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Fun fact if you didn’t know: the saxophone was invented in the 1840s and is named after its creator, Adolphe Sax.
When I was younger I just kind of mentally grouped all classical instruments together as ‘very old’ so it was neat to learn that some of them are actually pretty new.
Secondary fun fact: the surname Sax and the demonym Saxon are both derived from the type of blade called a seax.
Feels weird to call the saxophone a “classical instrument”, but I suppose it’s true even if it’s not popular with classical orchestras.
Angles?
Like all 360 of 'em?
What’s a bit funny is that the name of the Angles (the people) and angle (the shape) are directly related. Both come from an old word meaning “hook”, the Angles being a fishing people originally and an angle being the shape of a hook.
the Angles being a fishing people originally
This is EXCELLENT news for the German dub of Monty Python’s Holy Grail where Arthur claims to have taught fishing (German “Angeln”) to the Saxons (“Sachsen”), making them Anglo-Saxons (“Angelsachsen”).
And that’s how we get the term anglers, angling? Never questioned the origin
No , all 6.283…
τ supremacy
And they would have lived in Sexland.
Well, we have essex, wessex, sussex, middlesex.
Luckily, we don’t have nosex
In that timeline, the British is officially governed by a corporation. Therefore, its head of state is the CEO of sex.
Right on the border with Bonerland.
Bunch of Bonerphones
A mouthful of boners.
Real-world Saxon, ironically, has a bit of a low-brow reputation, not a language in which you’d want to hear a Danish prince lament his woes.
Sein ödo ni sein, des is hier de Froche.
The Old Saxons spoke a language that is much more similar to Low German/Plattdeutsch/Low Saxon/Niedersächsisch than to dialects from Saxony. Almost like the old saxons settled in what is now the state of Lower Saxony, and never anywhere near Saxony! Though like in most countries, any non-standard dialect has a low-brow reputation in Germany.
That’s fake Saxony though, real-world Saxony is north-western Germany, specifically Lower Saxony.
We Finns still call the entirety of Germany “Saksa”, from “Saxony”.
A German person is a saksalainen and a saxophone is a saksofoni. And and anglophone is anglofoni. The former one being just the instrument though.
I’m from a very different area and definitely very poorly imitating a stereotype for a very cheap joke :)
I shouldn’t be surprised how close to German it is, yet in a dominantly anglophone context, I didn’t expect to see it.
(The joke being that Saxon is a dialect that’s far enough away from what I consider “normal” German that it’s almost a separate language)
As far as German dialects go, Saxon is pretty close to standard German, it’s just that few Germans speak “pure” dialect nowadays, usually it’s closer to an accent. Compare Low German, which is a separate language branch and generally treated as a separate language, too.
See, my “normal” is the kind of Swabian-infused German Stuttgarters think is standard German but apparently anyone else can clock as being Swabian.
Sein oder ned sein, des isch hier die Frage.
It gets worse if I to full tilt into Swabian:
Sei odr ed sei, desch hier d’Fråg.
If you know how that sounds spoken, I think you can see why Saxon would sound odd to me. It’s still German, of course, but the joke that it’s not really German established itself in my family at some point and I can’t shake the habit.
Yeah, always funny listening to those southern Germans, especially the more educated ones where you wouldn’t expect it Ü TBH I’m a bit jealous, Prussia killed almost all local colour in my parts.
Being anglophones is also why they do so much fishing in Britain!
Anon? Isn’t the name right there?
And people who have a particular interest in that culture would be termed… Saxophiles.
Those who pronounce things phonetically are phonophones.
