Editing Endonym and exonym (section)

=== Slavic people ===
Exonyms often describe others as "foreign-speaking", "non-speaking", or "nonsense-speaking". One example is the [[Slavic languages|Slavic]] term for the Germans, {{lang|sla|{{wikt-lang|en|Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/němьcь|nemtsi}}}}, possibly deriving from plural of {{lang|sla|{{wikt-lang|en|Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/němъ|nemy}}}} ("mute"); standard etymology<ref>{{Cite book |last=Townson |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5dNRAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA78 |title=Mother-tongue and Fatherland: Language and Politics in German |year=1992 |isbn=9780719034398 |page=78| publisher=Manchester University Press }}</ref> has it that the [[Slav]]ic peoples referred to their Germanic neighbors as "mutes" because they could not speak the "language". The term survives to this day in the Slavic languages (e.g. [[Ukrainian language|Ukrainian]] німці (nimtsi); [[Russian language|Russian]] немцы (nemtsy), [[Slovene language|Slovene]] Nemčija), and was borrowed into [[Hungarian language|Hungarian]], [[Romanian language|Romanian]], and [[Ottoman Turkish]] (in which case it referred specifically to [[Austria]]).

One of the more prominent theories regarding the origin of the term "[[Slav]]" suggests that it comes from the Slavic root {{lang|sla|{{wikt-lang|en|Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/slovo|slovo}}}} (hence "[[Slovakia]]" and "[[Slovenia]]" for example), meaning 'word' or 'speech'. In this context, the [[Slavs]] are describing Germanic people as "mutes"—in contrast to themselves, "the speaking ones".{{citation needed|date=June 2024}}