Hello Brian, your post made me start thinking a bit about my native language. Adding "-er" is okay for the name of a town, asin JFK's famous "ich bin ein Berliner". The German "isch" is like the Englisch suffix "ish" (as in English, Irish, Swedish, Danish etc.). A Swedish soldier is "ein schwedischer Soldat" in German. Unlike in English where you have words like "Norwegian", "Japanese" etc. (probably due to the French influence since 1066) we use the "isch" is for all nations and countries ("norwegisch", "japanisch", etc.). Of course sometimes it is difficult to tell whether something is a town or a country. Google gives 542.000 hits for "Hamburgisch" (for obvious reasons "Hamburger" gets some 27 Million hits). Carl ----- Original Message ----- From: <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 4:19 PM Subject: [HESSE] Solms [Was Re: Translation help] > Fantastic! So one adds -ischer to Solms to indicate a soldier from Solms, > but you would add just -er to Berlin to indicate a soldier from Berlin, or > not? Where would I look to find the rules for this? I've only had two > years of High School German, and that was so long ago. > > I've tried posting this query to the German Military list for days, but it > seems that the list is down, or at least to me it is. > > Thanks, this is really helpful. Now I'm going to have to try and find this > soldier. I now have to figure out who would have the records for Solms. > Solms would have belonged to One of the Hessian principalities, but which > one, and there seems to have been three partitions of Solms at the time. > Oh you have to love those petty kingdoms of the German State. > > Thanks for the help! > > Brian > > On Fri, April 3, 2009 3:01 am, Carl Becker wrote: >> The period indicates an abbreviation. The full word would be "Solmsischer >> Soldat". >> >> Carl >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: <[email protected]> >> To: <[email protected]> >> Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 4:16 AM >> Subject: Re: [HESSE] Translation help >> >> >>> That was my thoought, but I'm curious why the writer put a period after >>> Solms and before soldat? What might be the purpose of the period? >>> >>> Thanks for the answer, >>> Brian >>> >>> >>> On Thu, April 2, 2009 4:28 pm, Carl Becker wrote: >>>> I think this is a soldier belonging to the Duke or Count or Earl of >>>> Solms. >>>> In the pre-Napoleon time there where where several independent tiny >>>> states >>>> ruled by different branches of the noble family of Solms. >>>> >>>> For those who can read Geman, here is another link to Wikipedia. >>>> >>>> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solms_(Adelsgeschlecht) >>> >>> I read the English version and then went to the German version to >>> compare >>> it last night. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> ------------------------------- >>> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >>> [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the >>> quotes >>> in the subject and the body of the message >>> >> >> >> ------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >> [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes >> in the subject and the body of the message >> >> > > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes > in the subject and the body of the message >