I mean:

English

Russian

French? (how did this happen? France --> French?!?)

Chinese

And someone from Afghanistan is an Afghan? How did the word get shorter not longer? 🤔

Also, why is a person from India called an Indian, but the language is called Hindi? This breaks my brain…

Philippines --> Filipino? They just saw the “Ph” and decided to use an “F”? 🤔

Okay idk how language even works anymore…

[This is an open discusssion thread on languages and their quirks…]

  • sbv@sh.itjust.works
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    20 hours ago

    I’ve always wondered how we got Japan for a place that calls itself Nippon.

    Tbf, I’ve looked it up a few times and forgotten, so I guess I don’t feel that strongly about it.

    • don@lemm.ee
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      19 hours ago

      For anyone else wondering, according to the wiki: “The name “Japan” is based on Min or Wu Chinese pronunciations of 日本 (pronounced a bit like JOO-pun)* and was introduced to European languages through early trade.”

      *parentheses mine.

    • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
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      18 hours ago

      English likely got the name from Portuguese, “Japão” *[ʒä’pɐ̃ŋ] (see note). I don’t think that it’s from Dutch “Japan” because otherwise the name would end as “Yapan”, as Dutch uses a clear [j] (“y”) sound.

      In turn Portuguese got it from either Malay or some Chinese language. I think that it’s from Cantonese 日本 jat⁶ bun² [jɐt˨ puːn˧˥]. Portuguese has this historical tendency to transform [j] into [ʒ] (the “g” in “genre”), and to mess with any sort of nasal ending.

      The name in Chinese languages can be analysed as meaning simply “Sun origin”. Because it’s to the east of China.

      In turn, there are a few ways to refer to Japan in Japanese:

      • 日本 / Nihon - it’s a cognate of that Cantonese jat⁶ bun². Except that it uses the Japanese rendering of Wu Chinese words.
      • 日本 / Nippon - same as above, with a slightly more conservative pronunciation (Japanese converted a lot of [p] into [h]).
      • 大和 / Yamato - it’s metaphorically referring to the whole (Japan) by one of its part (the Yamato province, modern Nara).
      • 日の本の国 / Hinomoto-no-Kuni - poetic and dated name. 日/hi = Sun, 本/moto = origin, 国/kuni = land, の = an adposition**. So it also means “land of the origin of the Sun”. The big difference here is that all words used are inherited from Old Japanese, so there’s no Chinese borrowing involved.

      *note: that [ŋ] is reconstructed for around 1500 or so (Nanban trade times), given the word was also spelled Japam back then. A more typical contemporary pronunciation would be more like [ʒä’pɜ̃ʊ̯].

      **the best way I know to explain Japanese の/no is that it works like a reversed English “of”: in English you’d say “origin of Sun”, in Japanese you’d say “Sun no origin” (hi no moto = 日の本). I only remember this because of Boku no Hero Academia, because “boku no” = “of I” (my).

      • sbv@sh.itjust.works
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        10 hours ago

        Thanks for the explanation. So Japan comes from Portuguese via a Chinese language?

      • Cousin Mose@lemmy.hogru.ch
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        17 hours ago

        The way I always remembered の is that it’s much like ’s in English. In other words 日の本 would be“sun’s origin.”

        At first I tried to remember it like a reversed Spanish de but that didn’t work because I got it confused with で.

    • Forester@pawb.social
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      19 hours ago

      The Dutch you can blame the Dutch.

      I may be conflating, Japan and China. Whoops

      • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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        19 hours ago

        We didn’t. 中國likely became the most common name with 中華民國(present day commonly known as Taiwan). What you now know as China is 中華人民共和國, so 中國 carries on. During dynasty periods that was not the common name.

        China comes from sina/sino. I don’t remember where this comes from. Sanskrit?

        • Uh… 中国(Zhongguo) was first used in the Western Zhou period, over 3000 years ago. Other words like 诸夏(Zhuxia), 诸华 (Zhuhua), 天下 (Tianxia), 华夏 (Huaxia), 神州 (Shenzhou), 九州 (Jiuzhou), and assorted combinations or variations of these were used off and on over the time as well. (None of which sound like “China” naturally.) 大清国 (Daqing Guo) was used the Qing before they were overthrown and the Republic, and later the People’s Republic, took the country over again.

          • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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            9 hours ago

            It wasn’t common though. Like everyone calls it 中國 now. Not so back then. China has fragmented and reunited many times

        • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
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          5 hours ago

          China comes from sina/sino. I don’t remember where this comes from. Sanskrit?

          Odds are that both were independently borrowed from Sanskrit चीन / Cīna:

          • China: Sanskrit, then Persian, Portuguese, English. By then Portuguese likely still had the [tʃ] “tch” sound.
          • Sina: Sanskrit, then Persian, Arabic, Greek, Latin, English. Arabic converted Sanskrit [tɕ] into [sˤ], then Greek into [s].

          Note: dunno in English but at least in Latin “Sina” (often Sinae, the plural) refers specifically to southern China. The north is typically called Serica (roughly “of the silk”).

      • themoken@startrek.website
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        19 hours ago

        Wikipedia says from Portuguese, through Persian, back to Sanskrit, being the grand daddy of English, calling it “cina”, and/or it has to do with Qin Dynasty that unified China.

        Probably better than whatever bullshit they would have gotten from Zhongguo if “Peking” was as good as they could do with “Beijing”

        • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
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          18 hours ago

          back to Sanskrit, being the grand daddy of English

          Sanskrit is more like English’s uncle than granddaddy: English is from Proto-Germanic, and both Proto-Germanic and Sanskrit are from Proto-Indo-European.

      • SGforce@lemmy.ca
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        19 hours ago

        Or that soy beans are actually named after the sauce, since English didn’t have a word for the bean yet.