Take it up with your ancestors (or the English, if you have no English ancestors yourself). They started calling the Dutch "Dutch" when people in what is today The Netherlands and Germany were both called deutsch/dutch, and the English didn't care to adjust when the distinction started to matter/people from the Netherlands stopped calling themselves deutsch/dutch.
But Germans are not much better, it's absurd that Italian city names that aren't at all hard to pronounce for Germans have different names in German, e.g. Torino, Milano, Roma (Turin, Mailand, Rom), and we also call Japan "Japan", even though Japanese is one of the few languages that uses a word for Germany that is derived from "Deutschland" and "Nippon" isn't hard to pronounce for Germans, either.
Also, the saxons never lived in the area of the German federal state of Saxony.
Guess what? The modern state of Saxony (aka Upper Saxony, Obersachsen) is not even contiguous with the state of Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen). They're separated by nearly 300 km.
Although to be somewhat fair they are connected by Sachsen-Anhalt. And basically all of northern Germany was at one point called Saxony ("Old Saxony", Altesachsen), at least by some others in the first millennium.
Of course history is funny; The lands of Upper Saxony weren't part of the medieval Duchy of Saxony that followed, despite eventually taking the name (via "Electorate of Saxony" and then "Kingdom of Saxony").
But anyway the "Anglo-Saxons" were probably really from Denmark and northern Schleswig-Holstein. The southern parts of their region might've been called Saxony at the time.
(I'm mostly posting this because I wanted to figure it all out)
But Germans are not much better, it's absurd that Italian city names that aren't at all hard to pronounce for Germans have different names in German, e.g. Torino, Milano, Roma (Turin, Mailand, Rom), ...
Nobody is better. All languages do this to an extent. The Germanized city names especially in Northern Italy also stem from the fact that they used to be under Austrian control and they claim to speak German too.
Exactly. In Spanish, we have some 'curious' names for Germany and its states and cities. «Alemania» is the name of the country. «Renania-Palatinado» is Rheinland-Pfalz, Bayern got turned into «Baviera». «Colonia» is Köln, «Friburgo de Brisgovia» is Freiburg im Brisgau...
You are assuming that the name as it is in Italian today has always been the same and it isn't. Both Milano and Mailand are linguistic descendants of the name whichever people who first set up shop there spoke and decided to call the place. And that wasn't anywhere close to modern Italian. They are both valid.
English ditches the o and has Florence on the books as well. Geographical names follow no logical rule. Most are just historical accidents, some historical crimes. This is more in the former category if you ask me.
Cologne, Munich, Brussels, Naples, The Hague ... It's everywhere.
Those have more straightforward transliterations. But where the fuck does the L even come from?
Firenze was also the art and culture capitol of Europe for quite some time, so this isn't some backwater town. It's like the CCP telling people that New York is now officially called "Not Yoodle" in Chinese.
No, in Italian, the city's name is Firenze, which is much cooler IMO than nasal EN/DE Florence. Which, TIL, is from the Latin Florenti, as in "Florentine" as the ajdectival form.
"Nippon" isn't hard to pronounce for Germans, either.
I don't know about that. Even if Germans are not shy of pronouncing letters wrongly (using V as F for instance), the P in Nippon makes no sense in German. It would have to be spelled with an H to make the right sound.
OK. German has an H (same as English, which makes it weird that it's written with a P in the first place) and isn't shy about spelling reforms, either.
Those are good points but Torino as Turin is complicated, some folks there still call it that in dialect etc. and historically, run by the Lombards and all that.
English is terrible at this, Venice is Venezia, if you can say pizza you can say that.
I speak two languages so yes, i’d say it really is. Some spanish place names are completely different than english ones and trying to dredge them up in conversation can be tedious if you don’t often use them.
But keep downvoting people you mildly disagree with. It really improves the platform and discussions. /s
Cool beans, I speak three languages and there's no way you believe that some arbitrary vocabulary is harder than grammatical finesses, or some outrageous slang, or idioms/shibboleths.
Maybe you aren't "speaking" that second language as well as you think?
Also, imagine caring about votes 😂 it's not a disagree button, Brudi. But your high effort post probably deserves all the updoots.
Entire nations: You cannot keep "America" for yourself. There is history, maps, books, the independence of other countries in the region called for the liberation of "America" (e.g. Simón Bolívar "the liberator of America"; "America for the Americans"; Sentimientos de la Nación: "America is free and independent of Spain and all other nations, governments, or monarchies").
The U.S. of A.: Yeah... No. I'm America now. There's no other "America" because there's only North America and South America, 🤷🏼♂️ don't you know? And the land is The Americas because it's two in one. Duh. Erasure? I call it freedom! 🇺🇸🦅
In Denmark we refer to the UK as England. If it's more official we call them Storbritannien but no one calls them that in everyday speech. It's just England.
German in German is “Deutsch” or “Duits” in Dutch.
Dutch in Dutch is “Nederlands” or “Niederländisch” in German.
“Deutch” comes from an old high german word “diutisc” which meant “of the people”
“Dutch” comes from “Diest” meaning “people’s language”
When the Romans invaded England, they important the Latin “Germania” to refer to Germany and gradually started to use “Dutch” for the common people of the “lower countries” (Belgium and Netherlands)
AFAIK French has something similar. I might be wrong, but similarly to the Holland/Netherlands (Nederlanden) story, it was named after one of the tribes in Germany (alamanni, "all men"), before the great unification.
I think the term "The Nethetlands" was coined after the Reformation and Counter-Reformation when the northern provinces ,which became Lutheran, separated from the southern provinces which remained Roman Catholic.
The country was usually referred as "Holland" (a northern province) before then.
There’s no actual difference in meaning/etymology between ‘Diets’ and ‘Deutsch’. They’re both derived from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz, meaning ‘of the people’. Well into at least the seventeenth century, probably the eighteenth (I’m basing this off what I’ve read myself in primary sources) ‘Duits’ was still commonly used in the Netherlands as well. It was essentially part of a distiction between ‘Duits’ and ‘Waals’, where those who were ‘Waals’ were the ‘others’.
Actually I'd argue country names are one of the examples where it would make more sense to have the same name everywhere. Why not use the countries actual name (maybe with slight adaption to the language)?
Because of an old rule (plurals get double letter), I believe the recommended way by the Academy is «E.E. U.U.». Not sure if they've said otherwise recently.
It's also not uncommon to see «E.U.A.», «E.U.» or those same but without the dots.
No confusion with the European Union, though, because that's «Unión Europa»: «U.E.».
Why not use the German name for "chair"? Words are arbitrary. Why would you use the local inhabitants' name for it?
What about when a country has more than one ethnic group with more than one language, which have different names for the country? This is the case in many places. You could pick one, of course, but that's just another arbitrary choice.
The historical reason is that names for countries (which often develop from names for peoples) don't always come from the a common source.
The word for chair is arbitrary. The chair has no feeling towards one word or another. Most countries' people do have feelings towards their country and it's name.
Picking one of the people's names for the country would still be better than using your arbitrary name for the country.
OK, but most native speakers of a language have feelings towards their own language, and want to continue to speak it as they learnt it. Why should the speakers of a one language have any say over how the speakers of another language speak? What if I feel that Germans should stop using the word "Stuhl" and start using the word "chair" instead? My feelings are irrelevant because it's not my language and have no rights or interests in the matter.
