Re: Language naming terminology

At 20:21 23/09/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Raymond A. Brown wrote:
>> This is IMO one of those instances where I agree
>> with Tom about the name of the nearest branch, 'tribe' or whatever, of a
>> people being adopted and then used generally of the whole people.
>>
>> Ray.
>
>I suspect that that's only true part of the time (yes, I realize Tom
>already stated that it was not always true, I'm just making an
>additional point), often one people learns about another people thru a
>third people.  For example, the Arabic word for German is based on
>_aleman_ (or at least the Lebanese dialect - my neighbor, who's
>Lebanese, told me this), I don't remember the exact form.  Anyways, they
>acquired this term thru the French.
>
>Related note: in my Japanese class, we've learned some nation-terms,
>most of them are based on the words used by the peoples themselves.
>Nationality is the nation's name + -jin, and language is nation + -go
>
>Japan = Nihon or Nippon (written with kanji meaning "origin" and "sun")
>China = Chuugoku (written with kanji meaning "middle" and "country")
>Korea = Kankoku (written with a compound kanji, the second means
>"country", I don't know what the first means)
>Germany = Doitsu
>Italy = Itaria
>France = Furansu
>England = Eikoku (literally "Proud" or "Brilliant" Country!) OR Igirisu
>(I don't know why it's not *Ingirisu)
        My Japanese teacher said that Igirisu came from portuguese. Maybe
it's the answer

>Thailand = Tai
>Switzerland = Suisu
>Spain = Supein (not *Esupanya)
>India = Indo
>Egypt = Ejiputo
>Australia = Oosutoraria (took me a while to figure that one out)
>New Zealand = Nyuujiirando
>Vietnam = Betonamu (at least, I think that is Vietnam)
        Here she couldn't tell us why it was that.

>America = Amerika or Beikoku (literally "Country of Rice"!)
>
>I don't know why some have -koku at the end, but they retain those with
>nationality and language, so Korean person = Kankokujin, Korean language
>= Kankokugo
        I fact, The Japanese have many different ways to name a country. I
think it depends on the date when they decided to name the country. For
instance, I think Eikoku and Beikoku are older than the equivalents Igirisu
and Amerika, but I am not sure. China and Korea are languages written with
the same ideograms as Japanese. They only took the ideograms used by the
Chinese and the Korean to designate their country, and they pronounced it as
they were used to in Japanese.
        Nowadays, Japan is used to borrowing words from other languages
(mostly English), so they don't have problems to take the English name of a
country and to change it to their phonology, hence 'Supein' from 'Spain'.
They also often reduce the word when it's too long and difficult for them to
hear, hence 'Suisu' from 'Switzerland' (or it may come from the French
'Suisse', it's also a possibility).
        IF someone has a theory of why they choose one or other language to
borrow the name of a country, just tell me, I'm very interested in that.


>
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                                                Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

homepage: http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepage/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html