Board Thread:General Grimm Discussion/@comment-86.120.181.113-20170718200410/@comment-78.53.70.199-20180101210852

To both of you: I think you might have missed one fact of Grimm: The makers aren't interested in any sort of positive or acurate portrayal of anything outside of what they consider All American culture. I mean have they so far had any "Wesen" based on a creature from White American folklore? Also they could have gotten the German language right in the first place, but they chose not to and use plenty of negative German and Austrian stereotypes. They created what they wanted to see. That is why the "Zigeunersprache" (do I have to point out the problem with what term?) is this gypsy/Romanian amalgamation, which is a pretty standard portrayal of "Gypsies", not entirely unwarranted because the two most visible romani ethnicities are kalderash and lovarra, both heavily influenced by their long time in Romania. However if Stefania's family really has some long reaching roots into the Black Forest region that would not have been their family name. In fact the only name of her family that could be fitting the region is Yanko. The rest... I doubt it, especially names like Dragomir and Lucian. Maybe Miquel but so far I have never come across a "german gypsy" with a name like that, unless he was a recent immigrant from Spain. To make it short, historically a "german gypsy" would belong to the Sinti people and their family names are usually clearly based on German, with some, of the older family names, being based on French and Polish, just like German family names. And if they ever dressed anything like Stefania does, that must have been a while ago. Because we have private pictures of Sinti as far back as the end of the 19th century and not a single woman on it ever dressed like Stefania does. In fact, had you seen them you would not even identify them as "gypsy."