What happens in multilingual countries? Should the English-speaking majority of Wales be able to dictate to the Welsh-speaking minority that the country is called Wales rather than Cymru ? Should the English-speaking majority of England be able to dictate to Welsh-speaking Welsh residents of England that they should stop using the name Lloegr? Or vice-versa? Shall we call Switzerland Die Schweiz or La Suisse or Svizzera or Svizra? Do you think the German people - or perhaps the German government - should go and tell speakers of Sorbian that they have to stop calling Germany Nimska and must instead use a different word? Do you like where this is going? I mean there were never any problems in Germany before that smell similar to this.
No, this is all rubbish and nonsense. Let people speak their languages. Literally nothing bad happens if you do, and if you go the other way it opens a massive can of ethnically-oppressive worms where one ethnic group gets to tell others what to do.
So does every person get called a different name in every country they visit? What about your pet?
It is normal - in most European languages at least - for proper nouns to be treated differently. And usually the names we use for places ARE the same across languages or at least extremely similar. I think it makes sense for someone to be surprised and curious in cases where that isn't true.
And I find the reasons in this and a bunch of similar cases to be really interesting, often weird, and sometimes pretty stupid to still be in use. Including the name China (and variations of it).
What if I feel that Germans should stop using the word "Stuhl" and start using the word "chair" instead?
If you would be a people of the nation of chair, then yes. But turns out you're not, because chair isn't a country and you're just making a useless comparison.
The only one who's talking about forcing this on anyone, is you. So instead of getting all agitated over it you could just stop?
Anyway in your opinion Turkey has no right or reason to ask others to use it's original Türkiye instead?
I'll answer your question if you answer the questions I already asked about Wales, England, Germany and Switzerland. Though my position should be obvious.
Türkiye cannot in any reasonable sense be called "original" either - it's the word naming the country in Turkish but like all words except those coined recently it has undergone etymological changes to become what it is today. Calling it "original" makes it sound like the Turks came up with a name they still use and the English got it wrong. That's not what happened.
Other languages use different characters or might not even be able to pronounce the name as they don't have the sounds. It might be simple to think that, doesn't make it correct.
But they specifically said "There's no reason to expect them to be the same in different languages." Which there absolutely IS a reason to expect that.
Countries aren't people though. And depending on language and context, this does happen, and used to happen even more. Finns might refer to a David as Taavi in Finnish. John Cabot's name in Italian was Giovanni.
Never said we shouldn't be translating the names of countries, only that there is a reason to think we shouldn't. Because the comment I was replying to said "There's no reason to expect them to be the same in different languages."
It’s not really a mix-up. More a continuation of an old name for the language spoken in the Netherlands. The Dutch centuries ago called their language Diets/Duuts/Duits which means something like Germanic. This was before the countries Germany and the Netherlands existed.
Diets is not a single language but a name for all the different regional languages spoken in the low lands. Diets is also known as Middle Dutch. The name was used to differentiate the languages from the Romance languages.
Hence why the English called the people of the low lands Dutch since the people of the low lands said they were speakers of Diets/Duuts/Duits.
Also in the Dutch national anthem there is a line that says “Ben ik van Duitsen bloed” “I am of Dutch/Deutsche blood” which does not refer to modern day Deutschland but to what all Germanic people in the low lands, what is now present day Netherlands, would call themselves back then.
Well in Dutch they call themselves Nederlanders or Hollanders. Though Hollanders is technically only correct if they are from the Dutch province North-Holland or South-Holland
And the reason why the Netherlands is also known as Holland is basically before the unification of the Low Lands every province was a self governing state and Holland was the richest province. Hence why most traders who went abroad from the Low Lands were people from Holland. It's therefore why people abroad would call the Low Lands Holland since Hollanders were the only people from the Low Lands they met and and after the Netherlands was formed the name Holland for that area stuck in many languages.
While it is quite common that countries have different names in other languages, germany is special because it really has a lot of very different names. Alemagne in french, germany in englisch, deutschland in german, tyskland in danish, Niemcy in poland and so on.
There is actually a wikipedia article about it, that also explains the origin of the different names.
The Saxons were a group of Germanic tribes/peoples. So similar in origin to "allemannia" (from the Alemanni tribes) and its variants in many other languages.
Thats my german keybord autocorrecting some words while i try to write in english. I am too lazy to go through all the mistakes as long as one can get my point.
It's always 唐人街 Tang-People Street, Tang referring to China's most powerful dynasty, or 華埠 Hua-City, Hua also refers to Chinese people, it's actually a character in the official name of both PRC 中华人民共和国 (in simplified) and ROC 中華民國 (in traditional)
Overseas Chinese is typically not referred as 中国人 but as 華人 (Hua People)
Chinese Americans are not really referred to as "Americans" but the emphasis is put on the Citizenship, rather than being an "American"
Like in 美籍華人 which Google Translate says is "Chinese American", but really transliterates to "Hua (meaning ethnic Chinese) Person with American Citizenship"
To emphasis on the "American-ness" I'd have to use 華裔美國人 which transliterates to "American of Hua (aka: Chinese) Ethnicity", which I think would sound really weird and I think I'd get weird looks if I use the term 美國人 (American), so I probably would never call myself an "American" in front of Chinese-speaking people, but use 美籍華人 instead.
(Sort of like code-switching. I call myself American in front of other Americans to fit in, but call myself 華人 (ethnic Chinese person) to other ethnic Chinese so I could also fit in.)
I always thought that India uses both Bharat and India with English still an official language. Has the current government made the switch to only using Bharat?
India is the official name. I think Bharat or Hindustan is commonly used tho as folks speak in their local languages instead of English typically. I could be wrong. Worth noting that Hindustan would basically translate to "India" or Land of the Indus River.
Not that it matters but I would take India or Bharat over Hindustan any day. I get that it'd be in line with naming conventions in the area, but it just sounds so silly. XD
As someone from Czech Republic, I am not surprised. There are sometimes huge differences between country names in czech and English. And the closer the country is, the bigger the difference.
For the German speaking countries eng - ger - cze:
Oh yeah? This symbol = ß that looks deceptively like a mangled B is the double S in German.
Don't get me started on their states. My favourite is Mecklenburg-Vorpommern because it sounds like a curse word you'd yell out in pain after stepping on a Lego.
Which might seem confusing but I wish English used accents/umlauts to show pronounciation because that would do a lot to unfuck the spelling of this powerful but bastard of a language.
Oh for sure. I do have to admit, though, that I very much enjoy when Americans use umlauts in inappropriate ways. And as a Dane I have feel special joy when they replace their o's with ø in an attempt to make words look hardcore, cool and Nordic.
That, my friend, is endlessly entertaining to me and will never not be funny.
I remember that one album by Twenty One Pilots where literally every o was replaced with and ø on the cover and I was friggin crying and hyperventilating the first time I saw it. I haven't listened to any of the songs. They may go really hard and be masterpieces, but to me I can never take that album seriously. They really thought that ø is just a cooler looking o and not its own letter with a very distinct sound that, in the context of English would make every word sound like it's being spoken by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I know. It's a shocking difference. We call you guys Holland for some reason, though and every non-european I've ever met keeps thinking we are the same country. I was asked to say something in Dutch once and just looked blankly at the person.
Or Németország in Hungarian. And Hungary is Magyarország in Hungarian. Ország just means country, so they're just "German country" and "Hungarian country", literally.
