Charlemagne: Allemand or Français?

Charlemagne: Allemand or Français?

  • He was German.

    Votes: 8 10.1%

  • He was French.

    Votes: 22 27.8%

  • He was both German and French.

    Votes: 14 17.7%

  • He was Belgian!

    Votes: 7 8.9%

  • He was none of the above.

    Votes: 20 25.3%

  • Shoes are cool...

    Votes: 8 10.1%
  • Total voters
    79
"at least its not as ridiculous as the Chinese and Mongols fighting over Genghis Khan..."
Thats because Khan was an imperalist....The Chinsese Communist Party doesnt want him^^
 
Just to add to the argument. I just read a book where people think Charlemagne was actually Basque!

i wonder how that adds to the argument. :D
 
humm i think we just want to know if all that we have learned is true^^

And i agree with the last answers that says Charlemagne is neither german or french but frank ..
 
Charlemagne was a Germanic frank on the lands of Francia. He took over the lands of Belgium, Austria, Germany, ect. The pope dubbed him the (holy) Western Roman Emperor (of Germanic lands). But durring the dark ages all lands north of the western roman empire was Germanic/Barbarian lands.
 
He founded the first German empire, despite being French, in the same way that Washington founded America, despite being English.
 
dutchking said:
Damn, I wanted it to be Allemagne because of the "magne" on it and Charlie-magne...:cry:
Click to expand...


Actually the word Allemagne derives from the Alemanni, an early alliance of Germanic tribes. The name is thought to simply mean "all men".

It is interesting though that the name for Germany in different languages, is derived from different Germanic tribes or groups of tribes.

In the Latin languages - Allemagne/Alemania/Alemanha from the Alemanni.

In the German language - Deutch from the Teutons

In English - German from the Roman name for the Germanic tribes. So naturally the Germanic peoples didn't refer to themselves as Germanic.



About Carolus Magnus you can also make the case that he was South-African (or Dutch of course), since the Afrikaans (and Dutch) language is still classified as a Franconian language, a direct descendant of old Frankish.
 
Germanicus = like or pertaining to a brother or sister (well, germanus means sibling, and the -icus is a fairly common ending used to make something an adjective. I'm pretty sure this is the etymology, although my Latin dictionary only gives the usual definition.)

I've never really understood why the Romans considered Germans to be their close relatives, but surely Germanic peoples would consider their closest relatives as their relatives too.
 
Dennis_Moore said:
In the German language - Deutch from the Teutons
Click to expand...
I was tought that the original meaning of "Deutsch" was actually "of the people". The language of the church was Latin, while the people spoke "Deutsch".

In the language that was spoken in The Netherlands and Flanders, there was a similar word: The "common people"'s language there was called "Diets". Nowadays we call the language "Nederlands" ("Netherlandic"). In the English language however, they kept using the word "Diets", which evolved into the word "Dutch", to refer to the Netherlandic language and as the adjective form for The Netherlands.

In the Dutch language we use the words 'Duitsland" for Germany/Deutschland and Duits for German/Deutsch. So for us, it's quite clear. It's just the English language that makes things complicated... :crazyeye:


A question for our East-European friends here: when I was in Hungary last year, I noticed that their word for Germany is "Nemet Orszag" ("Orszag" means "country"). Besides the fact that Hungarian is an extremely strange language ( ;) ), I was also told that the name is similar to the Polish, Russian and other slavic names for Germany. Does anyine have an idea were this words come from?
 
Jan H said:
A question for our East-European friends here: when I was in Hungary last year, I noticed that their word for Germany is "Nemet Orszag" ("Orszag" means "country"). Besides the fact that Hungarian is an extremely strange language ( ;) ), I was also told that the name is similar to the Polish, Russian and other slavic names for Germany. Does anyine have an idea were this words come from?
Click to expand...

Well, see for instance,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemetes and its links.

My understanding was that the word actually came from the Slavic word for "a mute" or "incomprehensible", something along those lines. I think that is one of the theories. I think in the Middle Ages it could be applied to Western Europeans other than German-speakers too, much in the way the Arabs called all Westerners Franj.
 
Jan H said:
I was tought that the original meaning of "Deutsch" was actually "of the people".
Click to expand...


oops, I missed the "s" in Deutsch. Anyway, both Teuton and Deutsch means "of the people", Deutsch in basically a newer version of the proto-indo-european word teuta.


Actually most tribal people seem to refer to themselves as simply "people" in their own language, for example "inuit" means people in the inuit language.
 
Just adding to the confusion :D

Charlemagne is supposed to be born (no hard proof on this one) in Jupille, which is today a village in Belgium.
Nope, I'm not saying he's Belgian :king:

Below a map of his territory:
Blue: when he received the country from his daddy
Orange: what he added to his territory
Yellow: what remained "more or less" independant

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afbeelding:Frankenrijk.jpg

Up to you guys :)
 
bonafide11 said:
Neither France nor Germany existed at the time of Charlemagne, so he is neither.
Click to expand...

Thats exactly the point (tried to say the same on the first page in my first post^^).

"The name Německo and the other similar-sounding names above are derived from a Slavic root (in Russian немой, nemoy) meaning "mute", "dumb" i.e. "those who do not speak our language". In contrast, Slavic speakers called themselves slovo - "people of the word". At first nemoy was used for any foreigners who did not speak a Slavic language, but later it began to be used specifically for those who spoke German."

I always thought that IS cool.
 
a random source of information says he was Basque. Interesting. so how did a basque family get over to belgium again?
 
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