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[–] 99 points 8 months ago (46 children)

The US still looking weird by calling Germany “Germany.”

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  • [–] 53 points 8 months ago (10 children)

    Tbf a good chunk of Europe calls it "land of people that can't speak" basically

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  • [–] 28 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Cause they can't!1!

    But for real, for those who are curious: the border between Germany and Poland is effectively the border between western and eastern Europe. So to Slav people Germans lived right over there, and yet spoke something incomprehensible; so we called them "mute" (in Poland at least). If I can't understand you you are mute to me, basically. And the word for "Germans" is the same as for "Germany", so we call the country itself mutes 😅

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

    For fun with words:

    • Niemcy - polish for Germans
    • Niemcy - polish for Germany
    • Niemy - polish for mute
    • Jadę do Niemiec - "I am riding to Germany"
    • Jadę z niemcami - "I am riding with germans"
    • Jadę z niemcem - "I am riding with a german"
    • Jadę z Niemczech - "I am riding from Germany"
    • Jadę z niemym - "I am riding with a mute"

    I wonder how confusing these are for people not speaking polish xD

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  • [–] 20 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Nemecko
    Nemý

    Never realized that.

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  • [–] 22 points 8 months ago* (10 children)

    And what about the Romance languages. They call Germany “Land of the Alemanni”, they called an entire country full of different tribes after a single Germanic tribe that lived near the French/Italian border. It’s like calling the entire country of the Netherlands Amsterdam.

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  • [–] 13 points 8 months ago* (9 children)

    It's like calling the entire country of the Netherlands Holland. Holland(ia?) is part of the Netherlands which gave the name of the country in a bunch of languages.

    This is weird, by the way, I just wrote about the exact same thing not too long ago.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (8 children)

    I can open your link, but as someone who's Dutch, the way this all works in English is so absurd. Here we call Germany "Duitsland" and they speak "Duits". This is quite similar to what they say themselves, "Deutschland" and "Deutsch". We call our country "Nederland" and our language "Nederlands". This is again similar in German.

    Then why is English "Germany", "German" and "Holland"/"The Netherlands" and "Dutch". It's so silly. There are of course historic reasons, but can't we all just collectively change it?

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  • [–] 18 points 8 months ago (7 children)

    The weirdest ones are the Finns, calling Germany Saksa.
    I'm German and I feel more at home when I'm in Finland than in Sachsen.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    What about the Portuguese! ALEMANHA for Germany

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    In Grench it’s Allemagne. The Alemanni were a german tribe at the rhine.

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  • [–] 14 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Not any weirder than any other English speaking country.

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    English speakers call Deutschland Germany, don't give us all the credit here. And it's called that cause the UK hated keeping track of what y'all were calling yourselves, so they chose bigotry instead (a common theme for England). The rest of us usually don't know the history and just have a word with no context as to why it is that way.

    For those Americans who don't understand, calling it Germany is like calling First Nation land "Indialand" because "how can anyone keep track of what they call it? It's always changing!"

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Why put that on the US? We just carried on calling it what the English did.

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    [–] 42 points 8 months ago* (8 children)

    I constantly mix up sore and sono. 😮‍💨

    For more context: They don't just mean the same thing. One is a pronoun and the other is an adjective. Like the difference between the word THAT in the following sentences: "That which is given" vs "Hand me that."

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago*

    Just remember that "no" is the particle that indicates possession, so you need to show what it's possessing if you use it.

    Sore can be used as a subject or object directly:

    それを説明して下さい。
    Explain that please.

    Compared to:

    その話を説明して下さい。
    Explain that conversation please.

    Using "no" to show possession can be used without indicating the possessed word with regular nouns, but not the kono/sono/ano words.

    家のドアは大きい。
    The house's door is big.
    家のは大きい。
    The house's is big.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Thank you for actually talking about the post ;)

    I find that when speaking about them in isolation I also have to take a split-second to remember which one is which. But after a bit of practice, when actually forming sentences, you'll develop a feeling for it and using the wrong one will sound wrong to your ears so you won't need to think about it.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    But both of those examples are pronouns?

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    I was screwing around on Duolingo for a while, trying different languages. Happened upon Russian.

    After you get through the alien character set and sounds, it was pretty easy, or so I thought.

    There are 16 verb classes There is formal and informal dialect Nouns are gendered.

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago
    [–] 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Ok but then what about are, ano, aitsu?

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    As someone who's family is trying to learn Japanese in order to better enjoy our trip there... I feel this in the depths of my soul...

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