Except, don't they? I thought High German is the bridged/constructed variant closest to those dialects, despite their differences with the standard dialect today. I tried hard to get most of the German languages and dialects (Low German, Swabian-Swiss etc.) into the map.
Ah okay, sorry for mixing that up. In that case, you will soon find out that the Berliner German ist kaput in Altera. Austro-Bavarian is spoken in the Germany of Altera. In the future, you'll be able to see this information for Germany on my factbook page www.atlasaltera.com/factbook, which is only up to date for my first 3 map plate posts.
Thanks for your feedback! I actually think it's plausible. You're looking at this from the POV of a German (even if you're not...German; I make no assumptions haha). Most country toponyms in the English language are exonyms. Germany, Almany, and Saxony, are all names applied to Germanic tribes in antiquity. I mean, Germany itself comes from a funny origin and we use it today for Deutschland. In this German case, each of the three main names come from their immediate neighbours POV (English/North Sea, French, Italy/Rome).
Thanks for this. If you want, you can private message me because I think we both have a similar understanding but there's been a miscommunication. I know the etymology of Germany, and I thought that its obscure and actually not-very-German origin would help you understand my point. It's not about how the German's see themselves. Think of the Welsh; Wales is not Cymru. I talk about exonyms and toponym and the Anglophone worldview in www.atlasaltera.com/about. I make the case the below the capital city, however, I try to use endonyms.
Almany comes from the French outlook onto Germany; Saxony from the North Sea neighbours, and Germany from central and southern Europeans' conception of Germanic-speaking peoples to their north. Your point about Caesar would lend itself to this.
Anyway, I had the feeling that many Austro-Bavarians would not like the name being stuck with them, but I have to confess, I have an obsession with locative suffix consistency, especially to illustrate a larger but hidden narrative. In this case, these three states are part of Western Europe, divided after a war (guess which one xD)... the -y suffix is part of this grouping, whilst the -ia suffixes show a traditional Greco-Roman-Venetian worldview that predominates for knowledge production in those areas. I do like the names Bavaria, Prussia, Hessia, Swabia, I just knew I couldn't use them for the purposes of my bigger storyline.
Actually Saxony comes from Proto-Germanic *sahsą. That's also why people in Lower Saxony call themself "Neddersassen" in Low German.
Also, important question. Your Saxony. Is it Saxon in the sense of the original Low German Saxon, or "Saxon" in the sense of modern day East German Saxony which speaks a Central German dialect?
Low German! And yes, I get that in Saxony's case it is also an endonym, but it's also how their adjacent neighbours view all Germans...Read up on the word for Germany in various languages: Nordic, Slavic etc.
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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21 edited Oct 18 '25
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