Re: CHAT: The [+foreign] attribute

On Thu, 5 Sep 2002 18:03:56 +0000, Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
wrote:

>Herman Miller wrote:
>>Names of countries [in Tirehlat] often end in -vor, and
>>the corresponding languages in -lhat: ingglavor "England", ingglalhat
>>"English language"; frangsevor "France", frangselhat "French language";
>>svenskavor "Sweden", svenskalhat "Swedish language".
>
>Any specific reason that _svenskavor_ is based on the ethnonyme/language
>name rather than on the country name?
In this particular case it's arbitrary whether "svenska-" or "sverje-"
would turn out to be the basic root. There's a general trend to use
language names instead of country names; other examples are "mylaaju-"
(from "Melayu") for both Malaysia and the Malay language, and "malgaash-"
for the Malagasy language and the name of Madagascar. In other cases, the
country name is borrowed. Greenland and the Greenlandic language get their
name kalaalhit- from "Kalaallit Nunaat". Names of countries ending in -stan
are generally borrowed by substituting -vor for -stan (afhaanvor, pakyvor,
kazahvor, and so on). But Tirelat is far from systematic, and in most cases
the choice of names is arbitrary. The Tirelat root for China/Chinese
doesn't come from "Han", or "Zhongguo", or anything comparable, but from
the Russian "kitai".

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