I felt so betrayed when I found out Germany isn't called Germany in Germany
3d 15h ago by sh.itjust.works/u/Grandwolf319 in showerthoughts
To add insult to injury, what they call it, Deutschland, sounds like what we should call Netherlands
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.
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.
All languages do this to an extent.
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...
Austrians are just as able as BRD Germans to pronounce something like Milano, though.
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.
I say we should go the Belarus route.
I look forward to renaming virtually everything in the Americas.
It wouldn't really make sense to use different names than the current locals, though.
Who decided that it wouldn't make sense?
You're entitled to your incredibly ridiculous opinion.
Plus the true downgrade of Firenze to "Florence."
Naples? Rome? Venice?
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.
Florence comes from the Latin name of the city Florentia.
TIL
Napoli. Roma. Venezia.
Czech: Neapol, Řím, Benátky.
Do you perhaps mean "Florenz"?
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"?
What's "Florenz"?
It's Firenze in German.
Florenz, but yeah
IIRC Germany is named weirdly different around the world with names stemming from several roots.
Deutschland, Germany, Alemania, Nemezky, Saksa,...
Well Germans kind of were the Holy Roman Empire so in my books they can call those cities in italy what ever they fancy.
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.
"Venedig" in German, even though they literally use (almost) the same sound for z as Italian ...
"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.
Having to learn new names for countries and cities is one of the worst parts of learning a second language.
lol it's not by far
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.
"/s" 🤣 holy Moses, Reddit is leaking hard.
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.
Americans are slowly learning about the rest of the world.
Better late than never.
America was originally just the name of South America, then the English lazily coined the term "North America".
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! 🇺🇸🦅
Mostly found out as we feverishly seek out escape routes.
The amazing thing is, people don’t refer to their home country by a two letter acronym.
UK has entered the chat
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.
I know it's not the point.
But spitting on Scotland and Northern Ireland like that is a bit harsh.
(Sees car with CH sticker drive by...)
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.
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".
I believe the languages of some neighbouring countries such as Turkey resemble Magyarország more closely :)
I've always wanted to make a map that used the native names for countries instead of their English/American names.
https://endonymmap.com/ ? :)
Looks like they specifically chose the official English names for countries even when the indigenous name is also official.
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.
That's certainly a decision.
How would you pick along multiple official names in different languages?
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.
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.
I don't really understand. I asked how you would pick better names but you're not saying how.
Maybe I would understand if you gave an example. I look at a country you might be thinking of, Nigeria, say, the official language of Nigeria is English, so this surely should not be an example because English is the language of the country. (Both by official status and by number of speakers).
English of course is not an indigenous native language of Nigeria - a description you seem to use interchangeably with "language of the country" - but there are over 500 of those, so if you don't think the map is suitable due to featuring non-indigenous names, which of them should it pick?
Trying to answer the question I asked on your behalf (always prone to error) maybe you would prefer a map which names countries according to the most widely spoken indigenous language in each country? It would be interesting to have a map which labelled the USA Wááshindoon bikéyah ałhidadiidzooígíí, and Britain as Prydain, but I suspect the original reply would have expected those countries to be labelled in English, not in indigenous minority languages.
Mate. This is the post you responded to:
I've always wanted to make a map that used the native names for countries instead of their English/American names.
And you then suggested a map that chose "Ireland" over Éire
It's ok if you don't want to discuss it but it would be nice if you just said that rather than ignoring whatever I say. Bye.
Most of them are fairly expected. That Finland tho...
Etkos puhu suomeä? :)
valitettavasti en :(
I do watch a lot of Hydraulic Press Channel though so i at least have an ear for Finglish :)
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)?
The United States of America is just a series of English words. It really wouldn't make sense in some other languages.
In Spanish it's Estados Unidos which seems like a translation of the words.
In Spanish it's Estados Unidos
USA is EU???? 🤯
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.».
Finally we can get into Eurovision!
