Tbf a good chunk of Europe calls it “land of people that can’t speak” basically
Comment on Learning Japanese
Gullible@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
The US still looking weird by calling Germany “Germany.”
trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Lumidaub@feddit.org 4 days ago
They’re clearly thinking of the Dutch.
UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world 4 days ago
They can speak, they just act like they can’t in front of foreigners. I am learning “Dutch” and am 100% convinced this whole language is a hoax
agavaa@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Cause they can’t!1!
But for real, for those who are curious: the border between Germany and Poland is effectively the border between western and eastern Europe. So to Slav people Germans lived right over there, and yet spoke something incomprehensible; so we called them “mute” (in Poland at least). If I can’t understand you you are mute to me, basically. And the word for “Germans” is the same as for “Germany”, so we call the country itself mutes 😅
Demdaru@lemmy.world 3 days ago
For fun with words:
- Niemcy - polish for Germans
- Niemcy - polish for Germany
- Niemy - polish for mute
- Jadę do Niemiec - "I am riding to Germany"
- Jadę z niemcami - "I am riding with germans"
- Jadę z niemcem - "I am riding with german"
- Jadę z Niemczech - "I am riding from Germany"
- Jadę z niemym - “I am riding with a mute” I wonder how confusing these are for people not speaking polish xD
user224@lemmy.sdf.org 4 days ago
Nemecko
NemýNever realized that.
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 3 days ago
Still better than Rakousko/Rakúsko. Czech and Slovak are the only languages where the word for Austria does not originate from “Österreich” but fron Ratgoz, a single proto-Austrian guy’s name.
trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Yeah right? When it hit me I was like hmmm
ceiphas@feddit.org 4 days ago
Du meinst Deutschland.
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 4 days ago
And what about the Romance languages. They call Germany “Land of the Alemanni”, they called an entire country after a single Germanic tribe that lived near the French/Italian border. It’s like calling the entire country of the Netherlands Amsterdam.
Dicska@lemmy.world 3 days ago
It’s like calling the entire country of the Netherlands Holland. Holland(ia?) is part of the Netherlands which gave the name of the country in a bunch of languages.
This is weird, by the way, I just wrote about the exact same thing not too long ago.
gerryflap@feddit.nl 3 days ago
I can open your link, but as someone who’s Dutch, the way this all works in English is so absurd. Here we call Germany “Duitsland” and they speak “Duits”. This is quite similar to what they say themselves, “Deutschland” and “Deutsch”. We call our country “Nederland” and our language “Nederlands”. This is again similar in German.
Then why is English “Germany”, “German” and “Holland”/“The Netherlands” and “Dutch”. It’s so silly. There are of course historic reasons, but can’t we all just collectively change it?
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
as someone who’s Dutch, the way this all works in English is so absurd
Yeah but don’t you say Japan instead of Nihon/Nippon? Every language does this to a certain extent.
Lumidaub@feddit.org 3 days ago
Face it, even the Anglophones know what you speak is simply Drunk German. :P
Dicska@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I think we can - but just see how many people in your country call Turkey Türkiye (they made a request back in 2022) - and that was just one country, not all.
mech@feddit.org 4 days ago
The weirdest ones are the Finns, calling Germany Saksa.
I’m German and I feel more at home when I’m in Finland than in Sachsen.bstix@feddit.dk 3 days ago
Finnish Saksa is a reference to the Saxon tribe from Old Saxon in Northern Germany, not the current Sachsen.
First_Thunder@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
What about the Portuguese! ALEMANHA for Germany
Spezi@feddit.org 4 days ago
In Grench it’s Allemagne. The Alemanni were a german tribe at the rhine.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
In Grench
Is that the Grinch’s native language?
chuckleslord@lemmy.world 3 days ago
English speakers call Deutschland Germany, don’t give us all the credit here. And it’s called that cause the UK hated keeping track of what y’all were calling yourselves, so they chose bigotry instead (a common theme for England). The rest of us usually don’t know the history and just have a word with no context as to why it is that way.
For those Americans who don’t understand, calling it Germany is like calling First Nation land “Indialand” because “how can anyone keep track of what they call it? It’s always changing!”
b_tr3e@feddit.org 3 days ago
Actually, it was the Romans who came up with the term “Germani” for the various tribes at the nortthern end of the world. The anglo-saxons being one of them.
chuckleslord@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Yeah, just like it was an Italian man that first called them Indians. Wouldn’t make it Italy’s fault if Americans called it Indialand, though.
remon@ani.social 4 days ago
Not any weirder than any other English speaking country.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
Or any country really. I’d be curious to see if a chart of languages ranked on how many countries’ endonyms are also the same word in that language. But there’s definitely no language that doesn’t have exonyms.
Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
TYSKLAND
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Why put that on the US? We just carried on calling it what the English did.
Gullible@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
To spur discussion, mostly
87Six@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
We romanians call it Germania as well for some reason
RickyRigatoni@retrolemmy.com 2 days ago
By making yourself look like a dork?
Gullible@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
For all of Lemmy’s positive qualities, it’s still filled with nerds with a complex about keeping the record straight. Some like to be rude about it, like you and I, and others simply enjoy sharing information for the sake of it.
missingno@fedia.io 4 days ago
About as weird as calling Nihon "Japan".