Fascinating answers, guys!
"Het rijk" can mean the state, but only in the Nederlands, as in Rijkswaterstaat. We did have the rijkswacht (empire/state guard), some kind of military police, but no longer. I think "rijk" is more like the territory, the domain, but governed by some ruler, mainly a king or an emperor. In fact that is the underlying meaning of "gebied": the area where a someone is in charge, can gebieden (to order, to rule perhaps) - and verbieden... Rijk refers to the root reg-, which we find in regel(s), maha-radja/ rex, etc.
I think the english word Realm kind of fits your description for Rijk. what do you think?
ONe other difference: we will never use "keizerrijk" in a figurative sense, but we do use "rijk" in that way. "Het rijk (voor zich) alleen hebben" bijvoorbeeld... Ironisch kunnen we ook zeggen: "in zijn/ haar rijk"...
I don't understand what you meant here. could you develop a little more?
Reich is totally Rijk.
Kaizerseit? That can't be the name of a Keizerrrijk. Kaiserzeit means <Zeit, Ära, in der ein Kaiser bzw. eine Kaiserin regiert>
Keizerrijk: that's "Kaiserreich"
I got the word Kaiserzeit from first looking up "Roman Empire" on wikipedia, and then changing the language to german. The title of the article is
Römische Kaiserzeit, so I assume that's how it's called in Germany. I do agree that Kaiserreich is the more 1:1 equivalent to Keizerrijk, but I don't know why german uses the other one since I don't know german.
Perhaps you prefer the ambiguous English Roman that means the two or the unequivocal German Römisch, that only means 'Romeins'?
I actually like the distinct words in dutch, I find them richer in meaning. Roman and Römische, even though they could be used both in the context of the political body and the religious entity, standing by themselves they don't clearly indicate either. Romeins(e) and Rooms(e), on the other hand, seem more clear and unambiguous in this respect.
'Romeins' came a few years first.
It's not archaic now, because it's of daily use for 'popish/Catholic' Almost all Dutch and Flemish know the word...
Thank you
very much for referring to this book, I love this kind of content (historical development of words, languages and filology in general)
I absolutely agree with you that Roomse is not archaic, but rather in current use. I think I meant something else, that one might have originated before the other. But yeah, both are equally modern.
But by the snippet you have shared it doesn't seem like
romeinse necessarily came first. The word written in old dutch in the 12th century Reimbibel was the adjective
romisk (inflected to
romische in singular nominative and
romis[c]he in singular dative).
I'd have to research further on this topic, but from a quick look into this source I'd imagine that latin Roma -> old dutch Roma -> old dutch adjective Romisk (roma + isk suffix) -> old dutch inflected adjective romisch(e) -> middle dutch adjective roomsch(e) -> early modern dutch adjective rooms(e).
While the other word took a different path, going from latin Roma -> old dutch Roma -> middle dutch Rome -> inflected romeinsch -> modern dutch romeins(e).
At some point in the history of middle dutch, roomsch(e) might have gotten too closely associated with the Catholic Church, and that may be why another term was developed to describe purely the place. Of course, I'm not asserting all this, I'm no linguist. I'm just conjecturing, so it's probably riddled with faults.