Comment on Learning Japanese

Gullible@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• missingno@fedia.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  About as weird as calling Nihon "Japan".

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• trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Tbf a good chunk of Europe calls it “land of people that can’t speak” basically

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  • Lumidaub@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They’re clearly thinking of the Dutch.

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    • UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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

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  • agavaa@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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 😅

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    • Demdaru@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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

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    • Tuuktuuk@anarchist.nexus ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Literally it’s more like “non-speakers”, though, isn’t it? Nie + mowić = Not + to speak.

      So, maybe in contemporary Polish the word has been polished to mean “mute”, but could be that they were “those damn non-speakers [of our Polish] across that river-thing!”

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      • agavaa@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Well, the “mówić” part is not present, the root of the word is more similar to “niemy”, meaning “mute”; the Polish word comes from “non-speaker”, as in “not speaking at all”. but that’s just speculation on my part, I’m no linguist or etymologist 🤷‍♀️

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  • user224@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Nemecko
    Nemý

    Never realized that.

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    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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    • trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yeah right? When it hit me I was like hmmm

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• ceiphas@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Du meinst Deutschland.

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• SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • Dicska@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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    • gerryflap@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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?

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      • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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      • Lumidaub@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Face it, even the Anglophones know what you speak is simply Drunk German. :P

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      • Dicska@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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• mech@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • bstix@feddit.dk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Finnish Saksa is a reference to the Saxon tribe from Old Saxon in Northern Germany, not the current Sachsen.

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  • First_Thunder@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    What about the Portuguese! ALEMANHA for Germany

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    • Spezi@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      In Grench it’s Allemagne. The Alemanni were a german tribe at the rhine.

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      • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        In Grench

        Is that the Grinch’s native language?

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• chuckleslord@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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!”

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  • b_tr3e@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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    • chuckleslord@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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      • mitchty@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        So Americans alone are at fault for using the term German in English then? The chain of logic here is impressive I’ll say that.

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• remon@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Not any weirder than any other English speaking country.

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  • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endonym_and_exonym

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• Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  TYSKLAND

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• samus12345@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Why put that on the US? We just carried on calling it what the English did.

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  • Gullible@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    To spur discussion, mostly

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    • 87Six@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      We romanians call it Germania as well for some reason

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    • RickyRigatoni@retrolemmy.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      By making yourself look like a dork?

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      • Gullible@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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