Re: [conculture] Names of countries and national languages

On 9/24/07, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> wrote:
> On 9/23/07, Scotto Hlad <scott.hlad@...> wrote:
> > I chose Rumansa as the language in its native form which
> > ended up being very close to the native name of Romansch or one of its
> > dialects (I forget which.)
>
> Well, consider how close the native names for Slovenian and Slovak are
> IRL (slovensky and slovinsky IIRC; not sure which is which)....
Ooh, even better: Slovenian is slovenski jezik or slovenščina; Slovak
is slovenský jazyk or slovenčina. So the difference in the adjective
is -ki vs. -ký, with the same vowel in the root.

As for the countries, Slovenia is Slovenija while Slovakia is
Slovensko (which could be easily mistaken by a non-native as referring
to Slovenia).

Good job English has -ak- in there to make telling the two apart
easier. (Niger vs. Nigeria is bad enough, especially when you come to
derivative forms.)

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>