Buon giorno Marco,

am 2000-09-21 um 8:34 h UCT hat Marco.Cimarosti@icl.com geschrieben:
> I read that the German dialectal word "Welsch" means "Italian"
> (a *Romance* language) to Austrians and German-speaking Italians;

Actually, it is standard German, and it means any Romance language, mostly
French or Italian (cf. infra for a wider meaning). In Gottfried A. Bürger's
poem, <http://gutenberg.aol.de/buerger/gedichte/bravmann.htm>, "Welschland"
apparently is Italy. In Swiss German, "Welschland" is almost a synonym for
the Romance, the French-speaking part of Switzerland.

The German adjective "welsch" stems from the name of the Celtic tribe of
the Volscae (in Latin) who lived in the area now called France (I forgot
in which part of France). After the Celts had adopted Latin, the term
"volsc", or "welsch", changed to mean Romance.

> but it means "Polish" (a *Slavic* language) to North-East Germans and
> German-speaking Poles.

This is news to me; where did you read it?

Actually, German "welsch" also can refer to any uncomprehensable language,
or speech, notably in the composite "kauderwelsch". The constituent
"kauder" stems from "Churer" (meaning "from Chur"). The Swiss town of
Chur is the capital of the Grisons. Around Chur, the Sutsilvan dialect
of Rheto-Romance <http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/countries/Swit.html#RHE>,
<http://home.luna.nl/~benne/rumantsch.html> is spoken; hence, the original
meaning (now lost) of "kauderwelsch" is Rheto-Romance, again a Romance
language.

A modern analogical form is "Computerwelsch", meaning the Double-Dutch
spoken/written by computer experts.

> And, of course, it is easily noticed that a very similar word exists in
> English: "Welsh" (referring to the neighbor *Celtic* language).

IIRC, this also stems from the Volscae. I think that in the neighbourhood
of a living Celtic language, there was no incentive for the shift of
meaning seen in German (as discussed above).

Note that in German there is also a similar word, "Walser", with an
entirely different history. Walser are German-speaking people living
in the highest parts of the Grisons' valleys, above the Rheto-Romans,
and also in western parts of Austria (there are two valleys called "Walser-
tal"). These came from the upper (German speaking) Rhone valley, the Wallis
(Valois in French, IIRC).

Interesting, but vastly off-topic for the Unicode list. I have warned you,
in the subject line :-)

Ciao,
   Otto Stolz