[PRCo] Re: Trolleys

[Donald Galt]

On 11 Mar 2005 at 11:28, Fred Schneider wrote:

> 
> Commenting farther on the linguistic frontier ... there are a lot of towns on the map
> on the French side that still have German names.
> 

Oh, indeed! You have to be nearly into S. Lorraine before they disappear 
entirely. Though the nationality of the places is often betrayed by 
prepositions as in Rohrbach-lès-Bitche (not sure why that is necessary, since 
there is no other Rohrbach in France) and though before you get very far south, 
-burg becomes -bourg and -weiler/-willer becomes -viller. And the bilingualism 
peters out before the German names do.

And then, an hour west of the Saar valley lies the capital city of Metz, 
proudly French for the past five centuries with bitter memories of the 
occupation of 1870-1918, but with the spelling of its name unmistakeably 
Teutonic.

Fred, do you have any plans of sharing your Saarbrücken pictures?

Don