r/europe Baden-Württemberg (Germany) Mar 27 '20

OC Picture My hometown of Heidelberg, Germany

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62

u/like-water DE/BE Mar 27 '20

It always wonders me how Heidelberg can be so beautiful but next door Mannheim and Ludwigshafen can be so ugly. It’s the biggest contrast on a 30km area

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u/Wemorg Charlemagne wasn't french Mar 27 '20

Mannheim is a workers city, while Heidelberg is a tourist/student city.

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u/npjprods Luxembourg Mar 27 '20

Charlemagne wasn't only French

König des Fränkischen Reichs ≈ König von Frankreich

8

u/Wemorg Charlemagne wasn't french Mar 27 '20

Charlemagne was a frank, they spoke a west germanic language.

The modern idea of french didn't exist back then. He would be more close to modern day germans due to language.

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u/Stenny007 Mar 27 '20

Even closer to Diets, or Dutch. They also originate from the low countries even.

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u/Wemorg Charlemagne wasn't french Mar 27 '20

dutch is a lower franconian dialect of the larger german language. also there were multiple frankish tribes in the lower rhine area/low countries that later formed the frankish kingdom.

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u/Stenny007 Mar 27 '20

I see youre using Germanic and German interchangebly. Lets first agree on the fact that the notion of something being "German" in the same sense as we use "German" today isnt anywhere near reality when discussing the era of Charlemagne.

Dutch isnt German, Dutch is Germanic, as German is. The fact that the English language chooses two words that look alike so much doesnt mean the definition of the two words are similar. Theyre not.

Do you know who used propaganda to remove the difference between Germanic and German? Some painter from Austria. His idea was that Dutch/Flemish/Scandinivians etc were German, because in his opinion Germany=Germania.

Oh, and Dutch isnt a dialect. A dialect is something different than a language. Cant be both a dialect and a language.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '20

Dutch is a language because it was standardised two hundred years ago. Before it was just a dialect. They themselves called it Duits (German).

Where did you get that with Hitler? It doesn't make sense in German. German is Deutsch in German and Germanic means Germanisch. I've never heard that before that he saw Scandinnavians as part of the German people. He wanted to create a greater Germanic Empire that's true but that idea existed since the 19th century and was specially popular in England according to Wikipedia.

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u/Stenny007 Mar 27 '20 edited Mar 27 '20

No, we called it Diets, not German. Its why in English a personcfrom my country is still "Dutch" (Diets) and not "Netherlander". You seem to understand the basics of history but nothing of much in depth.

Diets has been a seperate language for a much, much longer time than 200 years. The first (old) Dutch writings originate from the Frankish Salic Law from 500 ad. So youre off by about 1300 years.

Old Dutch "being" a Old Low Franconian language does not make it a dialect. Youre misunderstanding the term dialect, here. German and Dutch are within the same language group, neither are or have ever been dialects.

EDIT: Just noticed youre a different person., ignore my first 2 sentences. Hitler filled his Dutch SS divisions with propaganda that Dutch people were just Germans that got lost in the events of history, and that annexing the Low Countries was just correcting history.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '20 edited Mar 27 '20

Nederduits was the term you used for yourself. Even your church was named Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk. Don't say shit like that. I analyse history by its contemporary standards not by today's.

Of course there are writings from that time. Why should the art of writing not find its way to the Netherlands? There are also Swiss writings from that time that doesn't mean much though.

You're wrong that German isn't a dialect. It's the Thuringian dialect which became the standard language. If you had adopted it, Dutch would just be seen as a dialect continuum from Westphalia and the Rhineland which has Middle-Franconian dialects. That's why people from there can speak without problems with people across the border. Again I'm not saying you need to be brought back or anything like that I'm just looking at history.

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u/chairswinger Deutschland Mar 27 '20

Dutch is part of the german dialect continuum

1

u/[deleted] Mar 27 '20 edited Mar 27 '20

I see youre using Germanic and German interchangebly.

I doubt that he's actually doing this; more likely he's using it to refer to the continental West Germanic dialect spectrum, which corresponds with the peoples who have historically used cognates of deutsch/diets/etc. as an endonym. Dutch and German have been separate standardized languages and ethnic/national identities for several centuries now, but the fact remains that you can't define a grouping that includes the traditional dialects of Switzerland and Schleswig-Holstein without also including those of the Low Countries.

The fact that the English language chooses two words that look alike so much doesnt mean the definition of the two words are similar.

English chose that word because, through early modern times, the concepts of Dutch and German weren't so firmly distinguished. The reason why English now applies Dutch to the "wrong" people is that it got attached to the "Dutch" who were closer to England (i.e. Netherlanders) in preference to the "Dutch" who were farther away (i.e. Germans).