinavian often looks like a mix of German and English. Such as in this example (using Swedish):
En: _I put the book on the little green table_
Sw: _Jag lade boken på lilla gröna bordet_
Ge: _Ich legte das Buch auf den kleinen grünen Tisch_
Just remember that scandinavian usually place the definite article as a word suffix! So _boken_ = "the book", and _bordet_ = "the board" = "the table".
@@herrbonk3635 you're smart 👍
@@NotOliwiec Thanks dude :)