Most slavic countries also call Germany Německo or the like.
This happens when there's no fast global media when you meet a new nation, and you can't copy someone else's homework to come up with a name for them. Or when you copy someone else's homework, instead of actually asking a member of that nation.
I still cannot get over the fact that Tolkien based Middle Earth and several characters in Lord of the Rings on friggin Djursland in Denmark. I live an hour away from the real life Helms Deep, Isengard and so on. There's even a local myth in the area that directly inspired the characters of Aragorn and Eowyn who were split onto two characters. The original myth was about a chief's daughter who had to reclaim her dead father's legendary sword and thereby set him free from the curse that kept him and his men trapped as ghosts. I forget if their Graves were on Helm Island or if it was somewhere else. It's just really cool and super random. Apparently there are official Tolkien tours. I don't have to go to New Zealand to experience middle earth xD I have the original lame version at home.
The first time the inhabitants of what is now Germany and what is now Hungary met, there were no nations at all. People have been communicating and trading with those from far-off lands for longer than the concept of nation even existed, which is a major contributor to why these names are so different.
Endonyms often turn out to derive from "people" in some language or other, but exonyms could come from anything like "the people on the other side of the hill/river/swamp" or "the rich people" or "the people who herd sheep" or "the people who really like goat's milk". There's an inherent asymmetry between naming the one group of "us" and all the groups of people who are not "us"!
Apparently even Tacitus said it was a made up name. It seems like it might have originally applied to lands west of the Rhine, or some tribe living there in Roman times. So it might have applied to as much of modern Netherlands and Belgium as to modern Deutschland.
Don't forget the 'Heiliges Römisches Reich' though - that always seemed a bit contrived.
It's interesting how countries have names that we just don't use. To be fair, the UK calls it Germany, too, at least the BBC does. And not just their .com (American) site, which still uses English rather than American English (e.g. honour instead of "honor," centre instead of "center," and other minor spelling differences... to stranger ones like manoeuvre vs "maneuver" and so on), so that tells me they call Deutschland "Germany" in the UK as well. Even the English Wikipedia (which covers English and American English) says the official name of the country is "The Federal Republic of Germany".
We call Turkiye "Turkey", I guess because the name of the bird is more familiar and easier to type?
What we call Japan, people who live there say Nihon (or Nippon). But what they write is 日本, but I don't know how to make my keyboard (or computer) produce those symbols without copying and pasting them. It's easy to remember these symbols. One looks like a skyscraper (like in Tokyo) and the other looks like clouds around the peak of Mt Fuji, together representing the manmade and natural beauty of the country. It might be coincidence that those glyphs look like that, though.
Let's take it a step further, shall we? So we were talking about countries that call themselves something other than what you (I'm assuming American) call them. There are companies that do it, too, but other than having extra words and symbols at the end, it's mostly pronunciation... and I only have two examples. There may be more. The first one is Nokia, which people try to pronounce like it's Korean or Japanese. It's not, it's Finnish (from Finland, one of the places Vikings come from). That's why they're so sturdy. It's not just a meme. Anyway, while it's fine for you to call it "No-kia," like you're saying you don't drive a Kia, the Finns pronounce it "Knock-ya." Like, throw a Nokia at you and "knock-ya" TF out!
Going back to Japan, the Japanese language is made up of glyphs which represent the syllables that make up the spoken language. Japanese is both simpler and more complex than you might think. So 日本 means Nihon, or Ni and Hon. Maybe you see where this is going... Hon isn't pronounced like it rhymes with Don, it instead rhymes with "bone." So to say 日本, you say "Ni" (knee) "hon" (hone). Those are the sounds represented by those glyphs. Now say "Honda." You probably said it wrong. 本田 is pronounced "Hon" (hone) "da" (duh). Of course, if you say "Hone-duh" to car guys, they'll look at you like you're a fool, because no one outside of Japan pronounces it that way, even at the dealer. And you won't score home field points by going to the dealer and pronouncing it correctly. (Of course, when they speak to leadership in Japan, if they ever do, you bet your ass they're saying it right. But outside of Japanese corporate, they're pronouncing it the way you always have.)
Does any of this even matter? No, not really. It's trivia, which means it's fun to know but not exactly useful to know, in most situations. German people will likely tell you they are German, not that they are Deutsch. Then again, Germans are far nicer than their rough language would imply (you can thank Rammstein for making you think it's rough in the first place, especially if you're Gen X or Millennial). They would just as soon you say hello as hallo (German for hello), though I will almost always use "auf widersehen" over goodbye, because goodbye sounds more formal. "Auf widersehen" translates to "Until next time." Compare that with the Japanese "さようなら" (sayonara), which means "farewell." Three languages, the other two translate to "goodbye," but they all actually mean different things. This is why learning some of your more common phrases in other languages helps. I'd much rather say "auf widersehen" to someone I'm going to see again tomorrow rather than "goodbye." And as much as I'd love to tell my boss さようなら... well, it's just not the appropriate parting phrase.
日 is sun and 本 is origin (in this case), which lines up with the western moniker for Japan as the land of the rising sun.
Also I'd say that goodbye is a decent enough translation for sayonara. I can't remember the last time I said goodbye in English (instead of bye or see you), and seems almost as formal and final as farewell, which seems almost outdated at this point. I'm not sure I've ever actually used that in my entire life.
219 Comments
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 79 pts · 218d
Take it up with your ancestors (or the English, if you have no English ancestors yourself). They started calling the Dutch "Dutch" when people in what is today The Netherlands and Germany were both called deutsch/dutch, and the English didn't care to adjust when the distinction started to matter/people from the Netherlands stopped calling themselves deutsch/dutch.
But Germans are not much better, it's absurd that Italian city names that aren't at all hard to pronounce for Germans have different names in German, e.g. Torino, Milano, Roma (Turin, Mailand, Rom), and we also call Japan "Japan", even though Japanese is one of the few languages that uses a word for Germany that is derived from "Deutschland" and "Nippon" isn't hard to pronounce for Germans, either.
Also, the saxons never lived in the area of the German federal state of Saxony.
Skunk@jlai.lu · 47 pts · 218d
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Deconceptualist@leminal.space · 11 pts · 218d
Guess what? The modern state of Saxony (aka Upper Saxony, Obersachsen) is not even contiguous with the state of Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen). They're separated by nearly 300 km.
Although to be somewhat fair they are connected by Sachsen-Anhalt. And basically all of northern Germany was at one point called Saxony ("Old Saxony", Altesachsen), at least by some others in the first millennium.
Of course history is funny; The lands of Upper Saxony weren't part of the medieval Duchy of Saxony that followed, despite eventually taking the name (via "Electorate of Saxony" and then "Kingdom of Saxony").
But anyway the "Anglo-Saxons" were probably really from Denmark and northern Schleswig-Holstein. The southern parts of their region might've been called Saxony at the time.
(I'm mostly posting this because I wanted to figure it all out)
FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website · 20 pts · 218d
Nobody is better. All languages do this to an extent. The Germanized city names especially in Northern Italy also stem from the fact that they used to be under Austrian control and they claim to speak German too.
Katrisia@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 217d
Exactly. In Spanish, we have some 'curious' names for Germany and its states and cities. «Alemania» is the name of the country. «Renania-Palatinado» is Rheinland-Pfalz, Bayern got turned into «Baviera». «Colonia» is Köln, «Friburgo de Brisgovia» is Freiburg im Brisgau...
