THE FOLK NAME GERMAN AND THE GERMAN: A DIACHRONIC AND SYNCHRONIC VIEW

Abstract

Among the cultural nations, the Germans are one of the few that possess an original language. This means that they have a completely inherited vocabulary derived from their own tribe and without gaps. Since the validity of German as a mother tongue does not extend beyond the German settlement area, the language community and ethnicity could be closely linked. Originally, it is said that a never-interrupted development took place from the Indo-Germanic root via Germanic, through the interaction of various tribal languages and dialects (of Franconian, Bavarian-Alemannic, Saxon), through mergers during the Eastern settlement (in Thuringian-Upper Saxon) to the New High German written language so strongly promoted by Martin Luther. From the 16th century onwards, the Dutch high-level language developed from a Low German dialect, which was further diverged in the Afrikaans of the Boers. Unlike most European language names, there is no connection in German between a country or tribe name and the language name (along the lines of England – English, France – French, Italy – Italian, Sweden – Swedish, Ukraine – Ukrainian, Poland – Polish, etc.). It was not until the 10th century that the use of the word became widespread diutisc to the inhabitants of the Kingdom of the East Franks, the later Germany. The transfer of „diutisc“ but in terms of language, country and people: „Diutschin sprechin, Diutschin liute in Diutischeme lande“ („Speak German, German people in German land“) is only found around 1090 in the Annolied, the oldest poetic work of history in German. In 878 verses, it deals with the life and work of Anno II, who was archbishop of the city of Cologne from 1056 to 1075 against the will of the Cologne patricians, written by a monk in the Siegburg monastery.