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Adalbertus
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Cologne, Germany
Feb 2001
time: 06:20
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Victor, you are right, Nanzig = Nancy. Nowadays, one uses mostly the French name in German, however.
PH, the "messing with Polish names" in German has some historical reasons. The region of today's Poland was rather empty before around 700 AC (if I'm not mistaken). Then came Slavic tribes from the east and settled slowly westward to the area of the former German Democratic Republic. This was a process which took several centuries. So many cities in that region were founded between 800 and 1000 AC. Somewhat later (starting around 900 or so), German settled eastward, and brought with them superior agricultural techniques. Therefore there was not a real competition but the populations could more or less mix to give a transition region of over 500 km depth. During and after the second world war some "demixing" took place which IMO was completely artificial.
Two examples: The city of Berlin was created by joining five villages/small towns, among them Berlin, Neukölln and Dahlem - Berlin is a Slavic name, Neukölln an offspring of Cologne and Dahlem (probably) of Dahlem in the Eifel (a mountaineous region southwest of Cologne).
Danzig/Gdansk is three towns, one Slavic fishermen's town (the first), then a German trader's settlement and a town of Dukes. Danzig was a mixed German/Polish population for about 800 years, and for the same time Stettin never had the idea of being Polish. I don't know exactly about Breslau, but I think it was German-speaking for at least 500 years. After 1945, the populations were completely exchanged, Germans expelled and many Polish people left "completely voluntarily" the east of Poland to make place for Russians who came from I don't know ... **** nationalism.
Anyway, we say Danzig instead of Gyddansk for the same reason as the Polish say Gdansk and you say York instead of Jorvik.
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Anodyne
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Being perverse is bad.
Jan 2001
time: 07:20
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Yep... and the reasons why some country names in Finnish sound quite esoteric are also found in history...
In fact, there are only 5 countries (Sweden/Ruotsi, Russia/Venäjä, Estonia/Viro, Germany/Saksa and Denmark/Tanska) that sound completely different in Finnish, and the reason is that those are the countries that we have had the longest contact with...
the name 'Saksa' comes from the Saxon people on that area, Viro comes from the Estonian province of Virumaa, Ruotsi is an ancient Finnish word for 'western, from west', if I remember right. In fact, some Fenno-Ugric tribes who live east from Finland call the Finns by that name...
And what I find quite interesting is that in English you have lots of insulting names for people of different nationalities; Krauts, Spics, etc... in Finnish, there are insulting names for only two nationalities; the Swedes (hurri) and the Russians (ryssä) 
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Heresson
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of frogs
Jun 2000
time: 06:20
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When it comes to Wroc?aw/Breslau, villages around it were Polish up to XIX century, and You could live in the city now knowing German, as everyone knew Polish, but Poles were small minority, except for students. The city has Polish roots, though.
John Paul II
is Jan Pawe? II (Drugi) in fact, but w is spelled like v,
and ? is spelled like w or (eastern dialects) closer to l.
Names of cities;
London - Londyn
Paris - Pary?
Berlin - Berlin (Polish name!) Germany - Niemcy
Potsdam (or whatever) - Poczdam, but older
(Polish name!) - Postupin
Dresden - Drezno (Slavic name!) Munich - Monachium
Kiev - Kijów
Rome - Rzym Italy - W?ochy (in fact it could also mean; big hair)
Istanbul - Konstantynopol, Stambu?, Istambu?, Carogród
etc
Last edited by Heresson on 09-07-2002 at 23:42
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Ecthy
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Zhonghuà Rénmín Gònghéguó
Mar 2000
time: 06:20
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and before anyone makes some anti-frog joke... despite all the rumors, French is still considered a beautiful language
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Ecthy
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Zhonghuà Rénmín Gònghéguó
Mar 2000
time: 06:20
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is ja lappidar
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Ecthy
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Zhonghuà Rénmín Gònghéguó
Mar 2000
time: 06:20
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Juggernaut, that'd be "Berlin-Spandau" not "Turku"
Apart from that, any idea why Finland is so pathetic? I mean there must be a reason.
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Ecthy
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Zhonghuà Rénmín Gònghéguó
Mar 2000
time: 06:20
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don't be so picky, landsmann
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Apolyton Time is 00:20. |
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08-07-2002 02:21
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