To detract from the confusion the European Union is Union Européenne (UE) in French.
"United States" in French (États-Unis) would have made a very confusing acronym
Submitted 2 days ago by zlatiah@lemmy.world to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Comments
Chais@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
zlatiah@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I thought it would be so funny if any of the EU employees would go to a bar in Brussels (majority French-speaking) and have an aneurysm explaining what they do to a local in broken French. Not that it would ever happen… but it would be funny
paequ2@lemmy.today 2 days ago
In Spanish you can see EEUU for «Estados Unidos». The letters are doubled because they’re plural.
AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
I’ve always wondered why spanish speakers online use EEUU for the US. I once asked a friend of mine and he said “that’s just the way it is”; this is a much better explanation lol
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
A bit like how we used to call the CCCP the USSR?
BobbyGasoline@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
I still pronounce it as Eeeh Eeeh Uu Uu. Its just fun to say.
foggy@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I am forever annoyed that every language has the audacity to rename other countries to something that is not their name.
Germany? It’s called Deutschland
Spain? España.
Russia? Rossiya.
It’s everywhere and it’s weird.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Japan? AnimeLand
spankinspinach@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I learned not that long ago the Japanese refer to Japan as Nippon, and that stuck with me
justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io 2 days ago
Russia == Rossiya doesn't belong in that list.
idiomaddict@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Spain and españa are also just cognates
dubyakay@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Because no one can say Magyarország, and it’s easier to make fun of being Hungary for Turkey.
foggy@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Oman, Iran, with Chad, to Chile bc I was Hungary for Turkey 😋
DrunkenPirate@feddit.org 2 days ago
Im happy with it. Better than 中国 or .مصر No idea how to read nor how to speak it out.
hera@feddit.uk 2 days ago
A transliteration would be fine, eg Nihon, Zhongguo
megrania@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
Dunno, as a German, I’d find it ahistorical if everybody was using “Deutschland” … the nation-state as an idea, and a unified nation state, are relatively young. Before that, what we call Deutschland today was a mess. It’s no surprise that romance languages use some or another variation of “Allemagne” … the german dialect spoken around the southwestern border is still called “Allemannisch” even in Germany, same with “Saxon” and the variations “Saksa” to the east …
I kinda prefer it the way it is in this case, honestly …
shalafi@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’m annoyed by the inverse. I speak English, why shouldn’t I use English words? I use English words for everything else in life. Does every other country say “United States of America”?
“Because that’s what I call it and so should every other language!”
See how that sounds?
spongebue@lemmy.world 1 day ago
And honestly, some of them do just translate (more or less). Like España vs Spain, pretty much any Spanish word that starts with es(consonant) drops the leading e when translated to English (estado, estudiante escuela for state, student, and school). We also don’t have the same o/a suffices. So that leaves spañ, except I don’t think any Spanish word ends with ñ (it makes a “ny” sound to bridge with the next letter, for those who don’t know) and Spain comes pretty darn close.
Not too mention that pronunciations and even alphabets are bound to change. Just how much do you want to stay authentic? Because if I start talking about عُمان (Google says that means Oman in Arabic, and looks about right from what I remember seeing on license plates there) I’m going to lose a lot of people.
pedz@lemmy.ca 23 hours ago
The Netherlands, but in English the language is called Dutch.
But I prefer when it happens to cities. Aix-la-Chapelle or Aachen. Liège or Luik or Lüttich. Ghent or Gand or Gent.
FishFace@piefed.social 1 day ago
And while we’re at it, why do languages have the audacity to use ANY words different from other languages!
See how this sounds?
lemmyknow@lemmy.today 1 day ago
ITT: Americans struggling to comprehend languages other than their own
TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca 1 day ago
Um..... It is an acronym my guy. How do you think French people write USA?
KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
In Polish, “United States” is Stany Zjednoczone, but the acronym is USA, even though that doesn’t match up at all
Michal@programming.dev 1 day ago
But Unia Europejska is UE
Revan343@lemmy.ca 23 hours ago
Union Européenne as well, and French is one of the languages they actually care about
WereCat@lemmy.world 1 day ago
So “Etats” is “State”… just written backwards?
Witchfire@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Ah alors tu as découvert comment est-ce que le français marché. Désolé pas désolé
eskimofry@lemmy.world 1 day ago
ah so you have discovered in your comment how french functions.
what’s Desole?
WereCat@lemmy.world 1 day ago
What a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious statement!
SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 1 day ago
“États” is “States” ☝️🤓
billwashere@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
🤯
pedz@lemmy.ca 23 hours ago
If you want to be serious, the word state and état are both coming from an older version of French when it was written estat. French replaced ES with É because it wasn’t pronouncing the S, while English dropped the E and kept pronouncing the S. It happened to multiple words, although some also come from Latin.
Étrange - Strange. Époux - Spouse. École - School. Épice - Spice. Éponge - Sponge.
It also happened with circumflex.
Hôpital - Hospital. Forêt - Forest. Pâte - Paste.
Here’s a whole video about exactly this.
Vinny_93@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The French and acronyms. You got NATO, but the French translate it so they call it OTAN. Directly translated, they also just say the ‘States United’.
Anyone’s guess who did word order first to find out why French is a silly language.
justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io 2 days ago
French predates English.
Also, bold calling a language silly in english
AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
I decided to look into this because I was curious.
The unification and regulation of the French language came about in 1653 with the founding of the Académie Française and it actually took a while for the revolutionaries to pivot from “liberty of language” to “the only language in France should be French” English was already established by this time and the vowel shift was basically complete.
According to Wikipedia, Middle French died out in the 17th century while Middle English died out in the 15th. Ergo: Modern English predates Modern French
If we check back farther it seems the two languages developed similarly though the arbitrary divides for each age of language (old, middle, modern) seem to show with English being first by roughly a century.
Of course this is all arbitrary since language doesn’t evolve discretely. However the Wikipedia entries for the oldest Gallo-Romance (precursor to French) is from 842CE, whereas old English poetry dates as early as 650-700CE. Once again suggesting English predates French.
Now there is a difficulty here with French because it originates from Vulgar Latin which could be considered older than English, but I’m not sure many would call it French since lots of European languages branched from Vulgar Latin
As for silliness… yeah no arguments there lol
birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
This comment belongs right in a badling sublemmy.
Hadriscus@jlai.lu 2 days ago
Japanese sentences (clauses) end with the verb. In Kiswahili/Shimaore a noun is followed by its possessive pronoun (“cup my”, “spirit their”…). Languages are very diverse in that regard
MicrowavedTea@infosec.pub 2 days ago
To be fair the same happens in Spanish with most acronyms
hansolo@lemmy.today 2 days ago
In Serbo-Croatian, the acronym is САД. It transliterates to SAD.
CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 2 days ago
Shouldn’t Spanish have the same problem? I’ve seen them abbreviate it to EEUU though, which I assume must help prevent confusion?
emmanuel_car@fedia.io 1 day ago
Same as another user said, in Spanish European Union is Unión Europea, so abbreviates to UE, and you’re right about EEUU, because it’s the United States
aarch0x40@lemmy.world 2 days ago
That’s why they use EUA (États-Unis d’Amérique) for the abbreviation.
Hadriscus@jlai.lu 2 days ago
I have to say I had never encountered this abbreviated form
RickyRigatoni@retrolemmy.com 23 hours ago
Fake french. Get 'em, boys.
TribblesBestFriend@startrek.website 2 days ago
But we tend to forget de A so just ÉU