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · -2 pts · 218d
Austrians are just as able as BRD Germans to pronounce something like Milano, though.
FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website · 13 pts · 218d
You are assuming that the name as it is in Italian today has always been the same and it isn't. Both Milano and Mailand are linguistic descendants of the name whichever people who first set up shop there spoke and decided to call the place. And that wasn't anywhere close to modern Italian. They are both valid.
English ditches the o and has Florence on the books as well. Geographical names follow no logical rule. Most are just historical accidents, some historical crimes. This is more in the former category if you ask me.
Cologne, Munich, Brussels, Naples, The Hague ... It's everywhere.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 1 pts · 218d
I say we should go the Belarus route.
FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website · 4 pts · 218d
I look forward to renaming virtually everything in the Americas.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · -1 pts · 218d
It wouldn't really make sense to use different names than the current locals, though.
FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website · 2 pts · 218d
Who decided that it wouldn't make sense?
NachBarcelona@piefed.social · 0 pts · 218d
You're entitled to your incredibly ridiculous opinion.
hansolo@lemmy.today · 16 pts · 218d
Plus the true downgrade of Firenze to "Florence."
20cello@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 218d
Naples? Rome? Venice?
hansolo@lemmy.today · 5 pts · 218d
Those have more straightforward transliterations. But where the fuck does the L even come from?
Firenze was also the art and culture capitol of Europe for quite some time, so this isn't some backwater town. It's like the CCP telling people that New York is now officially called "Not Yoodle" in Chinese.
zaphod@sopuli.xyz · 16 pts · 218d
Florence comes from the Latin name of the city Florentia.
hansolo@lemmy.today · 5 pts · 218d
TIL
X@piefed.world · 4 pts · 218d
Napoli. Roma. Venezia.
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org · 4 pts · 218d
Czech: Neapol, Řím, Benátky.
NachBarcelona@piefed.social · 1 pts · 218d
Do you perhaps mean "Florenz"?
hansolo@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 218d
No, in Italian, the city's name is Firenze, which is much cooler IMO than nasal EN/DE Florence. Which, TIL, is from the Latin Florenti, as in "Florentine" as the ajdectival form.
What's "Florenz"?
NachBarcelona@piefed.social · 2 pts · 218d
It's Firenze in German.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 0 pts · 218d
Florenz, but yeah
froh42@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 218d
IIRC Germany is named weirdly different around the world with names stemming from several roots.
Deutschland, Germany, Alemania, Nemezky, Saksa,...
MrFinnbean@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 218d
Well Germans kind of were the Holy Roman Empire so in my books they can call those cities in italy what ever they fancy.
bstix@feddit.dk · 0 pts · 218d
I don't know about that. Even if Germans are not shy of pronouncing letters wrongly (using V as F for instance), the P in Nippon makes no sense in German. It would have to be spelled with an H to make the right sound.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 4 pts · 218d
OK. German has an H (same as English, which makes it weird that it's written with a P in the first place) and isn't shy about spelling reforms, either.
SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 218d
Those are good points but Torino as Turin is complicated, some folks there still call it that in dialect etc. and historically, run by the Lombards and all that.
English is terrible at this, Venice is Venezia, if you can say pizza you can say that.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 4 pts · 218d
"Venedig" in German, even though they literally use (almost) the same sound for z as Italian ...
teft@piefed.social · -1 pts · 218d
Having to learn new names for countries and cities is one of the worst parts of learning a second language.
NachBarcelona@piefed.social · 5 pts · 218d
lol it's not by far
teft@piefed.social · -2 pts · 218d
I speak two languages so yes, i’d say it really is. Some spanish place names are completely different than english ones and trying to dredge them up in conversation can be tedious if you don’t often use them.
But keep downvoting people you mildly disagree with. It really improves the platform and discussions. /s
NachBarcelona@piefed.social · 5 pts · 218d
Cool beans, I speak three languages and there's no way you believe that some arbitrary vocabulary is harder than grammatical finesses, or some outrageous slang, or idioms/shibboleths.
Maybe you aren't "speaking" that second language as well as you think?
Also, imagine caring about votes 😂 it's not a disagree button, Brudi. But your high effort post probably deserves all the updoots.
"/s" 🤣 holy Moses, Reddit is leaking hard.
teft@piefed.social · -3 pts · 218d
I’m glad accounts like yours out themselves so early after joining. Makes you easier to block.
Keep questioning peoples lived experiences. I’m sure you’ll make lots of friends that way. /s
I won’t be responding as i’ve blocked you.
GeneralEmergency@lemmy.world · 74 pts · 218d
Americans are slowly learning about the rest of the world.
Better late than never.
ThomasWilliams@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 217d
America was originally just the name of South America, then the English lazily coined the term "North America".
Katrisia@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 217d
Entire nations: You cannot keep "America" for yourself. There is history, maps, books, the independence of other countries in the region called for the liberation of "America" (e.g. Simón Bolívar "the liberator of America"; "America for the Americans"; Sentimientos de la Nación: "America is free and independent of Spain and all other nations, governments, or monarchies").
The U.S. of A.: Yeah... No. I'm America now. There's no other "America" because there's only North America and South America, 🤷🏼♂️ don't you know? And the land is The Americas because it's two in one. Duh. Erasure? I call it freedom! 🇺🇸🦅
rumba@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 216d
Mostly found out as we feverishly seek out escape routes.
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip · 0 pts · 218d
The amazing thing is, people don’t refer to their home country by a two letter acronym.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works · 14 pts · 218d
UK has entered the chat
Nangijala@feddit.dk · 2 pts · 216d
In Denmark we refer to the UK as England. If it's more official we call them Storbritannien but no one calls them that in everyday speech. It's just England.
GeneralEmergency@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 216d
I know it's not the point.
But spitting on Scotland and Northern Ireland like that is a bit harsh.
can@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 204d
But it's the appropriate amount of harsh when it comes to Wales?
ripcord@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 217d
(Sees car with CH sticker drive by...)
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz · 32 pts · 218d
You have it backwards.
German in German is “Deutsch” or “Duits” in Dutch.
Dutch in Dutch is “Nederlands” or “Niederländisch” in German.
“Deutch” comes from an old high german word “diutisc” which meant “of the people”
“Dutch” comes from “Diest” meaning “people’s language”
When the Romans invaded England, they important the Latin “Germania” to refer to Germany and gradually started to use “Dutch” for the common people of the “lower countries” (Belgium and Netherlands)
WolfLink@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 218d
Where does “Alemania” (what they call Germany in Spain) come from?
teft@piefed.social · 11 pts · 218d
It comes from from french and originally from latin alamanus. There was a germanic tribe there called the the Alamanni.
Dicska@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 218d
AFAIK French has something similar. I might be wrong, but similarly to the Holland/Netherlands (Nederlanden) story, it was named after one of the tribes in Germany (alamanni, "all men"), before the great unification.
ThomasWilliams@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 217d
I think the term "The Nethetlands" was coined after the Reformation and Counter-Reformation when the northern provinces ,which became Lutheran, separated from the southern provinces which remained Roman Catholic.
The country was usually referred as "Holland" (a northern province) before then.
