[PLUG-TALK] begging the question

Russell Senior seniorr at aracnet.com
Mon Oct 5 19:29:34 UTC 2009


>>>>> "wes" == wes  <plug at the-wes.com> writes:

wes>      And to add more things that English does to confuse
wes> foreigners: We also seem to have a penchant for making up names
wes> for other places.  Germany is really Deutschland, Japan is really
wes> Nihon, Spain is really España, etc. Do others do this as much as
wes> we do?

While IANALinguist, I think other languages do the same thing more or
less with regularity.  My knowledge of French is but a smattering, but
I do know that they don't call Deutschland by that name, rather
Allemagne or something.

According to translate.google.com, the Czech's call Germany "Německo",
which given the history might translate into 'performers of unnatural
acts with farm animals', but there you go.  The Estonians call Germany
"Saksamaa".  Most others I looked at were variations on either
Germany, Allemagne, or Deutschland, mostly along proximity and
language family lines.  In short, I think people tend to not respect
the native spelling or pronunciation of the foreign country involved.
It's not something unique to English.


-- 
Russell Senior         ``I have nine fingers; you have ten.''
seniorr at aracnet.com



More information about the PLUG-talk mailing list