• zlatiah@lemmy.worldOP
      21·
      12 days 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

  • foggy@lemmy.world
    194·
    12 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.

    • megrania@discuss.tchncs.de
      4·
      12 days 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 …

    • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
      2·
      11 days ago

      Because no one can say Magyarország, and it’s easier to make fun of being Hungary for Turkey.

    • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      12 days 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
        5·
        12 days 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, and 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.

        • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          12 days ago

          Asked my half-Japanese wife how to say “Japan” in Japanese. First she said “Japan”, then “Nippon” pronounced “Nihon” (silent P), then “Nippongo” (silent P), or something I can’t type exactly. She also wrote down “Wakarami” with a note “I don’t know”. She was born and bred in the Philippines, so there’s that twist.

          Now I’m totally confused, fuck it, Japan it is.

          So yeah, how authentic do you want to be?! Bitching about such things is a sign I can’t take one seriously.

          I’m not insensitive. Lady at Lowe’s saw my Ukraine patch and said, “Slava Ukraini!” I said it back, but came on here to ask for proper pronunciation.

          And Turkey is fucking Turkey. Fuck the haters.

    • pedz@lemmy.ca
      1·
      11 days 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.

  • KSP Atlas@sopuli.xyz
    6·
    12 days ago

    In Polish, “United States” is Stany Zjednoczone, but the acronym is USA, even though that doesn’t match up at all

  • Vinny_93@lemmy.world
    75·
    12 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.

      • AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        41·
        12 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