@dokidoki I am no linguist, but I doubt the etymology for ’nyemets’ accepted today from ‘nemoy’ (mute) and meaning ‘someone who speaks incomprehensibly’. The reason of my doubt is that mute person can’t speak. The other reason is stress on the first syllable of the modern word, when it should be on the last one, if the word had a sense as ‘mute one’. And the third reason – I know that ⋅ various regions of Russia had various forms of pronunciation – just open Dal’s Dictionary to see tens of various forms for one word; ⋅ modern Russian is a blend of two large groups (Southern and Northern Russian), which in their turn were formed from dozens of little dialects. ⋅ not many of the modern words can be tracked to pre XVIII c. just because there’s no written evidence left from those lands. And last, it was common for some regions to say ‘ts’ in place of t / sh / tsh. For example the word ‘что’…