About as weird as calling Nihon "Japan".
Comment on Learning Japanese
Gullible@sh.itjust.works 15 hours ago
The US still looking weird by calling Germany “Germany.”
missingno@fedia.io 15 hours ago
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 9 hours 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 8 hours 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 7 hours 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?
Lumidaub@feddit.org 5 hours ago
Face it, even the Anglophones know what you speak is simply Drunk German. :P
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 3 hours 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.
Dicska@lemmy.world 7 hours 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.
chuckleslord@lemmy.world 7 hours 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 hours 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 hours 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.
ceiphas@feddit.org 15 hours ago
Du meinst Deutschland.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
Why put that on the US? We just carried on calling it what the English did.
Gullible@sh.itjust.works 7 minutes ago
To spur discussion, mostly
mech@feddit.org 13 hours 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 9 hours ago
Finnish Saksa is a reference to the Saxon tribe from Old Saxon in Northern Germany, not the current Sachsen.
First_Thunder@lemmy.zip 11 hours ago
What about the Portuguese! ALEMANHA for Germany
Spezi@feddit.org 10 hours ago
In Grench it’s Allemagne. The Alemanni were a german tribe at the rhine.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
In Grench
Is that the Grinch’s native language?
remon@ani.social 10 hours ago
Not any weirder than any other English speaking country.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 8 hours 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 9 hours ago
TYSKLAND
trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Tbf a good chunk of Europe calls it “land of people that can’t speak” basically
Lumidaub@feddit.org 13 hours ago
They’re clearly thinking of the Dutch.
UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world 9 hours 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 13 hours 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 hours ago
For fun with words:
user224@lemmy.sdf.org 12 hours ago
Nemecko
Nemý
Never realized that.
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 8 hours 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 12 hours ago
Yeah right? When it hit me I was like hmmm