Steve Schwartz wrote:

>Robert Peters:
>
>>The old German word "welsch" means "foreign" in general and "French"
>>in particular.  So the quoted phrases are definitely and clearly both
>>anti-foreign and anti-French.
>
>Doesn't it have particular reference to Mediterranean peoples as well?
>Aren't, for example, Italians "waelsch?"

Thomas Mann uses the adjective to mean Italian in his novel *Doktor
Faustus* when describing the mother of Adrian Leverkuehn (the fictional
composer about whom the book is written) and Luca Cimabue, the assistant
to Leverkuehn's uncle, who owns a musical instrument shop.

Reading the novel recently, I was surprised to see both English
translations render "welsch" as "Italian" when first encountering it in
the description of L's mother.  I checked my dictionaries and found them
all defining the adjective as meaning "French".  I attributed the choice of
"Italian" to the translators' desire to create an atmosphere of the exotic
which among Germans could be accomplished by a reference to the French but
for Anglophones would have to be Italian.  When, later in the novel I found
Cimabue also described as "Welsch" I had to conclude that the dictionaries
and I were misinformed.

However I'm sure that "die welsche Schweitz" refers exclusively to the
French speaking part of Switzerland and does not include the Italian
speaking Ticino.

Walter Meyer