3 ms·

The acronym was new to me and I found your introduction of it into the conversation interesting, and your brief explanation of it sufficient. (And I didn't in

by oska 3y ago

The acronym was new to me and I found your introduction of it into the conversation interesting, and your brief explanation of it sufficient. (And I didn't in the least find it pretentious)

lproven 3y ago
Oh, that is great to hear! Thank you! I only learned the term a few years ago, while working at SUSE, and it fits a need I wasn't aware I had. "The German-speaking world" is awfully long and yet remains imprecise: * Are we talking about countries where there are some German speaking people? No -- that's probably every country. * Are we referring to countries where there's a resident German-speaking minority? No. The USA has the Amish who speak "Pennsylvania Dutch" (among other minorities there among whom old folks speak Germanic languages) and that isn't Dutch at all but a Low Germanic dialect -- or a family of them. Then there are the Volga Germans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Germans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Germans -- hundreds of thousands of German speakers around the former USSR. * Are we talking about countries where German is the majority language then, like Anglosphere in English? The Teutonosphere? * Oh, but hang on, then shouldn't the term be in German? * Ah, but hang on, I do know a little German, and German speakers love coining new words by ramming existing words together, so it's probably been invented a dozen times. The Deutchsprachigewelt or something. * Uhoh... maybe there is such a word but non-German speakers don't know it because they don't understand it, or they can't say it? * And anyway, whose German then? Hochdeutsch or Schweitscherduutsch or Bayerisch or Swabish? So I looked, and there is, and it's short and easy, and it cuts through the difficulty of two of the countries having different forms of German and the third having a really weird form of German but anyway it's not the standard language it's just one of four... It's in German and English and Latin! Cool!

by oska 3y ago

The acronym was new to me and I found your introduction of it into the conversation interesting, and your brief explanation of it sufficient. (And I didn't in the least find it pretentious)

lproven 3y ago

Oh, that is great to hear! Thank you! I only learned the term a few years ago, while working at SUSE, and it fits a need I wasn't aware I had. "The German-speaking world" is awfully long and yet remains imprecise: * Are we talking about countries where there are some German speaking people? No -- that's probably every country. * Are we referring to countries where there's a resident German-speaking minority? No. The USA has the Amish who speak "Pennsylvania Dutch" (among other minorities there among whom old folks speak Germanic languages) and that isn't Dutch at all but a Low Germanic dialect -- or a family of them. Then there are the Volga Germans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Germans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Germans -- hundreds of thousands of German speakers around the former USSR. * Are we talking about countries where German is the majority language then, like Anglosphere in English? The Teutonosphere? * Oh, but hang on, then shouldn't the term be in German? * Ah, but hang on, I do know a little German, and German speakers love coining new words by ramming existing words together, so it's probably been invented a dozen times. The Deutchsprachigewelt or something. * Uhoh... maybe there is such a word but non-German speakers don't know it because they don't understand it, or they can't say it? * And anyway, whose German then? Hochdeutsch or Schweitscherduutsch or Bayerisch or Swabish? So I looked, and there is, and it's short and easy, and it cuts through the difficulty of two of the countries having different forms of German and the third having a really weird form of German but anyway it's not the standard language it's just one of four... It's in German and English and Latin! Cool!