Betty or Veronica?

[mudshark]

Originally Posted by catalina_marina

Just in your lifetime, hm? :P

Yes, yes -- cue the "antiquity" jokes. I can take it.

The name Germany doesn't make much sense anyway. Historically speaking, we're all Germans. People who think up those words should start looking at what countries call themselves, sometime, and only mangle it just a bit to make it fit in their own language. :P

I suppose Deutschland really isn't much better, is it?

Useless information: In our local dialect, we call them Prusen.

How, then, do you keep the Prussians sorted out from the Bayerischers? (Actually, the Bavarians probably tended to stay home with their beer and cheese, while the Prussians were the ones who came to your town uninvited, so yeah... )

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

How are we all Germans? "German" is a cultural label, one that is not shared by most of us.

Oh? And what is your background, then -- Basque? Samoyed? Greek? Native American? Sino-Tibetan?

Most of Europe that isn't south of the Alps is, at the very least, culturally informed by one or more German branches and the language in which you speak and write is a Germanic language. The Lutheran religion which pervades your neighborhood originated in a city midway between Berlin and Leipzig, and just who did you suppose the Angles and the Saxons were? Unless you're a Martian or a Gray alien or something nearly as exotic, you're most likely up to your eyebrows in German, whether you knew it or not.

Edit: Come to think of it, Germans did a fair bit of mucking about in the rest of Europe, too, so if your family came from pretty much anywhere west of the Urals, there's a German influence in there somewhere or other.

[Chancellor Valium]

Originally Posted by mudshark

Yes, yes -- cue the "antiquity" jokes. I can take it.

So...what was Clodius Pulcher like at parites?

[catalina_marina]

Originally Posted by mudshark

I suppose Deutschland really isn't much better, is it?

Well that is what I was referring to. We call it Duitsland, hence the mangling.

How, then, do you keep the Prussians sorted out from the Bayerischers? (Actually, the Bavarians probably tended to stay home with their beer and cheese, while the Prussians were the ones who came to your town uninvited, so yeah... )

I give up. What are Bayerischers? People from some other German state or something?

Edit: Come to think of it, Germans did a fair bit of mucking about in the rest of Europe, too, so if your family came from pretty much anywhere west of the Urals, there's a German influence in there somewhere or other.

I suppose I was mostly referring to the language, since Americans tend to come from pretty much all of Europe anyway... I wouldn't call the French Germanic, really. But if you're German, Dutch, British... Than yeah, all German.

[mudshark]

Originally Posted by Chancellor Valium

So...what was Clodius Pulcher like at parites?

Bit tedious, actually.

Originally Posted by catalina_marina

I give up. What are Bayerischers? People from some other German state or something?

Bayern is what the Germans call the State of Bavaria, so the Bayerischers are the people who live there. (Also BMW stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke.)

I suppose I was mostly referring to the language, since Americans tend to come from pretty much all of Europe anyway... I wouldn't call the French Germanic, really. But if you're German, Dutch, British... Than yeah, all German.

If you go back to Charlemagne and before, many of the tribes in what is now France were Germans -- Burgundians, Franks (hence the name "France"), Merovingians and all of those, not to mention the odd hordes of Visigoths, Vandals and the like passing through -- and the rest were Celts who had been to a greater or lesser degree Romanized pre-4th century. It's only from Charlemagne onward that you begin to get a distinctly French national character, and even then you had Vikings (North Germanic) all over the place for a few hundred years adding to the mix.

[Nate the Great]

I consider my cultural background to be Minnesotan, but if you want names of European countries, that's a job for a PM or e-mail. It's a bit complicated.

[mudshark]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

I consider my cultural background to be Minnesotan...

Okay, so... Jell-O salads, lutefisk, hotdish, Ole and Lena jokes and the Kensington Runestone, then. Not so much, eh?

[Nate the Great]

Erm, not exactly. Yes, I've indoctrinated myself into those aspects of my culture, but remember that I live in the Twin Cities. I hate hotdish, and in fact any casserole. Cream of anything soup is revolting to me. Never touched a drop of lutefisk in my life, but I know enough lutefisk jokes to nauseate anyone. Ole and Lena...oh goodness yes. As for the Kenzington Runestone, I knew about that secondhand, but not the exact circumstances. And we don't add "eh" to the end of our sentences. Although Howard Mohr's bestselling tape/CD/book/musical How to Talk Minnesotan takes a few liberties, it is accurate in a few places.

[catalina_marina]

Originally Posted by mudshark

Bayern is what the Germans call the State of Bavaria, so the Bayerischers are the people who live there. (Also BMW stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke.)

Oh Beieren! Why didn't you say so?

If you go back to Charlemagne and before, many of the tribes in what is now France were Germans -- Burgundians, Franks (hence the name "France"), Merovingians and all of those, not to mention the odd hordes of Visigoths, Vandals and the like passing through -- and the rest were Celts who had been to a greater or lesser degree Romanized pre-4th century. It's only from Charlemagne onward that you begin to get a distinctly French national character, and even then you had Vikings (North Germanic) all over the place for a few hundred years adding to the mix.

Okay, you might have a point there. But since I'm not that historically concious, I was still talking about the language.