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.
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.
It gets interesting when you hear how the Chinese call countries.
Oh, it's all interesting IMO!
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.
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.
You'd still expect to call them something similar to what they call themselves as best as another language can, but nope!
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.
Expectations end where knowledge begins, I guess.
Never said it was correct to not translate country names. Only that there is a reason to think they wouldn't be.
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."
My name is said differently in different languages, I'd expect nothing different
Your name is your name. Things like Jack versus Jacques or Matthew versus Mateo exist, but those aren't your name.
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
in Lithuanian it is Vokietija, of unclear origin, but possibly from Proto-Balto-Slavic *vākyā-, meaning “those who speak loud, shout (unintelligibly)”
DIESE ABSCHEULICHE UNTERSTELLUNG IST VOLLKOMMEN INAKZEPTABEL!
:D thats funny
Saksa in Finnish, no clue what the origin of that is. It doesn't even mean anything that I know of.
Sachsen, germaaninen heimo/Saksin alue nykyisessä Saksassa.
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.
polish*, also your capitalisation of the name in different languages is totally random
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.
Not totally random. Consistently wrong, with only "Niemcy" out of line.
isn't Alemagne correct? or is it an error to capitalise a country's name in French?
Since it's at the beginning of a sentence, it's correct either way :P
I think that means "mute" originally
Deutschland, sounds like what we should call Netherlands
Until you then find out that the Netherlands is actually called "Nederland" in the Netherlands. And the reason they'd called "Dutch" in America is due to an archaic mix-up between the two nationalities.
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.
The Dutch centuries ago called their language Diets/Duuts/Duits which means something like Germanic.
No, it means something like "people" or "of the people".
Wait, so Dutch is the language of people and everyone else has been using animal languages this whole time!?
Ja
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?
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.
Holland is fairytale beautiful. Would happily live there. I loved visiting.
Most Dutch people I met just call it Holland. We do so in Denmark as well
"We" call it Holland because foreigners say "eh?" when we call it the Netherlands.
Its the worst. Always try a "Netherlands" and get a "what??" in return and then say "Holland" - "ooooooh HOLLAND!"...
Hah, didn't know that
Yeah wierd situation. Internally it only refers to the 2 provinces in the west but externally we all chant it during football matches
This is what confused me so much about germany's real name :)
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)
Where does “Alemania” (what they call Germany in Spain) come from?
It comes from from french and originally from latin alamanus. There was a germanic tribe there called the the Alamanni.
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’.
Technically, Japan is not called Japan in Japan. Its Nippon.
In France it’s called Japon.
France also uses the world "nippon" as an adjective equivalent of "japanese"
Same both Japón & Nipón for Spanish language but with its phonetics
Same in Italian. Giappone and nipponico.
I love this exchange.
It is interesting, because Nippon is a somewhat archaic version in Japanese. They usually say Nihon now.
But of course, these exonyms will have been borrowed into these various languages a long time ago, so it kind of makes sense.
Maybe it's just regional for me, but we say Japonais
In Germany Nippon is a brand of puffed rice with chocolate.
That’s it, I’m going back to bed
More often Nihon than Nippon. The latter is somewhat archaic.
Both are spelled almost the same in Japanese (kana): にほん vs. にぽん.
日本 could be either, but most often Nihon.
Not technically, it just plain isn't called Japan.
Just wait til' you hear about what they call Japan in Japan.
Nihon-koku or Nippon-koku
ni!
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.)
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".
"I fok horses" "Pardon?" "Yes, paarden!"
i really wonder where you are from
Likewise, Germans feel betrayed when they find out that you don’t call your country Deppendorf
But we are not a village
Deppenmetropole*
A metropolis in size can still be a village in spirit.
In Spanish Germany is Alemania. Just to add more confusion to this topic.
Allemagne in french.
