Moin, moi or mojn is a Low German, Frisian, High German (moin [moin] or Moin, [Moin]), [1] Danish (mojn) [2] (mòjn) greeting from East Frisia, Northern Germany, the eastern and northern Netherlands, Southern Jutland in Denmark and parts of Kashubia in northern Poland.
Moin is used at all times of day, not just in the morning (see Etymology section below). [3] The reduplicated form moin moin is often heard, [4] although some authors claim it is regarded by locals as tourists' usage. [5]
Due to the similarity of the words one might think that moin derives from various regional pronunciations of (Guten) Morgen ("good morning"), which tend to alter, vocalise, or skip rg. However, the word may actually also derive from the Dutch, Frisian, and Low German word mo(o)i, meaning "beautiful" or "good". [3] [5] Similar forms in Low Saxon are mooien Dag, mooien Abend, mooien Mor(g)en. Possibly, as is common in etymology, one origin is correct (either from Morgen or mooi) but spread thanks to its oral assimilation with the other term.
The Luxembourgish cognate of the word is moien, which can mean either "hi" or "morning" (gudde Moien! means "good morning!"). Interestingly, in the area of Germany bordering Luxembourg, it is common to use moin, instead of moien.
Unlike Guten Morgen, moin can be used at any time of day. It is semantically equivalent to the Low Saxon (Plattdüütsch) greeting Dagg and replaced it in many areas. In Hessen, mojn is used for hello and good bye, but mojn mojn is solely used for good bye. The double form Moin Moin is also used as an all day greeting in for example Flensburg that belonged to Denmark until 1864.
In Finland, a similar greeting moi (pronounced [ˈmoi̯] ) is used for "hello", "hi" in the Finnish language. However, moi moi is used as a good bye, similarly to "bye bye" in English, even with a similar intonation. Both are particularly typical of Southwestern Finnish, but through internal migration spread to the capital and with the help of TV to the rest of the language area. Moi's use is identical to that of hei: diminutive forms heippa and moikka, and duplication as a good bye. Southwest Finland traded with Hanseatic cities, so it is plausible that the greeting was borrowed from their dialects.
Moro is found in some parts of Finland and has also been used in the same way as moi. It is theorised that it comes from Tampere due to its large number of foreign workers and like moi has been borrowed from morrow and abbreviated.
Moi is also used in Dutch Low Saxon dialects in the eastern part of the provinces Groningen and Drenthe.
The Frisian languages are a closely related group of West Germanic languages, spoken by about 400,000 Frisian people, who live on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany. The Frisian languages are the closest living language group to the Anglic languages; the two groups make up the Anglo-Frisian languages group and together with the Low German dialects these form the North Sea Germanic languages. However, modern English and Frisian are not mutually intelligible, nor are Frisian languages intelligible among themselves, owing to independent linguistic innovations and foreign influences.
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, English, is also the world's most widely spoken language with an estimated 2 billion speakers. All Germanic languages are derived from Proto-Germanic, spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia and Germany.
Low Saxon, also known as West Low German are a group of Low German dialects spoken in parts of the Netherlands, northwestern Germany and southern Denmark. It is one of two dialect groups, the other being East Low German.
Saturday is the day of the week between Friday and Sunday. No later than the 2nd century, the Romans named Saturday diēs Sāturnī for the planet Saturn, which controlled the first hour of that day, according to Vettius Valens. The day's name was introduced into West Germanic languages and is recorded in the Low German languages such as Middle Low German satersdach, saterdach, Middle Dutch saterdag, and Old English Sæternesdæġ, Sæterndæġ or Sæterdæġ.
Frisia is a cross-border cultural region in Northwestern Europe. Stretching along the Wadden Sea, it encompasses the north of the Netherlands and parts of northwestern Germany. Wider definitions of ‘Frisia’ may include the island of Rem and the other Danish Wadden Sea Islands. The region is traditionally inhabited by the Frisians, a West Germanic ethnic group.
Northern Low Saxon is a subgroup of Low Saxon dialects of Low German. As such, it covers a great part of the West Low German-speaking areas of northern Germany, with the exception of the border regions where South Low Saxon is spoken, and Gronings dialect in the Netherlands.
East Frisian Low Saxon, East Frisian Low German, East Frisian Saxon, Frisio-Saxon or simply called East Frisian is a Northern Low Saxon dialect spoken in the East Frisian peninsula of northwestern Lower Saxony.
Ciao is an informal salutation in the Italian language that is used for both "hello" and "goodbye".
Low German is a West Germanic language spoken mainly in Northern Germany and the northeastern Netherlands. The dialect of Plautdietsch is also spoken in the Russian Mennonite diaspora worldwide.
North Frisian is a minority language of Germany, spoken by about 10,000 people in North Frisia. The language is part of the larger group of the West Germanic Frisian languages. The language comprises 10 dialects which are themselves divided into an insular and a mainland group.
Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German. It is a West Germanic language, closely related to the Anglo-Frisian languages. It is documented from the 8th century until the 12th century, when it gradually evolved into Middle Low German. It was spoken throughout modern northwestern Germany, primarily in the coastal regions and in the eastern Netherlands by Saxons, a Germanic tribe that inhabited the region of Saxony. It partially shares Anglo-Frisian's Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law which sets it apart from Low Franconian and Irminonic languages, such as Dutch, Luxembourgish and German.
Gronings, is a collective name for some Low Saxon dialects spoken in the province of Groningen and around the Groningen border in Drenthe and Friesland. Gronings and the strongly related varieties in East Frisia have a strong East Frisian influence and take a remarkable position within West Low German. The dialect is characterized by a typical accent and vocabulary, which differ strongly from the other Low Saxon dialects.
South Jutlandic or South Jutish is a dialect of the Danish language. South Jutlandic is spoken in Southern Jutland on both sides of the border between Denmark and Germany.
In historical linguistics, the High German consonant shift or second Germanic consonant shift is a phonological development that took place in the southern parts of the West Germanic dialect continuum in several phases. It probably began between the third and fifth centuries and was almost complete before the earliest written records in High German were produced in the eighth century. From Proto-Germanic, the resulting language, Old High German, can be neatly contrasted with the other continental West Germanic languages, which for the most part did not experience the shift, and with Old English, which remained completely unaffected.
The expression grüß Gott is a greeting, less often a farewell, in Southern Germany and Austria.
There are many widely varying names of Germany in different languages, more so than for any other European nation. For example, in the German language, the country is known as Deutschland from the Old High German diutisc, in French as Allemagne from the name of the Alamanni tribe, in Italian as Germania from the Latin Germania , in Polish as Niemcy from the Proto-Slavic nemets, and in Finnish as Saksa from the name of the Saxon tribe. Each of these names has further been adapted into other languages all over the world.
In linguistics, Old Dutch or Old Low Franconian is the set of dialects that evolved from Frankish spoken in the Low Countries during the Early Middle Ages, from around the 6th or 9th to the 12th century. Old Dutch is mostly recorded on fragmentary relics, and words have been reconstructed from Middle Dutch and Old Dutch loanwords in French.
Hello is a salutation or greeting in the English language. It is first attested in writing from 1826.
In historical linguistics, the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law is a description of a phonological development that occurred in the Ingvaeonic dialects of the West Germanic languages. This includes Old English, Old Frisian, and Old Saxon, and to a lesser degree Old Dutch.
