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Lumidaub@feddit.org 2 days ago
When I was in Japan, I asked a receptionist if England-language was okay. Japanese has a word for “English”, it just didn’t exist in my head in that second. I still think about this 12 years later.
(Also, everything else is country-language too, France-language, Germany-language, China-language, Japan-language, why does England-language get to be special, why, Japanese people, why?!)
I was going to defend why it’s like that, but then I realized that I’m woefully under-qualified to defend any aspect of modern English as something well-understood, thought-out, or otherwise consistent with the rest of the language. Either you’re at the top of this field, or a rank amateur - there is no in-between. If I’m going to get skewered on the internet today, I’d rather it be in a Trek forum or something.
TL;DR: English is a mess.
Pretty sure they are complaining about the Japanese language here. In Japanese, the words for languages are generally just a compound word of “Nation + character for language”. So French is “France Language” if you took it literally.
Except the word for English which gets to be different
I was indeed complaining about Japanese. At least English is consistently weird whereas Japanese makes you lower your defenses with its VERY regular grammar (and then hits you over the head with different politeness-levels). ;)
Malgas@beehaw.org 2 days ago
It’s because “England” has a Japanese style adjective-country formation (英国), which then follows the native pattern for language (英語). By contrast, “Germany” (ドイツ) and “France” (フランス) are borrowed phonetically.
To your complaint about “Japan-language”, note that Japan’s official name is 日本国.
What I can’t explain is why 国 comes along for the ride when it’s China. (中国語)
Lightfire228@pawb.social 2 days ago
I vaguely remember from Japanese class that China’s name means “middle country”
But i dunno about that “go” character specifically
Malgas@beehaw.org 2 days ago
Yeah, it does, and it’s written the same in Chinese. I guess if 中国 is technically considered a loanword, then 中国語 is consistent with ドイツ語 and フランス語.
Lumidaub@feddit.org 2 days ago
Which still leaves the question why 英国 is treated differently from, say, 独国, 仏国 and 米国 ;D
Malgas@beehaw.org 2 days ago
I mean, 独語, and 仏語 are perfectly cromulent, albeit less common than the katakana versions. And 米語 likewise exists, referring specifically to American English.
Lumidaub@feddit.org 2 days ago
Lots of words exist, but if they aren’t used, they may as well not (goes for all languages). I recently had a conversation with someone about the German word for shark. The word they knew wasn’t wrong as such and people would understand what they mean but they’d sound weird and old-timey if they used it in normal conversation. I’m sure there are specific situations where 独語 is used but outside of that you’d sound weird. So why is 英語 used alongside ドイツ語?
I’m not really looking for a definite answer here, I know languages are under no obligation to be consistent, this just whinging :)