Does anyone happen to know why it is that in English the adjective of ‘The Netherlands’ as well as the noun denoting the people from that country and the language they speak is ‘Dutch’ while it would seem to make much more sense to reserve that word for referring to Germany, which in German is of course Deutschland.
The Dutch words for Dutch don’t seem remotely similar to the word Dutch; a Dutchman is ‘een Nederlander’; the Dutch language is ‘het Nederlands’ and the adjective is also Nederlands. This only makes sense since the Dutch refer to their country as ‘Nederland’
Why is this?