Talk:Landsgemeinde

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Landsgemeinde in English means literaly something like "community of the country" and not "provincial assembly". It is combined of the two words "Lands" in high-german it would be "Landes", the genetive form of "Land" meaning land, country, terra, territory, state (and in my opinion sometimes also something like soil or fertile land, when talking about peasants) and Gemeinde is difficult to translate, possible translations you can find here: http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&search=Gemeinde&relink=on One must take into account that Landsgemeinde is a very old word, so I try to describe the origins of the word Gemeinde to understand it better: It derives from the word "gemein" and is a substantivation of this word, that means it is a noun made from a adjective. In general in german you can make every adjective or verb with the substantivation to a noun. "gemein" in modern german can mean "mean", but in past it meant just something like "usual", "common", "general", "ordinary" ... It was like the Opposit to exquisite, to nobility... The substantivaton of "common" is "community", the total of ordinary people. So I think "community" is the best way to translate, because that is the meaning best fitting the old meaning of Gemeinde and also a translation for Gemeinde, found in the dictionary.