DonAntonioMagino@feddit.nl · 1 pts · 217d
There’s no actual difference in meaning/etymology between ‘Diets’ and ‘Deutsch’. They’re both derived from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz, meaning ‘of the people’. Well into at least the seventeenth century, probably the eighteenth (I’m basing this off what I’ve read myself in primary sources) ‘Duits’ was still commonly used in the Netherlands as well. It was essentially part of a distiction between ‘Duits’ and ‘Waals’, where those who were ‘Waals’ were the ‘others’.
FishFace@piefed.social · 32 pts · 218d
Wait till you find out that Germans have different words for all the other things we have words for, too!
Seriously though, the names of countries are just words. There's no reason to expect them to be the same in different languages.
oz1sej@discuss.online · 12 pts · 218d
I think it's so funny that almost all languages have some variation of the name "Hungary", except in Hungarian, where it's called "Magyarország".
FishFace@piefed.social · 5 pts · 218d
I believe the languages of some neighbouring countries such as Turkey resemble Magyarország more closely :)
AAA@feddit.org · 9 pts · 218d
Actually I'd argue country names are one of the examples where it would make more sense to have the same name everywhere. Why not use the countries actual name (maybe with slight adaption to the language)?
DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz · 3 pts · 217d
The United States of America is just a series of English words. It really wouldn't make sense in some other languages.
JackbyDev@programming.dev · 3 pts · 217d
In Spanish it's Estados Unidos which seems like a translation of the words.
TheBat@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 217d
Katrisia@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 217d
Because of an old rule (plurals get double letter), I believe the recommended way by the Academy is «E.E. U.U.». Not sure if they've said otherwise recently.
It's also not uncommon to see «E.U.A.», «E.U.» or those same but without the dots.
No confusion with the European Union, though, because that's «Unión Europa»: «U.E.».
JackbyDev@programming.dev · 3 pts · 217d
Finally we can get into Eurovision!
AAA@feddit.org · 2 pts · 217d
Do country names, or names in general, need to make "sense"?
As for the USA, without any evidence or desire to look it up, I think most languages translate it pretty much literally.
FishFace@piefed.social · -6 pts · 218d
Why not use the German name for "chair"? Words are arbitrary. Why would you use the local inhabitants' name for it?
What about when a country has more than one ethnic group with more than one language, which have different names for the country? This is the case in many places. You could pick one, of course, but that's just another arbitrary choice.
The historical reason is that names for countries (which often develop from names for peoples) don't always come from the a common source.
AAA@feddit.org · 5 pts · 218d
The word for chair is arbitrary. The chair has no feeling towards one word or another. Most countries' people do have feelings towards their country and it's name.
Picking one of the people's names for the country would still be better than using your arbitrary name for the country.
FishFace@piefed.social · -4 pts · 217d
OK, but most native speakers of a language have feelings towards their own language, and want to continue to speak it as they learnt it. Why should the speakers of a one language have any say over how the speakers of another language speak? What if I feel that Germans should stop using the word "Stuhl" and start using the word "chair" instead? My feelings are irrelevant because it's not my language and have no rights or interests in the matter.
What happens in multilingual countries? Should the English-speaking majority of Wales be able to dictate to the Welsh-speaking minority that the country is called Wales rather than Cymru ? Should the English-speaking majority of England be able to dictate to Welsh-speaking Welsh residents of England that they should stop using the name Lloegr? Or vice-versa? Shall we call Switzerland Die Schweiz or La Suisse or Svizzera or Svizra? Do you think the German people - or perhaps the German government - should go and tell speakers of Sorbian that they have to stop calling Germany Nimska and must instead use a different word? Do you like where this is going? I mean there were never any problems in Germany before that smell similar to this.
No, this is all rubbish and nonsense. Let people speak their languages. Literally nothing bad happens if you do, and if you go the other way it opens a massive can of ethnically-oppressive worms where one ethnic group gets to tell others what to do.
ripcord@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 217d
So does every person get called a different name in every country they visit? What about your pet?
It is normal - in most European languages at least - for proper nouns to be treated differently. And usually the names we use for places ARE the same across languages or at least extremely similar. I think it makes sense for someone to be surprised and curious in cases where that isn't true.
And I find the reasons in this and a bunch of similar cases to be really interesting, often weird, and sometimes pretty stupid to still be in use. Including the name China (and variations of it).
AAA@feddit.org · 2 pts · 217d
If you would be a people of the nation of chair, then yes. But turns out you're not, because chair isn't a country and you're just making a useless comparison.
The only one who's talking about forcing this on anyone, is you. So instead of getting all agitated over it you could just stop?
Anyway in your opinion Turkey has no right or reason to ask others to use it's original Türkiye instead?
FishFace@piefed.social · 0 pts · 217d
I'll answer your question if you answer the questions I already asked about Wales, England, Germany and Switzerland. Though my position should be obvious.
Türkiye cannot in any reasonable sense be called "original" either - it's the word naming the country in Turkish but like all words except those coined recently it has undergone etymological changes to become what it is today. Calling it "original" makes it sound like the Turks came up with a name they still use and the English got it wrong. That's not what happened.
RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 218d
I've always wanted to make a map that used the native names for countries instead of their English/American names.
FishFace@piefed.social · 7 pts · 218d
https://endonymmap.com/ ? :)
bobzer@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 217d
Looks like they specifically chose the official English names for countries even when the indigenous name is also official.
FishFace@piefed.social · 2 pts · 217d
They explain the methodology - where there is more than one official name, the name in the language with the most speakers in that country is used.
bobzer@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 217d
That's certainly a decision.
FishFace@piefed.social · 3 pts · 217d
How would you pick along multiple official names in different languages?
bobzer@lemmy.zip · 0 pts · 217d
I mean it's mostly a criticism of whoever suggested this map as a way to see country names in the language of the country, rather than just English.
But it's also kind of a pointless map as it's not useful to an English speaker but it doesn't commit to teaching you indigenous place names either.
rumba@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 216d
Most of them are fairly expected. That Finland tho...
FishFace@piefed.social · 2 pts · 216d
Etkos puhu suomeä? :)
rumba@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 216d
valitettavasti en :(
I do watch a lot of Hydraulic Press Channel though so i at least have an ear for Finglish :)
JackbyDev@programming.dev · 4 pts · 217d
No... I have a name. Someone talking to me in a different language doesn't make my name different. It's intuitive to think country names are the same.
Sheldan@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 217d
Other languages use different characters or might not even be able to pronounce the name as they don't have the sounds. It might be simple to think that, doesn't make it correct.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 216d
You'd still expect to call them something similar to what they call themselves as best as another language can, but nope!
JackbyDev@programming.dev · 0 pts · 217d
But they specifically said "There's no reason to expect them to be the same in different languages." Which there absolutely IS a reason to expect that.
Sheldan@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 217d
Expectations end where knowledge begins, I guess.
JackbyDev@programming.dev · 0 pts · 217d
Never said it was correct to not translate country names. Only that there is a reason to think they wouldn't be.
FishFace@piefed.social · 3 pts · 217d
Countries aren't people though. And depending on language and context, this does happen, and used to happen even more. Finns might refer to a David as Taavi in Finnish. John Cabot's name in Italian was Giovanni.
JackbyDev@programming.dev · 1 pts · 216d
Never said we shouldn't be translating the names of countries, only that there is a reason to think we shouldn't. Because the comment I was replying to said "There's no reason to expect them to be the same in different languages."
