Why do germans call themselves deutsch

Previous article Next article. Simon James September 01, at pm Very informative — we are so sorry we have left Europe. Luther Berg September 01, at pm Excellent answer. Roger Sfeel August 20, at pm What a great day..

Join Us A short sentence describing what someone will receive by subscribing. Your email. Follow us. Subscribe to our newsletter A short sentence describing what someone will receive by subscribing. Secure Payments Credit card data is not stored. Satisfied or refunded All purchases at OktoberfestHaus. Have a Question? I cannot know for sure, but I believe if one asked them: "Wo kommst du her?

Welche Sprache sprichst du? I can hardly imagine a situation where these people would have said "I bee a Deitschr", even if they met a person from France, which would have helped to establish the "national" contrast I really doubt the reliability, even the sensefulness of that Wikipedia statement about "40 per cent mutual intelligibility". Second, it fully depends on a person's training in using actively or passively various languages and dialects.

A general statement like in Wikipedia seems nonsensical to me. Show 4 more comments. Featured on Meta. Now live: A fully responsive profile. Linked Related Over time, this tribe was absorbed by the Roman culture there. These Franks often fought with the Allemani, a Germanic tribe living in Germania. This experience led to French individuals referring to the area as Allemagne. Other nearby countries with Latin-based languages like Spain and Portugal picked up on this name. In Spanish, for example, the country is known as Alemania.

Today, Germans refer to their country as Deutschland, a name that has its origins in the 8th century. During this time, people living in the region did not identify as either Germanics or Allemanis.

Instead, they considered themselves to be regular individuals, removed from the influences of the Latin and Roman cultures. In Old High German, the word diutisc was used. Over time, this morphed into tiutsch or diutsch in Middle High German, and then finally, Deutsch.

Therefore, the word Deutsch refers to the vernaculars spoken in the Germanic region that were not the the lingua franca, Latin. The term was then later used to differentiate between Romanic and Germanic languages, and all Germanic languages on the continent, including Dutch, were referred to as Diutsch or Tiutsch.

The term Dutch refers to the language spoken in the Netherlands. It is confusing to many that the two words used to describe the language Dutch and the country which is known as Nederland, Holland or even Vlaams are completely unrelated in English. This can be blamed on the ignorance of the British, who back in the day, used to refer to anyone who spoke a Germanic language as "Deutsch" which is ironic, since English itself is a Germanic language!

Over time, "Deutsch" gradually morphed into "Dutch", which was used to refer to people from both the highlands that make up present-day Germany, and the lowlands that make up the present-day Netherlands.