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Carpal Tunnel
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Wordcrazy-- Re:I had a grandfather who was of Spanish descent who always called Germans, "Aleman"
So you know how to spell that? there is a word-- on the tip of my tongue-- similar to almonds-- almandl??? (related / translated from Mandle-- (as in mandlebrot-- or almond bread-- a german form of what we in US call Biscotti--) that i have heard as a word for german -- It a word i never use-- but recognize it as i hear it spoken by other as "German" -- but i have no idea why Germans would be called almond anything!-- and i can't for the life of me think who uses it!
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enthusiast
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I believe both Monaco and Monte Carlo are towns in Monaco.
Monaco country and Monaco = Munich = Muenchen are both named after monks. (Well I'm guessing for Munich, on etymology.) The Latin was monachus, which gives Italian monaco. The Old English was munuc, and I'm guessing the Old High German was much the same, giving Munken = '(something of) the monks'.
The Grimaldi family seized Monaco in the 1200s sometime by disguising themselves as monks. I don't know whether it was called Monaco before that.
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why Germans would be called almond anything!-- and i can't for the life of me think who uses it!
There are four roots for names of Germans. The Latin and English name is related to the Latin germanus 'related' and presumably germen 'bud, sprout': so probably meant 'kin, confederacy, tribe' and then came to be applied to all the people of Germania. I don't know exactly.
The Spanish aleman and French allemand come from the Allemanni, one of the German tribes during the Roman period. I don't know why their name came to be the name of all Germans. The name is presumably Germanic itself, meaning 'all men'. Perhaps another confederacy name.
The Slavonic names are generally something like nemets. I have a vague recollection this means 'dumb'; the Slavs called themselves the speakers (slovo = 'word') and so anyone not Slavonic-speaking was a non-speaker. Can anyone confirm or correct this?
The most interesting root is the Indo-European teut-, meaning 'people'. As well as giving Teutonic and Dutch and Deutsch, it gives the Irish Tuatha in Tuatha De Danaan, the Italian tedesco which is their word for 'German', and the Old English theod. This didn't survive into modern English but Tolkien readers will recognize it in King Theoden.
There's also the Germanic word folk. This has no known counterpart outside the Germanic languages, and it's been suggested it came from an underlying language that was there before the Indo-Europeans. Someone has even called this hypothetical language "Folkish" on account of that.
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old hand
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Arial; that's a motorcycle, innit?
No, how silly of you! It's Prospero's fairie. Now don't go raising a tempest about it!
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Pooh-Bah
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Muenchen are both named after monks. (Well I'm guessing for Munich, on etymology.)
Nail on head.
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Pooh-Bah
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No, how silly of you! It's Prospero's fairie. Now don't go raising a tempest about it!
"The Tempest" Q: Why name a play after something over and done at first curtain?
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old hand
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"The Tempest" Q: Why name a play after something over and done at first curtain?Because Willie thought that naming it "Prospero's Books" sounded stupid!  If Peter Greenaway could have gotten away with it, everyone would have been naked in his film version, and Miranda would have uttered, "Oh, brave nude world that hath such creatures in it!" 
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Bean: In Italian, Tedesco=German. But I think Germany is "Germania". emanuela?
Yes, you are right. Anyway, wordcrazy, educated people can understand - and maybe find in old poems -
even the form Alemanno = tedesco = german.
Alemanno gives a feeling of fear, I think because centuries ago it was used for german army, arrriving from North and wasting some of our countries..
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Russian does use 'Nemets' to mean German or Germanic, and the verb _nemét'_ does mean "to be speechless." Bulgarian, on the other hand, uses /njam/ for 'dumb' but either 'germanski' or 'nemski.'
I'd question whether 'Slavic' comes from slóvo - 'word.' The Russian word for Slav is 'slavianín/slaviánka' (masc./fem.) and 'slaviánskii' for Slavic. The more likely root in my book would be 'sláva' - fame or glory.
Just my dve kopecka.
[oh, and to address Faldage's inquiry about my nom de guerre: slovo - word and voi - (thing)... Think in terms of Russian folk tales about domovoi, dverovoi, dvorovoi, etc. {The house/door/courtyard "thing" that watched over the home and could be source of either solace or mischief, depending on whether one paid the proper respect.}]
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Carpal Tunnel
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Why name a play after something over and done at first curtain?Ah, one of my favourite plays. Does it actually finish before curtain up? – I seem to remember the first stage direction is something like ‘On a ship at sea – a tempest of thunder and lightning’. But I can’t help feeling the meaning within the play is deeper than this. The tempests in Shakespeare are always a sort of leitmotif of some other process of wrack and discord in the affairs of mankind. In this play, I think it is underlining the fact that the story starts, not at the opening scene of the play, but 12 years earlier when Prospero is unrightfully evicted from the Dukedom of Milan by his brother’s perfidy. When he tells the story to his daughter Miranda, it’s worth noting that they are cast adrift in an unseaworthy wreck in a storm: “In few, they harried us aboard a bark; Bore us some leagues to sea, where they prepared A rotten carcass of a butt, not rigg’d, Nor tackle, sail, nor mast – the very rats Instinctively had quit it. There they hoist us, To cry to the sea, that roar’d to us…” (hope I’ve got that about right, no time to check now!) It’s also got a wider emblematic significance – when P asks Ariel (note not with an ‘a’, I think) how the day’s going, Ariel answers it is the sixth hour “at which time, my lord, you said our work shall cease” to which P responds something like ‘yes, I did say that, when I first rais’d the tempest’. This suggests a reference to rest on the 7th day etc of the creation myth – Prospero as god-figure, eventually setting aside his staff of power. At the very last scene, P promises his guests “calm seas, auspicious gales,/And sails so expeditious that shall catch/Your royal fleet far off (aside) My Ariel, chick,/That is thy charge. Then to the elements be free…” At this point, we know the tempest is metaphorically blown out. [shameless name-drop] – at school, I was in a production of this play with Daniel Day Lewis. He was quite good even then 
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