I mean:
English
Russian
French? (how did this happen? France --> French?!?)
Chinese
And someone from Afghanistan is an Afghan? How did the word get shorter not longer? 🤔
Also, why is a person from India called an Indian, but the language is called Hindi? This breaks my brain…
Philippines --> Filipino? They just saw the “Ph” and decided to use an “F”? 🤔
Okay idk how language even works anymore…
[This is an open discusssion thread on languages and their quirks…]
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Great comment as usual
Thank you for such a detailed answer!
I’ve always wondered how we got Japan for a place that calls itself Nippon.
Tbf, I’ve looked it up a few times and forgotten, so I guess I don’t feel that strongly about it.
For anyone else wondering, according to the wiki: “The name “Japan” is based on Min or Wu Chinese pronunciations of 日本 (pronounced a bit like JOO-pun)* and was introduced to European languages through early trade.”
*parentheses mine.
Min and Wu are wildly different. Is there pronunciation similar in this case?
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I can read, that’s why I’m asking this question!
Thanks for the sass
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The way I always remembered の is that it’s much like
’sin English. In other words 日の本 would be“sun’s origin.”At first I tried to remember it like a reversed Spanish
debut that didn’t work because I got it confused with で.Thanks for the explanation. So Japan comes from Portuguese via a Chinese language?
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The Dutch you can blame the Dutch.
I may be conflating, Japan and China. Whoops
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We didn’t. 中國likely became the most common name with 中華民國（present day commonly known as Taiwan). What you now know as China is 中華人民共和國, so 中國 carries on. During dynasty periods that was not the common name.
China comes from sina/sino. I don’t remember where this comes from. Sanskrit?
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In Arabic it’s “Seen” (صين) with a Saad (ص) [sˤ]. It came from Persian “چین” (Cheen). Which came from Sanskrit.
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It wasn’t common though. Like everyone calls it 中國 now. Not so back then. China has fragmented and reunited many times
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I can concede that
Or that soy beans are actually named after the sauce, since English didn’t have a word for the bean yet.
Wikipedia says from Portuguese, through Persian, back to Sanskrit, being the grand daddy of English, calling it “cina”, and/or it has to do with Qin Dynasty that unified China.
Probably better than whatever bullshit they would have gotten from Zhongguo if “Peking” was as good as they could do with “Beijing”
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I’m pretty sure it came from the Portuguese word for tea (chá).
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That was probably spare vocabulary. :)
cough, hiccough (pronounced hiccup), plough
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These are not additional pronunciations though.
Bough rhymes with plough, slough rhymes with tough, dough rhymes with though, and slough rhymes with plough or through.
Comb
Tomb
Bomb
Womb
Why don’t Canadians come from Canadia? I think about this too often.
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If I’m free to discuss what ever language quirk I’d want to, then let’s talk about German nouns. How did they end up with three genders (die, das and der) for their nouns? English has none, French has two just like Swedish mostly has two but the Germans ended up with five.
For any English speakers unfamiliar with the concept of noun gender it’s basically a way of grouping nouns. It commonly effects how they word works with other grammar. For example the German genders determine whether die, das or der should be used when English has the and it does, in a more convoluted way involving other grammar to, determine whether ein, eine, einen or einem should be used where English has a/an
Well I have no choice but to share this - she says exactly the same haha
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Here’s my favorite as a long time English language speaker, learner, and former editor in chief:
“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo
And my wife speaks Tagalog, which sounds nothing like the word Filipino and she’s from the Philippines.
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Bro are you stoned?
