Moin is a Frisian and
Low GermanLow German or Low Saxon is any of the regional language varieties of the West Germanic languages spoken mainly in northern Germany and the eastern part of the Netherlands.-Geographical extent:-Low German in Europe:Dialects...
greeting from
East FrisiaEast Frisia or Eastern Friesland is a coastal region in the northwest of the German federal state of Lower Saxony....
,
Southern SchleswigSouthern Schleswig is a name for the geographical area covering the thirty or forty northernmost kilometers of Germany, where Germany borders upon Denmark. Together with Northern Schleswig, the southernmost part of Denmark, it constitutes the region of Schleswig...
(inclusive
North FrisiaNordfriesland, English "Northern Friesland" or "North Frisia", is a district in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It includes almost all of traditional North Frisia along with adjacent areas to the east and south and is bounded by the districts of Schleswig-Flensburg and Dithmarschen, the North Sea and...
and
FlensburgFlensburg is an independent town in the North of the German state Schleswig-Holstein. Flensburg is the centre of the region Southern Schleswig...
),
BremenThe City Municipality of Bremen is a Hanseatic city in northwestern Germany. A port city along the river Weser, about south from its mouth on the North Sea, Bremen is part of the Bremen-Oldenburg metropolitan area...
, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the eastern
NetherlandsThe Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, constituting the major portion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east...
and Southern Jutland in
DenmarkDenmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe and the senior member of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries; southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and it is bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark borders both the Baltic and the North Sea...
, meaning "
helloHello is a salutation or greeting in the English language. It is attested in writing as early as the 1830s.-First use:Hello, with that spelling, was used in publications as early as 1833. These include an 1833 American book called The Sketches and Eccentricities of Col...
".
Its use spread during the first half of the 20th century over the whole of northern
Schleswig-HolsteinSchleswig-Holstein is the northernmost of the sixteen states of Germany, comprising most of the two historical duchies of Schleswig and Holstein...
; it is also used in the Danish dialect Southern Jutish. Due to the German comic character
WernerWerner is a fictional character, appearing in a number of German comic books and animated films. He was created by Brösel . Werner is the most successful German comic character of all time with over 10 million books sold and over 13 million film admissions...
(who always greets with
moin), since the 1980s it is used more and more by younger people in southern parts of the German language area as well.
Moin is a Frisian and
Low GermanLow German or Low Saxon is any of the regional language varieties of the West Germanic languages spoken mainly in northern Germany and the eastern part of the Netherlands.-Geographical extent:-Low German in Europe:Dialects...
greeting from
East FrisiaEast Frisia or Eastern Friesland is a coastal region in the northwest of the German federal state of Lower Saxony....
,
Southern SchleswigSouthern Schleswig is a name for the geographical area covering the thirty or forty northernmost kilometers of Germany, where Germany borders upon Denmark. Together with Northern Schleswig, the southernmost part of Denmark, it constitutes the region of Schleswig...
(inclusive
North FrisiaNordfriesland, English "Northern Friesland" or "North Frisia", is a district in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It includes almost all of traditional North Frisia along with adjacent areas to the east and south and is bounded by the districts of Schleswig-Flensburg and Dithmarschen, the North Sea and...
and
FlensburgFlensburg is an independent town in the North of the German state Schleswig-Holstein. Flensburg is the centre of the region Southern Schleswig...
),
BremenThe City Municipality of Bremen is a Hanseatic city in northwestern Germany. A port city along the river Weser, about south from its mouth on the North Sea, Bremen is part of the Bremen-Oldenburg metropolitan area...
, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the eastern
NetherlandsThe Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, constituting the major portion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east...
and Southern Jutland in
DenmarkDenmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe and the senior member of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries; southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and it is bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark borders both the Baltic and the North Sea...
, meaning "
helloHello is a salutation or greeting in the English language. It is attested in writing as early as the 1830s.-First use:Hello, with that spelling, was used in publications as early as 1833. These include an 1833 American book called The Sketches and Eccentricities of Col...
".
Usage
Its use spread during the first half of the 20th century over the whole of northern
Schleswig-HolsteinSchleswig-Holstein is the northernmost of the sixteen states of Germany, comprising most of the two historical duchies of Schleswig and Holstein...
; it is also used in the Danish dialect Southern Jutish. Due to the German comic character
WernerWerner is a fictional character, appearing in a number of German comic books and animated films. He was created by Brösel . Werner is the most successful German comic character of all time with over 10 million books sold and over 13 million film admissions...
(who always greets with
moin), since the 1980s it is used more and more by younger people in southern parts of the German language area as well. In particular, the word has gained some popularity in
InternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
use.
People in more southern parts of Germany often mistakenly assume that
Moin is a short form of
Morgen (meaning "morning") and should be used like "good morning". Saying "moin" in parts of Germany other than the north will indicate you to be a northerner. Non-locals often fall into the trap of using "moin moin" instead of "moin", which is more commonly used amongst the locals.
Etymology
The word derives from the Frisian word
mooi, meaning "beautiful" or "good". In the popular form
moin moin, the second
moin (also
morn) means "day" in Frisian. Similar forms in Low Saxon are
mooien Dag,
mooien Abend,
mooien Mor(g)en.
Moin is semantically equivalent to the Low Saxon (Plattdüütsch) greeting
Tag and replaced it in many areas. Therefore,
moin can be used 24 hours a day. The
reduplicationReduplication, in linguistics, is a morphological process by which the root or stem of a word, or part of it, is repeated.Reduplication is used in inflections to convey a grammatical function, such as plurality, intensification, etc., and in lexical derivation to create new words...
moin moin is used as emphasis and for a more polite form as well. In Southern Jutish,
mojn is used for hello and good bye, but
mojn mojn is solely used for good bye. Moin moin literally means "(Have a) good day".
Moin is also a likely root for the
FinnishFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. It is one of the official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a Finnish dialect, are spoken...
informal greetings
moi ("hello" or "hi") and
moi moi ("goodbye") which are typical of Southwestern Finnish.