Mantzy81@aussie.zone · 2 pts · 217d
My name is said differently in different languages, I'd expect nothing different
JackbyDev@programming.dev · 3 pts · 217d
Your name is your name. Things like Jack versus Jacques or Matthew versus Mateo exist, but those aren't your name.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 217d
It gets interesting when you hear how the Chinese call countries.
FishFace@piefed.social · 1 pts · 217d
Oh, it's all interesting IMO!
El_Scapacabra@lemmy.zip · 31 pts · 217d
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world · 21 pts · 217d
It’s not really a mix-up. More a continuation of an old name for the language spoken in the Netherlands. The Dutch centuries ago called their language Diets/Duuts/Duits which means something like Germanic. This was before the countries Germany and the Netherlands existed.
Diets is not a single language but a name for all the different regional languages spoken in the low lands. Diets is also known as Middle Dutch. The name was used to differentiate the languages from the Romance languages.
Hence why the English called the people of the low lands Dutch since the people of the low lands said they were speakers of Diets/Duuts/Duits.
Also in the Dutch national anthem there is a line that says “Ben ik van Duitsen bloed” “I am of Dutch/Deutsche blood” which does not refer to modern day Deutschland but to what all Germanic people in the low lands, what is now present day Netherlands, would call themselves back then.
zaphod@sopuli.xyz · 6 pts · 217d
No, it means something like "people" or "of the people".
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 216d
Wait, so Dutch is the language of people and everyone else has been using animal languages this whole time!?
ChairmanMeow@programming.dev · 4 pts · 216d
Ja
Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 217d
Most Dutch people I met just call it Holland. We do so in Denmark as well
starlinguk@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 217d
"We" call it Holland because foreigners say "eh?" when we call it the Netherlands.
Paper_Phrog@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 217d
Its the worst. Always try a "Netherlands" and get a "what??" in return and then say "Holland" - "ooooooh HOLLAND!"...
Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 217d
Hah, didn't know that
bestelbus22@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 217d
Yeah wierd situation. Internally it only refers to the 2 provinces in the west but externally we all chant it during football matches
Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 217d
What do people from the Netherlands call themselves if not Dutch or the Dutch?
Like, people from the United States call themselves Americans, there's the Spanish and French.
Are they called Netherlanders or something?
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 217d
Well in Dutch they call themselves Nederlanders or Hollanders. Though Hollanders is technically only correct if they are from the Dutch province North-Holland or South-Holland
here is a CGP Grey video about the difference between Holland and the Netherlands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE_IUPInEuc
And the reason why the Netherlands is also known as Holland is basically before the unification of the Low Lands every province was a self governing state and Holland was the richest province. Hence why most traders who went abroad from the Low Lands were people from Holland. It's therefore why people abroad would call the Low Lands Holland since Hollanders were the only people from the Low Lands they met and and after the Netherlands was formed the name Holland for that area stuck in many languages.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 217d
Holland is fairytale beautiful. Would happily live there. I loved visiting.
rumba@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 216d
This is what confused me so much about germany's real name :)
Flubo@feddit.org · 31 pts · 218d
While it is quite common that countries have different names in other languages, germany is special because it really has a lot of very different names. Alemagne in french, germany in englisch, deutschland in german, tyskland in danish, Niemcy in poland and so on.
There is actually a wikipedia article about it, that also explains the origin of the different names.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany
rustydrd@sh.itjust.works · 19 pts · 218d
DIESE ABSCHEULICHE UNTERSTELLUNG IST VOLLKOMMEN INAKZEPTABEL!
Flubo@feddit.org · 4 pts · 218d
:D thats funny
LNRDrone@sopuli.xyz · 9 pts · 218d
Saksa in Finnish, no clue what the origin of that is. It doesn't even mean anything that I know of.
chonomaiwokurae@sopuli.xyz · 6 pts · 218d
Sachsen, germaaninen heimo/Saksin alue nykyisessä Saksassa.
rustydrd@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 217d
The Saxons were a group of Germanic tribes/peoples. So similar in origin to "allemannia" (from the Alemanni tribes) and its variants in many other languages.
SchwertImStein@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 218d
polish*, also your capitalisation of the name in different languages is totally random
Flubo@feddit.org · 5 pts · 218d
Thats my german keybord autocorrecting some words while i try to write in english. I am too lazy to go through all the mistakes as long as one can get my point.
Schmuppes@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 218d
Not totally random. Consistently wrong, with only "Niemcy" out of line.
SchwertImStein@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 218d
isn't Alemagne correct? or is it an error to capitalise a country's name in French?
Schmuppes@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 218d
Since it's at the beginning of a sentence, it's correct either way :P
BlushedPotatoPlayers@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 217d
I think that means "mute" originally
KingGimpicus@sh.itjust.works · 27 pts · 217d
Technically, Japan is not called Japan in Japan. Its Nippon.
Jumbie@lemmy.zip · 16 pts · 217d
In France it’s called Japon.
tatann@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 217d
France also uses the world "nippon" as an adjective equivalent of "japanese"
sircac@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 217d
Same both Japón & Nipón for Spanish language but with its phonetics
Scrollone@feddit.it · 6 pts · 217d
Same in Italian. Giappone and nipponico.
Jumbie@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 217d
I love this exchange.
circuitfarmer@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 216d
T00l_shed@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 217d
Maybe it's just regional for me, but we say Japonais
hakunawazo@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 217d
In Germany Nippon is a brand of puffed rice with chocolate.
a_postmodern_hat@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 217d
That’s it, I’m going back to bed
samus12345@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 216d
Not technically, it just plain isn't called Japan.
circuitfarmer@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 216d
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works · 25 pts · 218d
Fun fact:
You might know China as 中国
But Chinatown is not China 中国 + Town 城
I never heard of any Chinese diaspora use 中国城
It's always 唐人街 Tang-People Street, Tang referring to China's most powerful dynasty, or 華埠 Hua-City, Hua also refers to Chinese people, it's actually a character in the official name of both PRC 中华人民共和国 (in simplified) and ROC 中華民國 (in traditional)
Overseas Chinese is typically not referred as 中国人 but as 華人 (Hua People)
Chinese Americans are not really referred to as "Americans" but the emphasis is put on the Citizenship, rather than being an "American"
Like in 美籍華人 which Google Translate says is "Chinese American", but really transliterates to "Hua (meaning ethnic Chinese) Person with American Citizenship"
To emphasis on the "American-ness" I'd have to use 華裔美國人 which transliterates to "American of Hua (aka: Chinese) Ethnicity", which I think would sound really weird and I think I'd get weird looks if I use the term 美國人 (American), so I probably would never call myself an "American" in front of Chinese-speaking people, but use 美籍華人 instead.
(Sort of like code-switching. I call myself American in front of other Americans to fit in, but call myself 華人 (ethnic Chinese person) to other ethnic Chinese so I could also fit in.)
Fleppensteijn@feddit.nl · 10 pts · 218d
Another fun fact:
In Dutch, the US is called Verenigde Staten.
But, the English United States sounds like u naait het steeds and means "you keep sewing it" or "you keep fucking it".
robador51@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 218d
"I fok horses" "Pardon?" "Yes, paarden!"
Kolanaki@pawb.social · 25 pts · 218d
Just wait til' you hear about what they call Japan in Japan.
