Talk:Reinhold von Werner

Reinhold von Werner has been listed as one of the Warfare good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
May 1, 2011	Good article nominee	Listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on April 20, 2011.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck sought the imprisonment of Admiral Reinhold Werner, who nearly precipitated a war between Spanish rebels and Germany in 1873?

Military history: Biography / Maritime / European / German

This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history articles

Associated task forces:
/
	Military biography task force
	Maritime warfare task force
	European military history task force
	German military history task force

Biography: Military

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
	This article is supported by the military biography work group (assessed as Mid-importance).

Germany Low‑importance

	Germany portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Germany, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Germany on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.GermanyWikipedia:WikiProject GermanyTemplate:WikiProject GermanyGermany articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Low German[edit]

The article says he was given the nickname Schweizer (Swiss), as his North German shipmates found his accent to be particularly foreign compared to their native Plattdeutsch.

He was born in Weferlingen, a place in North Germany and a place where Plattdeutsch is spoken too. Even if despite his place of birth he was raised with High German only his accent should have been the same North Germans are used to. So there must be more about his language that earned him his nickname. The article should tell us that. --::Slomox:: >< 12:05, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, Sondhaus doesn't give any more details as to the origin of the nickname. Parsecboy (talk) 14:29, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to look it up and in Erinnerungen und Bilder aus dem Seeleben, p. 7, Reinhold von Werner himself gives an account of the origin of his nickname. The first day he entered a ship as a simple hand-deck to be he had problems understanding the Low German-speaking boatswain. Von Werner says he could understand most of it but not everything. He probably grew up in a High German-speaking household, but it's almost impossible that he didn't pick up at least a passive knowledge of Low German in Weferlingen. Most likely also active knowledge. His problems with understanding the boatswain probably stemmed from the nautical lingo of the boatswain (he gives an example how the boatswain told him to pick up Spikers (nails) and von Werner has no idea what is meant because nails usually are called Nagels outside nautical lingo). And if von Werner answered Low German questions in High German that's a good explanation why the boatswain called him Schweizer (or Swiezer in Low German). So after this first day on the ship the boatswain sticked with calling him 'Swiss' instead of using his name.

So his language wasn't actually that particularly foreign, he just had the bad luck of meeting a grumpy boatswain who exaggerated his understanding problems. --::Slomox:: >< 17:28, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]