Proto-Slavic similarly borrowed the word as *ťuďь with the meaning "foreign", giving rise, for example, to modern Polish cudzy, Czech cizí, Serbo-Croat tuđi and Russian чужой.
It was rarely used as a descriptor of ethnicity or identity, as the Anglo-Saxons referred to themselves as Seaxe, Iutas or Engle, respectively meaning Saxons, Jutes and Angles.
[9] By the late 14th century, þēodisc had given rise to Middle English duche and its variants, which were used as a blanket term for all the non-Scandinavian Germanic languages spoken on the European mainland.
Dutch: ridder] is a knight) in which case linguistic and/or geographic pointers need to be used to determine or approximate what the author would have meant in modern terms, which can be difficult.
[12] For example, in his poem Constantyne, the English chronicler John Hardyng (1378–1465) specifically mentions the inhabitants of three Dutch-speaking fiefdoms (Flanders, Guelders and Brabant) as travel companions, but also lists the far more general "Dutchemēne" and "Almains", the latter term having an almost equally broad meaning, though being more restricted in its geographical use; usually referring to people and localities within modern Germany, Switzerland and Austria: He went to Roome with greate power of Britons strong, with Flemynges and Barbayns, Henauldes, Gelders, Burgonians, & Frenche, Dutchemēne, Lubārdes, also many Almains.
[13] He went to Rome with a large number of Britons, with Flemings and Brabanters, Hainuyers, Guelders, Burgundians, and Frenchmen, "Dutchmen", Lombards, also many Germans.
This lingering ambiguity was most likely caused by close proximity to German-speaking immigrants, who referred to themselves or (in the case of the Pennsylvania Dutch) their language as "Deutsch" or "Deitsch".
Because medieval trade focussed on travel by water and with the most heavily populated areas adjacent to Northwestern France, the average 15th century Dutchman stood a far greater chance of hearing French or English than a dialect of the German interior, despite its relative geographical closeness.
In the 13th century epic the Nibelungenlied, written in Middle High German, the protagonist Sigurd is said to hail from the city of Xanten in the "Niderlant", meaning the Low Countries.
[31] In the second half of the 16th century the neologism "Nederduytsch" (literally: Nether-Dutch, Low-Dutch) appeared in print, in a way combining the earlier "Duytsch" and "Nederlandsch" into one compound.
[32] Though "Duytsch" forms part of the compound in both Nederduytsch and Hoogduytsch, this should not be taken to imply that the Dutch saw their language as being especially closely related to the German dialects spoken in Southerwestern Germany.
On the contrary, the term "Hoogduytsch" specifically came into being as a special category because Dutch travelers visiting these parts found it hard to understand the local vernacular: in a letter dated to 1487 a Flemish merchant from Bruges instructs his agent to conduct trade transactions in Mainz in French, rather than the local tongue to avoid any misunderstandings.
Dutch humanists, started to use "Duytsch" in a sense which would today be called "Germanic", for example in a dialogue recorded in the influential Dutch grammar book "Twe-spraack vande Nederduitsche letterkunst", published in 1584: R. ghy zeyde flux dat de Duytsche taal by haar zelven bestaat/ ick heb my wel laten segghen, dat onze spraack uyt het Hooghduytsch zou ghesproten zyn.
Beginning in the second half 16th century, the nomenclature gradually became more fixed, with "Nederlandsch" and "Nederduytsch" becoming the preferred terms for Dutch and with "Hooghduytsch" referring to the language today called German.
The Dutch-speaking Cape Colony came under British control two years prior in 1814, resulting in the continued use of "nederduytsch" by the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa in its official nomenclature to the present day.
[1] In German dialects, a large amount of forms of "theodiscus" existed throughout the Middle Ages and which all referred to either the broader Romance/Germanic dichotomy in the West and South or the Slavic/Germanic bipartition in the East.