X@piefed.world · 12 pts · 218d
Nihon-koku or Nippon-koku
flowers_galore2@lemmynsfw.com · 8 pts · 218d
ni!
remon@ani.social · 15 pts · 218d
NachBarcelona@piefed.social · 24 pts · 218d
i really wonder where you are from
7uWqKj@lemmy.world · 23 pts · 218d
Likewise, Germans feel betrayed when they find out that you don’t call your country Deppendorf
ripcord@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 217d
But we are not a village
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 217d
Deppenmetropole*
7uWqKj@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 217d
A metropolis in size can still be a village in spirit.
JackbyDev@programming.dev · 22 pts · 217d
In Spanish Germany is Alemania. Just to add more confusion to this topic.
childOfMagenta@jlai.lu · 9 pts · 217d
Allemagne in french.
Scrollone@feddit.it · 7 pts · 217d
And in Italian we call the country Germania but the inhabitants are called "tedeschi"
Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 217d
Danish is closer, we call it Tyskland
nshibj@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 217d
*Alemania, no accent
JackbyDev@programming.dev · 1 pts · 217d
Thanks, fixed
beeng@discuss.tchncs.de · 3 pts · 217d
Tedesco
zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 217d
To be fair, Alemania (Ale Mania!) sounds like a kick ass name for Bavaria.
jjpamsterdam@feddit.org · 18 pts · 218d
There's many such examples, just off the top of my head: Hungary, Finland, Greece, Georgia, Egypt and Japan.
Jilanico@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 218d
Morocco (al-Maghrib "The West"), India (Bharat named after a legendary king), China (Zhōngguó 中国 "Middle Country"). There are probably several more...
jjpamsterdam@feddit.org · 2 pts · 218d
I always thought that India uses both Bharat and India with English still an official language. Has the current government made the switch to only using Bharat?
Jilanico@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 218d
India is the official name. I think Bharat or Hindustan is commonly used tho as folks speak in their local languages instead of English typically. I could be wrong. Worth noting that Hindustan would basically translate to "India" or Land of the Indus River.
Nangijala@feddit.dk · 1 pts · 216d
Not that it matters but I would take India or Bharat over Hindustan any day. I get that it'd be in line with naming conventions in the area, but it just sounds so silly. XD
FatVegan@leminal.space · 5 pts · 218d
They call pedo paradise america. Isn't that crazy?
killingspark@feddit.org · 5 pts · 218d
Hungary for some reason keeps surprising me. I know that fact, I just keep forgetting it.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 13 pts · 217d
and Japan is is not Japan in Japan.
T00l_shed@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 217d
NaNi-ppon?
Mothra@mander.xyz · 13 pts · 218d
Wait until you learn about Japan
Speculater@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 218d
Nippon! Wait...Nihon! Err...
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 218d
At least they call Germany "doitsu"
BenLeMan@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 218d
I hear "doitsu," I can't help but think
FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca · 13 pts · 218d
I'm a Newfoundlander. My sister felt betrayed when she found out that what we call turnips, most people call rutabegas
nandeEbisu@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 217d
I could have sworn rutabagas were a different vegetable...
faythofdragons@slrpnk.net · 8 pts · 217d
They are, I can buy both at the local grocery. Turnips are white, rutabaga are a yellowish color.
blackn1ght@feddit.uk · 6 pts · 217d
I've never heard the word rutabega, it's what we'd call a swede in the UK
falseWhite@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 218d
skozzii@lemmy.ca · 6 pts · 218d
Exactly, instead of saying USA, we say NAZI now.
falseWhite@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 218d
Pat_Riot@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 218d
Americunt! As an American myself I wholeheartedly approve of this epithet for us. The majority of my countrymen are positively unbearable.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 218d
美國 "Beautiful Country" in my language.
"America" as in the continent would be 美洲
"American" as in American Nationals would be 美國人 and is distinct from 美洲人 which means the "American" as in "People who live in the Americas.
So you don't need terms like "US-Americans" or "USA'ians".
Chinese is such a simple and beautiful language. Easy to understand.
falseWhite@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 218d
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 218d
Eh. The country is beautiful.
Politics is ugly, regardless of where you are in the world.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 218d
No shit?!
netvor@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 217d
What's Germany? You mean Německo?
Poteau_Poutre@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 217d
No, he meant Allemagne
Nangijala@feddit.dk · 3 pts · 216d
Clearly he meant Tyskland!
BigBrownBeaver@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 216d
You mean Niemcy?
ji59@hilariouschaos.com · 11 pts · 218d
As someone from Czech Republic, I am not surprised. There are sometimes huge differences between country names in czech and English. And the closer the country is, the bigger the difference.
For the German speaking countries eng - ger - cze:
Other examples (eng - cze):
blinfabian@feddit.nl · 8 pts · 218d
to fix it:
🇳🇱Netherland, where Netherlanders live is Netherlands
🇩🇪Dutchland, where Dutchlanders live is Dutch
Nangijala@feddit.dk · 8 pts · 217d
I have another mindblowing fact for you: in Germany, the v is an f and the w is a v.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 217d
Too far.
Nangijala@feddit.dk · 11 pts · 217d
Oh yeah? This symbol = ß that looks deceptively like a mangled B is the double S in German.
Don't get me started on their states. My favourite is Mecklenburg-Vorpommern because it sounds like a curse word you'd yell out in pain after stepping on a Lego.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 216d
Also umlauts.
Which might seem confusing but I wish English used accents/umlauts to show pronounciation because that would do a lot to unfuck the spelling of this powerful but bastard of a language.
Nangijala@feddit.dk · 5 pts · 216d
Oh for sure. I do have to admit, though, that I very much enjoy when Americans use umlauts in inappropriate ways. And as a Dane I have feel special joy when they replace their o's with ø in an attempt to make words look hardcore, cool and Nordic.
That, my friend, is endlessly entertaining to me and will never not be funny.
I remember that one album by Twenty One Pilots where literally every o was replaced with and ø on the cover and I was friggin crying and hyperventilating the first time I saw it. I haven't listened to any of the songs. They may go really hard and be masterpieces, but to me I can never take that album seriously. They really thought that ø is just a cooler looking o and not its own letter with a very distinct sound that, in the context of English would make every word sound like it's being spoken by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
rucksack@feddit.org · 8 pts · 217d
Too var.
BigBrownBeaver@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 216d
And s is z, z is c
squaresinger@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 215d
The v is an f in the beginning of the word and a v in the middle of a word.
Nangijala@feddit.dk · 1 pts · 215d
I love how we all just keep adding to the clusterfuck that is the German language. ❤️
Jaybird@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 217d
Nangijala@feddit.dk · 4 pts · 216d
Same with Denmark = Danmark
I know. It's a shocking difference. We call you guys Holland for some reason, though and every non-european I've ever met keeps thinking we are the same country. I was asked to say something in Dutch once and just looked blankly at the person.
squaresinger@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 215d
But the Americans seem to think you are Duits.
mechoman444@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 217d
And the country of Georgia isn't called Georgia either!
And lets not even get into named country's in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Thorry@feddit.org · 8 pts · 218d
Wait till you find out what Japan is actually called.
alsimoneau@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 217d
And Greece
Quilotoa@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 218d
Ah, but Canada is Canada. More or less consistent around the world. One of the few countries that is.
MrFinnbean@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 218d
Kanada.
Quilotoa@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 218d
same pronunciation
mcz@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 217d
There isn't called there when you are there. It's called here there.
