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…]

  • 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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      17 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.