My father, who fought in the British army in WWII told me the Germans were most often the Hun to them then, too. I told him that in most stories, movies etc. I had seen about the war, the allied forces usually referred to the Germans as Jerries, but he seemed to think that in fact that was not in very common use at the time. Possibly “Jerries” was more an American thing. On Dad’s Army, Mainwaring uses both “the Hun” and “Jerry” (used as a sort of mass noun), but I don’t know how authentic that is.
Which is? In the interest of multicultural exchange and understanding.
I have a friend who tells the story of receiving a care package in the field. He mad the mistake of opening it up and sharing some of the meats with his fellow grunts. The emeny found them because of the smell.
Last time he opened a care package in the field.
My grandfather was an American veteran of the First World War who worked in France as a driver. When I was young, I read a letter he wrote to my grandmother in which he referred to “The Bosch”. I thought he was talking about spark plugs at first. It didn’t help that he was a horrible speller.
In a strictly “four letter word meaning vagina” sense, coño. You wouldn’t call a woman a coño.
Mid-20th century, Camilo José Cela caused an enormous scandal both because his characters used four letter words and because he insisted in that they were perfectly fine words and should be in the dictionary. He claimed that dictionaries and novels should reflect life, not autoclave it.
At least according to Wiki, gringo originated in Spain, the first reference being in 1786.
However, it may have first become popular as a term for Americans in Mexico during the Texan rebellion and Mexican-American War.
OK then, but in that case, it changed meaning completely and it went from meaning “mumbling foreigner” to “American” in Mexico; whether the Spanish soldiers in Cuba used either meaning to speak about the Americans or not, or even the word itself, I have no evidence. Nowadays you wouldn’t refer to a Frenchman as a gringo any more than you’d call a leftist gabacho.
For those who don’t speakee Spanish, the italicized paragraph in Colibri’s* post means:
In Malaga they call gringo those foreigners having a certain accent which prevents them from pronouncing Spanish natural and easily; in Madrid they use this same word, mainly for Irishmen.
Since Madrid is one of those places where “nobody was born there”, and since most of the people who move there hail from parts further South, it is very common to have words or pronunciations whose distribution “jumps” from somewhere in the South (like Malaga) to Madrid.
- Bad mod! Bad mod! [Threatens Colibri with a rolled-up newspaper]
The North Koreans seem fond of terms like ‘dogs’ or ‘imperialist bastards’ in contemporary propaganda. I have no idea what they were called during the Korean war.
[sup][sup](emphasis mine)[/sup][/sup]
How exactly was this determined?
And <<les goddams>> dates from the Hundred Years’ War.
Impressive list, but to quibble Hiwi wasn’t a term used by the Germans to refer to their Russian enemies and wasn’t really derogatory. Hiwi is an abbreviation of Hilfswilliger, “voluntary assistant” and was used to refer to former Russian POWs serving as auxiliary troops in the German military. Considering that the Germans were murdering Soviet POWs by starvation, take the “voluntary” part of the abbreviation with a grain of salt.
in the classic Welcome to Woop Woop, the girl refers to her American boyfriend using the abbreviated form “seppo”.
So, the only *derisive *nickname comes from our own closest allies.
Have we actually been on the right side in any war?
Mostly the Germans looked upon us as deluded pawns, led into war by the Brits and the Jews.
During WWI, they were right- at least the British part. Wilson was a Anglophile, the British drummed up some over-the top propaganda, the German Diplomatic service were bumblers- and *viola *- Yanks in The Great War.
The use of “Hun” or “the Huns” as a derogatory reference to Germans originates with the Kaiser himself, interestingly. In 1900, he shocked European sensibilities with the infamous “Hun Speech.”
From here: GHDI - Document
Other countries were prepared to treat the Chinese with equivalent savagery, but the idea that someone would admit it – let alone boast about it – was distasteful. A crowned monarch, no less! As the tensions that would lead to the Great War mounted over the next decade, the British remembered this speech and would apply the term as soon as war broke out.
Although the Allies would shamelessly milk it for propaganda, the German occupation of Belgium was unusually brutal for European-on-European violence by the standards of the day, and quickly cemented the “Hun” image in the public mind.
Yep… and I can confirm this first hand after having an argument with a Brit. He called me a Yank to which my reaction was “That’s it? That’s all you got?”
I don’t think there is even one American who is offended by being called a Yank.
Sort of oddly affectionate. My mum when she was a little girl used to ask the Jerries at the bottom of the garden for cheese. German POW’s used to cut wood in the field by her home, resplendent in grey with big yellow squares on their backs (“to make 'em easier to shoot if they run away” As the guard said). Those more involved in fighting that i have talked to have referred to Germans, as in one Bomber crew “only good German was a dead German”…and Infantry guy " the Germans hit us hard…" etc…no affection there.
I dunno…have you tried it on a Confederate re-enactor?
Or anyone born south of the Mason-dixon line?
Actually, I’ve met a couple Texans who find it so…
Probably some Civil War sympathizer types, too.