And in Italian we call the country Germania but the inhabitants are called "tedeschi"
Danish is closer, we call it Tyskland
*Alemania, no accent
Thanks, fixed
Tedesco
To be fair, Alemania (Ale Mania!) sounds like a kick ass name for Bavaria.
There's many such examples, just off the top of my head: Hungary, Finland, Greece, Georgia, Egypt and Japan.
Morocco (al-Maghrib "The West"), India (Bharat named after a legendary king), China (Zhōngguó 中国 "Middle Country"). There are probably several more...
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
Hungary for some reason keeps surprising me. I know that fact, I just keep forgetting it.
They call pedo paradise america. Isn't that crazy?
Wait until you learn about Japan
Nippon! Wait...Nihon! Err...
At least they call Germany "doitsu"
I hear "doitsu," I can't help but think
Exactly, instead of saying USA, we say NAZI now.
Americunt! As an American myself I wholeheartedly approve of this epithet for us. The majority of my countrymen are positively unbearable.
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.
Eh. The country is beautiful.
Politics is ugly, regardless of where you are in the world.
No shit?!
I'm a Newfoundlander. My sister felt betrayed when she found out that what we call turnips, most people call rutabegas
I could have sworn rutabagas were a different vegetable...
They are, I can buy both at the local grocery. Turnips are white, rutabaga are a yellowish color.
I've never heard the word rutabega, it's what we'd call a swede in the UK
and Japan is is not Japan in Japan.
NaNi-ppon?
What's Germany? You mean Německo?
No, he meant Allemagne
Clearly he meant Tyskland!
You mean Niemcy?
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:
- Germany - Deutschland - Německo
- Austria - Österreich - Rakousko
- Switzerland - Sweiz - Švýcarsko
Other examples (eng - cze):
- Czech - Česko
- Slovakia - Slovensko
- Slovenia - Slovinsko
- Greece - Řecko
- Georgia - Gruzie
- Spain - Španělsko
- Greenland - Grónsko
- Hungary - Maďarsko
- Croatia - Chorvatsko
In the Netherlands, we don't call out country The Netherlands.
We call it: "Nederland". Completely different.
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.
But the Americans seem to think you are Duits.
Wait till you find out what Japan is actually called.
And Greece
to fix it:
🇳🇱Netherland, where Netherlanders live is Netherlands
🇩🇪Dutchland, where Dutchlanders live is Dutch
Ah, but Canada is Canada. More or less consistent around the world. One of the few countries that is.
Kanada.
same pronunciation
I have another mindblowing fact for you: in Germany, the v is an f and the w is a v.
And s is z, z is c
Too far.
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.
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.
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.
Too var.
The v is an f in the beginning of the word and a v in the middle of a word.
I love how we all just keep adding to the clusterfuck that is the German language. ❤️
And the country of Georgia isn't called Georgia either!
And lets not even get into named country's in Sub-Saharan Africa.
There isn't called there when you are there. It's called here there.
Same same but different
Saksa in finnish. And Finland is Suomi in finnish.
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.
Nemetor sounds like a LOTR character
Some executioner style villain
If you want LOTR character names, look up 🇮🇸 Icelandic names: there are
- over 4900 people by the name of Guðrún
- over 4400 — Sigurður
- over 4200 — Guðmundur
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.
True, my bad for a poor word choice. I guess 'people' would have been more appropriate. But I guess the rest holds.
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"!
I believe trump will be renaming it due to his ancestry.
Wait'll you hear about Japan.
The wiki on Names of Japan is a rollercoaster.
Same goes for Korea (since it was defined by the reigning Kingdom)
Or China!
Wait until you find out that Kanada isn't called Kanada in Kanada.
Bimmer
ITT: people learning about endonyms and exonyms.
USA is called ABD in Turkey
How it called?
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.
well how else are you going to know I've visited if I can't go "Deutchland... sorry haha still thinking in German..."
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.
Let me tell you about the Pennsylvania Dutch.
What about the Swamp Germans
America brain
Deutschland*