Gau (territory)

Gau (plural Gaue, Dutch: gouw, Frisian: gea or goa) is a Germanic term for a region within a country, often a former or actual province. It was used in medieval times, when it can be seen as roughly corresponding to an English shire. The administrative use of the term was revived as a subdivision during the period of Nazi Germany in 1933–1945. It still appears today in regional names, such as the Ambergau.

Medieval period

The Germanic word is reflected in Gothic gavi (neuter; genitive gaujis) and early Old High German gewi, gowi (neuter) and in some compound names still -gawi as in Gothic (e.g. Durgawi "Thurgau", Alpagawi "Allgäu"), later gâi, gôi, and after loss of the stem suffix gaw, gao, and with motion to the feminine as gawa besides gowo (from gowio. Old Saxon shows further truncation to gâ, gô. The German word is a gloss of the Latin pagus; hence the Gau is analogous with the pays of feudal France.

Old English, by contrast, has only traces of the word, which was ousted by scire from an early time, in names such as Noxga gā, Ohtga gā and perhaps in gōman, ġēman (yeoman), which would then correspond to the Old High German gaumann (Grimm) although the OED prefers connection of yeoman to young.

German (given name)

German is a given name, often the Slavic form of Herman. For the Spanish given name pronounced with stress in the second syllable see Germán.

People with the name German include:

Art and music

Humanities and social sciences

Politics

Sport

Other

German orthography

German orthography is the orthography used in writing the German language, which is largely phonemic. However, it shows many instances of spellings that are historic or analogous to other spellings rather than phonemic. The pronunciation of almost every word can be derived from its spelling once the spelling rules are known, but the opposite is not generally the case.

Today, German orthography is regulated by the Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung (RdR; German for "Council for German Orthography").

Alphabet

The modern German alphabet consists of the twenty-six letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet:

Special characters

German uses letter-diacritic combinations (Ä/ä, Ö/ö, Ü/ü) using the umlaut and one ligature (ß (called Eszett (sz) or scharfes S, sharp s)), but they do not constitute distinct letters in the alphabet.

Capital ẞ exists, but has very limited use. In the past, long s (ſ) was used as well.

Umlaut diacritic usage

German (mythology)

German (Bulgaria and Serbian: Герман, pronounced [ˈɡerman]) is a South Slavic mythological being, recorded in the folklore of eastern Serbia and northern Bulgaria. He is a male spirit associated with bringing rain and hail. His influence on these precipitations can be positive, resulting with the amount of rain beneficial for agriculture, or negative, with a drought, downpours, or hail. Rituals connected with German included making a doll intended to represent this personage. This effigy of German, made of rags, fired clay, or dried fruits, was rather large, usually with a distinct representation of the male genitals. It was produced and used in rituals exclusively by girls or young women.

In eastern Serbia, when a drought developed, girls would make such a doll, and bring it to a river bank. Depending on the regional custom, they would either bury it by the river, or put it in a little casket and let it flow down the river. Two of the girls would then start lamenting for the doll. Asked by the others why they were crying, they would answer, “We are crying for German; because of the drought German has died for the rain to fall.” If the amount of rain would become excessive after that, the doll was dug out. In northern Bulgaria, the rituals with German usually followed immediately after the Dodola rituals, but could be performed independently from them. In some villages they were carried out on the Feast of Saint Germanus. Girls would make the doll, 20 to 50 cm long, and lay it on a slate or in a little casket. Having adorned it with flowers, they would bury it with funeral observances. After three, nine, or forty days, the doll was dug out, and thrown into water.

Gau

Gau or GAU may refer to:

Places

Military

Schools

Panhole

A panhole is a depressed, erosional feature found on flat or gently sloping rock. Panholes are the result of long-term weathering and are generally seen on bedrock or very large blocks of rock. Similar terms are gnamma (Australia), opferkessel (German, roughly “sacrificial basin”), “armchair hollows”, weathering pans (or pits) and solution pans (or pits). Other German names include kamenitza and kamenica. In Spanish they are tinajita. In Portuguese and Galician are called pias.

In Namaqualand these features are called !gau

These shallow solution basins, or closed depressions, tend to form on bare limestone or silicate rock. They are also found on granitic rock. They are generally characterized by flat bottoms and sometimes by overhanging sides. The initial form may be a closed hollow created by a patch of humus. Diameters are rarely greater than 15 centimeters

In the Sierra Nevada, California these features were termed weathering pits by François E. Matthes, where they are thought to indicate rock surfaces that are unglaciated or escaped more recent glaciations. In Sierra Nevada granitic rocks, these features have a characteristic shape such that they expand more rapidly in width than they grow in depth. One explanation for their conformation is because the most active environment for weathering is the zone of alternate wetting and drying along the margins of the pools that collect in the pits, the margins tend to deepen and enlarge until all points of the bottom are equally wet or dry at the same time, thus producing their characteristic shape.

Gäu District

Gäu District is one of the ten districts of the canton of Solothurn in Switzerland, situated in the centre of the canton. It has a population of 19,960 (as of 31 December 2014). Together with Thal District, it forms the Amtei (electoral district) of Thal-Gäu.

Municipalities

Gäu District contains the following municipalities:

Geography

Gäu has an area, as of 2009, of 62.01 square kilometers (23.94 sq mi). Of this area, 27.74 km² (10.71 sq mi) or 44.7% is used for agricultural purposes, while 23.36 km² (9.02 sq mi) or 37.7% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 10.41 km² (4.02 sq mi) or 16.8% is settled (buildings or roads), 0.44 km² (0.17 sq mi) or 0.7% is either rivers or lakes and 0.06 km² (15 acres) or 0.1% is unproductive land.

Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 3.1% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 6.6% and transportation infrastructure made up 5.0%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 1.5% of the area Out of the forested land, 36.4% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.2% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 41.9% is used for growing crops, while 1.2% is used for orchards or vine crops and 1.6% is used for alpine pastures. All the water in the district is flowing water.