Dollar, a shortening of Joachimstaler… Someone explain how the fuck something which I suppose is pronounced “yo-ah-keen-staah-laerh” eventually became dollar instead of “stalle” or “talle”
Short version: for some reason Thal means valley (Neanderthal means “Neander Valley” where the fossils were first found.)
A German valley known for silver became shorthand slang for money, so a Thal became synonymous with money (like buck, clam, bead, dough, green, etc.).
Thal, through time and clumsy mouths, became dal (doll).
So the slang for money became dal and that grew into daller, and the Angles did what they do to spelling and teeth and did their own thing. So now we have dollar as Germanic slang for money.
Then a new land is settled and it has a ton of immigrants who all muddle their languages but somehow learn slang super easy, like we all learn new languages, so we are left with dollar meaning money when it originally was a silver mine in a valley from around Charlemagne.
The region the currency was minted was called “Joachimsthal”, so the name became “Joachimsthaler”, with the suffix -er signifying it is something from there. The English suffix -er works similarly - a Londoner is a person from London.
By the way, nowadays the word is spelled “Tal”, not “Thal”. I’ll use that spelling from now on to also avoid any confusion with the thorn sound im English - “Th” in German is pronounced the same as “T”.
Because “Joachimstaler” has a lot of syllables, eventually people just said “Taler” instead, there was only one currency from a place with “-tal” at the end anyways. All German regions have dialects whose prononciation of certain letters differs from standard German - which standardized spelling conventions. As such, people from some other regions wouldn’t have written “Tal” but rather “Dal”, had they named the region. Small interjection: Bordeaux instead of Porto: A woman with a Saxon dialect accidentally booked the wrong ticket on the phone.
As such the Dutch / Low Germans named the currency “Daler” which then became “Dollar”.
Dollar, a shortening of Joachimstaler… Someone explain how the fuck something which I suppose is pronounced “yo-ah-keen-staah-laerh” eventually became dollar instead of “stalle” or “talle”
Just thinking out loud… “U.S. Staah-laerh” ~= “U.S. Taah-laerh” ~= “U.S. Daah-laerh”?
By taking a detour from the German Taler/Daler via Spanish Dolero. Already sounds more like Dollar?
Yeah they left a bit out:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/dollar
Short version: for some reason Thal means valley (Neanderthal means “Neander Valley” where the fossils were first found.)
A German valley known for silver became shorthand slang for money, so a Thal became synonymous with money (like buck, clam, bead, dough, green, etc.).
Thal, through time and clumsy mouths, became dal (doll).
So the slang for money became dal and that grew into daller, and the Angles did what they do to spelling and teeth and did their own thing. So now we have dollar as Germanic slang for money.
Then a new land is settled and it has a ton of immigrants who all muddle their languages but somehow learn slang super easy, like we all learn new languages, so we are left with dollar meaning money when it originally was a silver mine in a valley from around Charlemagne.
Small corrections:
The region the currency was minted was called “Joachimsthal”, so the name became “Joachimsthaler”, with the suffix -er signifying it is something from there. The English suffix -er works similarly - a Londoner is a person from London.
By the way, nowadays the word is spelled “Tal”, not “Thal”. I’ll use that spelling from now on to also avoid any confusion with the thorn sound im English - “Th” in German is pronounced the same as “T”.
Because “Joachimstaler” has a lot of syllables, eventually people just said “Taler” instead, there was only one currency from a place with “-tal” at the end anyways. All German regions have dialects whose prononciation of certain letters differs from standard German - which standardized spelling conventions. As such, people from some other regions wouldn’t have written “Tal” but rather “Dal”, had they named the region. Small interjection: Bordeaux instead of Porto: A woman with a Saxon dialect accidentally booked the wrong ticket on the phone.
As such the Dutch / Low Germans named the currency “Daler” which then became “Dollar”.
I will absorb this and fix my knowledge. Thank you!