Quote from: Draconarius on 31 March 2012, 10:59:33 AM
Actually I think, that I am not grafting modern senses of the word on the sevententh century. The term "germans" your polish friend is using does this, as it seems to has it roots in a national view of an united german nation. Such a nation started to exist in the 19th century and was then justified by a common language and culture. Before it had mainly been an idea in the heads of educated and potent men (probably beginning around 1500 with the reception of Tacitus' Germania).
On the level of the common people it is even more complex. There are loyalities to and dependencies from the local landlords (again a lot of diversity in the Empire), there is a huge influence of confession (lasting until the 20th centuy in some areas), there are linguistic differences (still today ), a limited mobility and so on. The common man probably never got an impression of the term "german" because he did not experience its variety.
The soldiers are a case sui generis.

Actually, "German" is a Latin word which we use in English. The Slavic languages refer to Germans by a number of words like "Nemetski" (Czech, but it's close enough to Polish, and my Czech is better than my Polish), meaning something like "Barbarians who can't speak properly". And Piotr certainly knows his east European history well enough to know what he means when he uses the word, which is what most English-speakers, and most Latin-users (i.e. most of educated Europe), have meant by it for most of history.

The there's the films!...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Fire_and_Sword_(film)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deluge_(film)

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Wolodyjowski_(film)

Quote from: FierceKitty on 31 March 2012, 11:25:08 AM
Actually, "German" is a Latin word which we use in English. The Slavic languages refer to Germans by a number of words like "Nemetski" (Czech, but it's close enough to Polish, and my Czech is better than my Polish), meaning something like "Barbarians who can't speak properly". And Piotr certainly knows his east European history well enough to know what he means when he uses the word, which is what most English-speakers, and most Latin-users (i.e. most of educated Europe), have meant by it for most of history.

And I can also list different terms and these wouldn't be only collective terms because of the language. There is also a variety of terms for "Germans" which have their origin in the contact with a single tribe:

Medieval Latin: (in the most cases) Teutons (Germani was first reintroduced with Humanism and the study of ancient latin texts)
Medieval Greek: Franks
Old Icelandic, Estonian and Finnish: Saxons
Sorbic: Bavarians
French, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, Portugese, Welsh, Galician, etc.: Alemanni
in Switzerland: Swabonians

However: You can know eastern European history well enough  - fine. But it won't help in this case. Perhaps it explains why some want to be thanked nowadays for things their ancestors have done (though they don't know if their direct ancestors took part directly at all ). But it doesn't explain why these peolple had not received thanks and won't receive thanks - this has to be explained by the history of those, from whom thank is expected.
[Besides: Wikipedia suggests that the Jan Sobieski was prized for the victory: "All the common people kissed my hands, my feet, my clothes; others only touched me, saying: 'Ah, let us kiss so valiant a hand!'"; additional he got a star constellation and a street in Vienna named after him and a church on the Kahlenberg is still organiszed by polish priests. If this is not a sign of thank, then I do not know.]


@J.S.: Ein kleines Gespräch über Kreta wäre jetzt eine sehr willkommende Abwechslung, findest du nicht?

Wie krieg Mann den Umlaut?

I've just entered it.
On the english keyboard layout it is probably the easiest way to enter it in word via symbols and copy it in the text field of the forum. 

Quote@J.S.: Ein kleines Gespräch über Kreta wäre jetzt eine sehr willkommende Abwechslung, findest du nicht?

Irgendwie läufts ja doch immer aufs selbe raus  

Quotemeaning something like "Barbarians who can't speak properly"

I speak some Polish and have no idea how this comes about; nie = no ; miec = to have. So  I'd rather translate it as  "the destitute barbarians" (who neverthless are always supposed to have enough money to safe the euro     )

QuoteOn the english keyboard layout it is probably the easiest way to enter it in word via symbols and copy it in the text field of the forum

That's excactly how i write Polish texts, I have no ida how to creata a ł for example. 
However, in German you can simply write ue for ü oder ae for ä and so on (Huette instad of Hütte for example); I do this when i have to tipe  a sms on my cellphone ec.

The negative is correct; the rest of the word means to speak. The derivation is common to Czech, Slovak, Polish, and Russian.

Don't know; to speak = mówić on Polish and that's the only eastern european language i know. Just asked some native speakers and they have never heard of it (but those Polish native speakers come from former Prussian Silesia, maybe not the best source?   ) I actually don't care how we are called in Slavic anyways, maybe I should add that bevore the discussion gets out of control. So if the Czech people think we have no idea about pronounciation let them do so, it's the truth!  
That's how I sound when speaking English, I even got the same sursame as the "German" Spy  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvWw77wBumY

Quote from: Draconarius on 31 March 2012, 07:43:35 PM
On the english keyboard layout it is probably the easiest way to enter it in word via symbols and copy it in the text field of the forum. 

On the English keyboard all the umlauts are represented on the extended ASCII character set. Hold down the Alt key and type the numeric code, e.g. ü = 129, ä = 132, ë = 137, ï = 139, Ã,, = 142, ö = 148, Ö = 153, Ãœ = 154. There are other more esoteric symbols too which frankly I don't recognise. The extended character set runs from 129 to 227.