Zamboni_Driver@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 216d
Same same but different
melsaskca@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 217d
I believe trump will be renaming it due to his ancestry.
Perspectivist@feddit.uk · 7 pts · 218d
Saksa in finnish. And Finland is Suomi in finnish.
Dicska@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 218d
Or Németország in Hungarian. And Hungary is Magyarország in Hungarian. Ország just means country, so they're just "German country" and "Hungarian country", literally.
Most slavic countries also call Germany Německo or the like.
This happens when there's no fast global media when you meet a new nation, and you can't copy someone else's homework to come up with a name for them. Or when you copy someone else's homework, instead of actually asking a member of that nation.
Rubanski@discuss.tchncs.de · 4 pts · 218d
Nemetor sounds like a LOTR character
Dicska@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 218d
Some executioner style villain
androidul@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 218d
If you want LOTR character names, look up 🇮🇸 Icelandic names: there are
Nangijala@feddit.dk · 1 pts · 216d
I still cannot get over the fact that Tolkien based Middle Earth and several characters in Lord of the Rings on friggin Djursland in Denmark. I live an hour away from the real life Helms Deep, Isengard and so on. There's even a local myth in the area that directly inspired the characters of Aragorn and Eowyn who were split onto two characters. The original myth was about a chief's daughter who had to reclaim her dead father's legendary sword and thereby set him free from the curse that kept him and his men trapped as ghosts. I forget if their Graves were on Helm Island or if it was somewhere else. It's just really cool and super random. Apparently there are official Tolkien tours. I don't have to go to New Zealand to experience middle earth xD I have the original lame version at home.
FishFace@piefed.social · 1 pts · 218d
The first time the inhabitants of what is now Germany and what is now Hungary met, there were no nations at all. People have been communicating and trading with those from far-off lands for longer than the concept of nation even existed, which is a major contributor to why these names are so different.
Dicska@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 218d
True, my bad for a poor word choice. I guess 'people' would have been more appropriate. But I guess the rest holds.
FishFace@piefed.social · 1 pts · 218d
Yeah true, then it works.
Endonyms often turn out to derive from "people" in some language or other, but exonyms could come from anything like "the people on the other side of the hill/river/swamp" or "the rich people" or "the people who herd sheep" or "the people who really like goat's milk". There's an inherent asymmetry between naming the one group of "us" and all the groups of people who are not "us"!
kerrigan778@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 216d
Wait'll you hear about Japan.
circuitfarmer@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 216d
TheOakTree@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 216d
Same goes for Korea (since it was defined by the reigning Kingdom)
samus12345@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 216d
Or China!
Zamboni_Driver@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 216d
Wait until you find out that Kanada isn't called Kanada in Kanada.
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 216d
belastend@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 218d
ITT: people learning about endonyms and exonyms.
thatradomguy@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 217d
BMW ❌️ BMV ✅️
T00l_shed@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 217d
Bimmer
Jankatarch@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 216d
USA is called ABD in Turkey
bryndos@fedia.io · 3 pts · 218d
Apparently even Tacitus said it was a made up name. It seems like it might have originally applied to lands west of the Rhine, or some tribe living there in Roman times. So it might have applied to as much of modern Netherlands and Belgium as to modern Deutschland.
Don't forget the 'Heiliges Römisches Reich' though - that always seemed a bit contrived.
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 216d
well how else are you going to know I've visited if I can't go "Deutchland... sorry haha still thinking in German..."
cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 218d
It's interesting how countries have names that we just don't use. To be fair, the UK calls it Germany, too, at least the BBC does. And not just their .com (American) site, which still uses English rather than American English (e.g. honour instead of "honor," centre instead of "center," and other minor spelling differences... to stranger ones like manoeuvre vs "maneuver" and so on), so that tells me they call Deutschland "Germany" in the UK as well. Even the English Wikipedia (which covers English and American English) says the official name of the country is "The Federal Republic of Germany".
We call Turkiye "Turkey", I guess because the name of the bird is more familiar and easier to type?
What we call Japan, people who live there say Nihon (or Nippon). But what they write is 日本, but I don't know how to make my keyboard (or computer) produce those symbols without copying and pasting them. It's easy to remember these symbols. One looks like a skyscraper (like in Tokyo) and the other looks like clouds around the peak of Mt Fuji, together representing the manmade and natural beauty of the country. It might be coincidence that those glyphs look like that, though.
Let's take it a step further, shall we? So we were talking about countries that call themselves something other than what you (I'm assuming American) call them. There are companies that do it, too, but other than having extra words and symbols at the end, it's mostly pronunciation... and I only have two examples. There may be more. The first one is Nokia, which people try to pronounce like it's Korean or Japanese. It's not, it's Finnish (from Finland, one of the places Vikings come from). That's why they're so sturdy. It's not just a meme. Anyway, while it's fine for you to call it "No-kia," like you're saying you don't drive a Kia, the Finns pronounce it "Knock-ya." Like, throw a Nokia at you and "knock-ya" TF out!
Going back to Japan, the Japanese language is made up of glyphs which represent the syllables that make up the spoken language. Japanese is both simpler and more complex than you might think. So 日本 means Nihon, or Ni and Hon. Maybe you see where this is going... Hon isn't pronounced like it rhymes with Don, it instead rhymes with "bone." So to say 日本, you say "Ni" (knee) "hon" (hone). Those are the sounds represented by those glyphs. Now say "Honda." You probably said it wrong. 本田 is pronounced "Hon" (hone) "da" (duh). Of course, if you say "Hone-duh" to car guys, they'll look at you like you're a fool, because no one outside of Japan pronounces it that way, even at the dealer. And you won't score home field points by going to the dealer and pronouncing it correctly. (Of course, when they speak to leadership in Japan, if they ever do, you bet your ass they're saying it right. But outside of Japanese corporate, they're pronouncing it the way you always have.)
Does any of this even matter? No, not really. It's trivia, which means it's fun to know but not exactly useful to know, in most situations. German people will likely tell you they are German, not that they are Deutsch. Then again, Germans are far nicer than their rough language would imply (you can thank Rammstein for making you think it's rough in the first place, especially if you're Gen X or Millennial). They would just as soon you say hello as hallo (German for hello), though I will almost always use "auf widersehen" over goodbye, because goodbye sounds more formal. "Auf widersehen" translates to "Until next time." Compare that with the Japanese "さようなら" (sayonara), which means "farewell." Three languages, the other two translate to "goodbye," but they all actually mean different things. This is why learning some of your more common phrases in other languages helps. I'd much rather say "auf widersehen" to someone I'm going to see again tomorrow rather than "goodbye." And as much as I'd love to tell my boss さようなら... well, it's just not the appropriate parting phrase.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 218d
日 is sun and 本 is origin (in this case), which lines up with the western moniker for Japan as the land of the rising sun.
Also I'd say that goodbye is a decent enough translation for sayonara. I can't remember the last time I said goodbye in English (instead of bye or see you), and seems almost as formal and final as farewell, which seems almost outdated at this point. I'm not sure I've ever actually used that in my entire life.
Triumph@fedia.io · 2 pts · 218d
Let me tell you about the Pennsylvania Dutch.
markgoldman@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 218d
blimthepixie@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 218d
What about the Swamp Germans
IWW4@lemmy.zip · -7 pts · 218d
brb@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 218d
America brain
IWW4@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 218d
NachBarcelona@piefed.social · 0 pts · 218d
Deutschland*