by liberal japonicus
A thread to invite Hartmut and any others to weigh in on the AfD’s electoral victory in Saxony-Anhalt. This was the Rest is Politics duo talk to German journalist Paul Ronzheimerx and I wonder what other points people might raise. The title is just to note that English speakers might be more closely connected to Saxony than we would care to admit. Ach, feckin’ Sassenachs.
“cynn”?
Saxon or welsh?
Saxon, from the Anglo Saxon Chronicle (if my quick search is reliable).
My wife liked Outlander. Now I know why the Scottish male lead called the English female lead “Sassenach.” Saxon … like, duh.
I thought I first heard it (as an insult) in a Guy Ritchie-esque film.
Sassenach in Scots English just means Englishman (or, occasionally by a Highlander, Lowlander). It’s uncomplimentary either way.
I’m reading on how the Saxons originally started off living next to the English Channel, which is how they got over with the Angles and Jutes, to make life miserable, but the territory ended up in East Germany with the title moving eastward. Interesting stuff.
OED…
< Scottish Gaelic Sasannach and Irish Sasanach (also Sacsanach: see note) (adjective) English, (noun) an Englishman (Early Irish Saxanach, adjective and noun; < Saxain, the name of England (see note) + ‑ach, suffix forming adjectives expressing belonging).
NotesThe Early Irish place name Saxain England (Irish †Sacsain, Scottish Gaelic Sasainn; compare Irish Sasana) originated as a specific use of the plural noun Saxain, denoting the Anglo-Saxons (< post-classical Latin Saxones, plural of Saxo Saxon n.). Compare also Early Irish Saxa (noun) Anglo-Saxon (directly < post-classical Latin Saxo) and further Welsh Sais (noun) Anglo-Saxon, Englishman (12th cent., earliest in plural Saesson).
Earlier parallel
Compare the following earlier passage, which shows the plural of the Scottish Gaelic word (now written Sasannaich) in an English context:
With the forms Sacsanagh and Sacsanach compare Irish Sacsanach, variant of Sasanach, originally in the same sense, but now chiefly used historically to refer to the Anglo-Saxons.
As for widespread: Celts go from the British Isles to Turkey (Galatians) but the languages got lost for the most part. In France the remaining Celtic language (Breton) is a medieval re-import from Britain since Latin had completely replaced the native Celtic.
The largest (non-oriental) minority in German are the Slavic Sorbs, clearly (as a word) related to Serbs but with no cultural connections I am aware of.
And then there is the (in)famous ‘Salic Speech’ of Canterbury in Shakespeare’s Henry V. where the archbishop tries to explain that the Salic law does not apply to France because ‘the land Salic lies in Germany’ (followed by on of the bards typical confusions of geography).
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No detailed comment at the moment on the AfD in Germany. There are state elections in Berlin on Sunday next week, which will be another test case. The district of the city where I live (at the Western edge) is currently run by a black*-green coalition (something unthinkable not much more than a decade ago). My bet is a split between West and East Berlin with the AfD getting large wins in the East (former GDR) but only moderate if any in the West.
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I fear I am better versed in US politics than German. The latter tends to be so boring. It’s always coalitions and the real differences between the established parties are minute (or have become so over the decades) in comparison. The Green party started far left but now serves the function that formerly the FDP had (which always was a Frankenstein
monster of socially liberal left and libertarian right) – the party which decides whether there is a CDU or SPD led government (unless CDU and SPD form a ‘Great Coalition’**).
*CDU = Christian Democratic Union, center-right (on the federal level traditionally in cahoots with the Bavarian CSU, our Texas GOP)
**both have shrunk now on the federal level so much that triple coalitions are necessary for a solid majority.
Yes, I didn’t mean he was calling her a literal Saxon, just that the word obviously derived from “Saxon.” That and I felt like a dope for not putting it together sooner.
It’s kind of like when someone here pointed out that omega and omicron are big O and little o. I wanted to beat my head against a wall.
hsh – I wanted to beat my head against the wall.
Heh. I was well into my twenties when it dawned on me one day while I was painting shutters that a shutter is a thing that shuts and a trailer is a thing that trails, etc. (Can’t remember the etc. right now.)
Decades later (quite recently, in fact) it hit me that if unicorn means one horn, then uniform must be one form…..
>if unicorn means one horn, then uniform must be one form
i had a literature professor in college who had a strange knack for pronouncing words in a way that made it obvious what each part was doing and how they combined to form the meaning of the whole. it was like he was doing this kind of analysis for you in real time. blew my mind.
Probably something that he had commented on so many times in classes that it was just a habit of mind. I do the same sort of thing in my classes when explaining ambi-guous,, and ambi-valent, using ambi-dextrous as the model for understanding them. All part of my crusade to break students of the lazy intellectual habit of treating analysis as splitting everything into a binary and digging in on one side.
The downside to such habits of mind is that they inevitably eat up about five minutes of teaching time that you had allocated for other things.
The latter tends to be so boring
Let’s hope it stays that way.
This election scares me to death, not that I was surprised.
The AfD is so extreme that both Le Pen and Meloni, as well as Salvini and Orban rejected any cooperation with them. And they are getting 40+ percent while the CDU would be lucky to get 20 and the SPD 10.
Of course it’s a bit different in the whole of Germany but even on the national level the AfD is undoutedly leading the polls:
https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/
I think with those guys it is purely about optics. They want to present themselves as mainstream (which neither of them is) and ostentatiously distancing themselves from GERMAN right-wingers is a cheap way to do that. Should the AfD somehow take over, they would quickly change their tune.
Is it the desire to appear mainstream? Or an unwillingness to embrace a group/party which is all too reminiscent of the Nazis. Being far right, fascist even, is OK, but Nazi is still toxic.
But AfD is much more extreme.
Le Pen and especially Meloni have made a deliberate move to the center. The AfD has moved further and further to the right – and with it their large share of the electorate.
Being far right, fascist even, is OK, but Nazi is still toxic.
That’s my impression.
In Europe at least. In the US on the other hand…
cf. His Orangeness’ remarks about the good people in Charlottesville that waved Nazi flags or the cases of GOP politicians holding (closed-door) speeches in front of the same. As in the past some see the greatest problem with the Nazis in their lack of christian fundamentalism and that they allowed too much social mobility and invested too much in infrastructure that commoners profited from too (That’s were the absurd claims that the Nazis were far left come from).
https://www.ft.com/content/4e1c7760-b716-47a9-bc08-064d13b936df
“That’s were the absurd claims that the Nazis were far left come from”
Wait, what?
SURE the Nazis were ‘far left’.
Compared to the modern Trump GOP.
Election in Sweden is too close to call. Left-leaning bloc may have a one seat advantage. Far right Sweden Democrats dropped to third in the election, but is still too big for comfort. If the right-leaning bloc wins, the Sweden Democrats have been promised seats in government this time around.
Jävla helvete.