Why is Germany so Different in other Languages?

[bigfatpandalaktana]

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"

[argronsuper]

Actually, Germany in Silesian is Mjymcy (Germans - Mjymce). Prusacy just means Prussians in Polish and means neither Germany nor Germans in Silesian.

[ydodel]

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".

[mimzim]

The slavic word nemeç is also used in arabic and ottoman turkish for austria.

[vincesimon]

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

[robinrehlinghaus]

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.

[androgkb]

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

[hansenhenry]

Dude I’ve been learning Russian and I was so confused by the германия and немецкий thing. Thanks 😅

[Eagles_Hunter]

0:42
Fun Fact:
In Arabic this word is the origin word for Austria (in Arabic: al-Nemsa).

[richardhughes]

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

[bingusiswatching]

Tedesco is fascinatingly close to þeudisko which is the word with which the germanic people referred to themselves.

[miyazakiofsweden]

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

[GanzotheSecond]

the Slavs were like “if you ain’t speaking Slavic you ain’t speaking!”

[tricolorcircle]

In Chinese we use 德國 with "國" meaning country and "德" pronounced dé /tɤ˧˥/ from "Deutschland"

[BrakeCoach]

In China, Korea, and Japan, we borrow the German native term. Deguo(guo meaning country) (CN), Dogil (KR), and Doitsu (JP)

[Czecherboard]

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'

[spicyMcHaggis]

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)

[dalubwikaan]

I love that Navajo is always creative. 😊

[entropy]

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.

[Oak_II]

In Hebrew we call it Germania (גרמניה)