And of course, in addition to all the linguistic peculiarities already mentioned, there’s the whole aspect of political change. We call it Germany, the locals call it Deutchland. Well, centuries past, before there was a nation named Deutchland, those pesky Latin-speaking people called the area “Germania.” (Where that came from, I don’t know right offhand.) I’m sure there are plenty of examples of similar holdovers.
Language is a funny thing, and English even moreso.
Whoops…I meant Apache, Zuni for “enemy.” The Mexicans called the Navajo “Apaches de Navajo,” enemies of the cultivated fields–they were Apacheans, but agriculturalists.
Nippon is an alternative pronunciation of Nihon in Japanese. And Nipponjin is a valid alternative of Nihonjin. (But Nippongo is not - not sure why, it just sounds weird.)
Yes I know all of that. What I was remarking is that using Nipponese doesn’t make any sense in the context of the OP’s examples (Munchen, Deutchland). Indeed, as Giles said, the analogous term would be nihonjin.
Why don’t we say nihonjin? It doesn’t fit with our naming convention for nationalities. Though it’s far from a perfect rule, we recognize -ese, -er, -ite, etc. as suffixes signifying “a person from —”. We don’t recognize -jin for this meaning. At best Jin is a character from Tekken.
The OP was confused, thinking Nipponese was what Japanese call themselves. That’s the only thing that makes sense. Wakarimasu ka?
Originally posted by Bear_Nenno
We call ourselves Nederlanders!
The rest of the world is soooo wrong. Pah. 
Yep - I was confused on “Nipponese.”
Those of you commenting on “cultural sensitivity” are missing the point of my post entirely, and the Nipponese confusion is a great example of what I’m talking about.
I’m not trying to be sensitive, I’m trying to be sensible. A great deal of confusion could be eliminated if we stopped trying to rename people and countries. You want to call your country Fredland? Fine. Let’s update all the maps and have everybody call it Fredland. No problems in airline reservations, newscasts, or anything else.
I’ve got a better solution. If all those dern furiners would just learn to talk American, we wouldn’t have this problem in the first place!
No, at best, she’s a quite fetching artist from Texas.
And we (or, at least, I) miss her here.
Unless you implement that as a universal policy, and refer to every group the way it likes, then it’s even worse. And if you do, I’ll point and laugh. Especially when you discover that half the people out there are going to demand something different, and you have to figure out whether that Moldovan is actually Transnistrian.
Besides, “Nippon”, at least in the opinion of this native English speaker, is a really stupid sounding word. Naturally sound associations are different in different languages - but while Nippon might work find in Nihongo, it sounds like crap to me. Isn’t it better that I use a word that doesn’t sound stupid in referring to foreigners?
I think “sounding stupid” is a rather subjective way to pick words. English has plenty of words that sound stupid to me, but you may like them. Hmm. That would make an interesting thread: Stoopidest-sounding English words.
Actually, I’ve been told by a number of my Mexican friends that “Mexico” is an Aztec word, not a Spanish word, and that it is properly pronounced “MECKS-i-ko” (just like we say it in English), not MEY-hee-ko (as the Spanish pronunciation would have it).
In medieval Spanish, the letter x was used to represent the “sh” sound (as it still is in Portuguese). But around the time of the Renaissance there was a sound shift in Castilian pronunciation, and the former “sh” sound changed to a “kh” sound. The original Nahuatl name of México must have had a “sh” sound which the Spaniards wrote with “x” as the only letter in their alphabet that could represent that sound. Sure, nowadays they say mé-hi-ko or mé-khi-ko in modern Spanish pronunciation, but the original may have been me-shi-ko or something like that. The nearby location Xochimilco is another example. In modern Spanish it’s pronounced Sochimilco, but if the original Nahuatl had been pronounced that way, the 16th-century Spaniards could have just written it with S. If it had been pronounced Shochimilko, that would explain the spelling with X. Modern Spanish has lost the “sh” sound, that’s all. In the case of Xochimilco, they substituted the nearest approximation, the “s” sound.
The Turkish government recently had a campaign to get everyone to call their country Türkiye, complete with 2 dots over the u, but it seems there are no takers. Hey, it had worked for them years ago, when they got everyone to change Constantinople to Istanbul, Angora to Ankara, Smyrna to Izmir, etc. But it seems country names are more resistant to change than city names. The demand of Ivory Coast that all English speakers call it Côte d’Ivoire has had at least partial success. The U.S. State Department is now using the French form of the name officially.
The title of the thread is “Why can’t we call folks what they want to be called?” Have you considered the possibility that what people want to be called is not necessarily what they call themselves? I’m Japanese and when I’m speaking in Japanese, I refer to my country as Nihon or Nippon. But when I’m speaking in English I prefer to use the English words “Japan” and “Japanese”. The English word referring to that country has always been “Japan,” and I see no compelling reason to change a functional, inoffensive and widely used word.
What exactly is the confusion? When you learn to speak a foreign language, you’ll learn what the natives call their country. But when you’re speaking English, all you need is the English name of that country. It would be far more confusing if we started borrowing foreign words.
I’m Hungarian, and the Hungarian word for the people who live in Hungary is “Magyar,”, and the Hungarian name for Hungary is “Magyarország” (“ország” means “country” in Hungarian). Where and how the English language got “Hungary” from “Magyar” is beyond me. 
In Hungarian, we also have our peculiarities for naming certain countries. Some are fairly close to their English equivalents, such as “Franciaország” for France, “Norvégia” for Norway, and “Kanada” for Canada. However, it’s “Németország” for Germany, “Olaszország” for Italy, and “Oroszország” for Russia. 
I’m just curious … how is the country of Hungary pronounced in other languages? I know it’s “Ungarn” in German, “Hongroise” in French, but how is it pronounced in other languages, such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, etc.?
It’s Hongarije here. Pronounced: Hon gggggaaaaa [hard g, long a] ri yuh.
What’s ‘the Netherlands’ in Magyaran?
In Turkish, Hungary is Macaristan. (C is pronounced j in Turkish, so it’s pronounced Majaristan.)
In Turkish, Poland is Lehistan. That means the land of Lech, as in Walesa.
In Hungarian, the Netherlands is called Németalföld. That ought to drive you crazy, gum.
Gum, similar as in English, the Hungarians tend to call the Netherlands “Hollandia”, in addition to the official name that Jomo Mojo gave.
Jomo Mojo, that’s interesting that the Turks call Hungary (more or less) by the name of its people, namely “Magyar.” Not many languages use “Magyar” in their pronunciation of Hungary.
Just as an FYI, we call Turkey “Törökország” (the “o” with the umlaut over it is pronounced like the “o” in the word polite, but round your lips).
I’ve noticed that newscasters started saying, “Keeyoto” making it 3 syllables, instead of Kyoto with two. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure it’s Kyoto w/two.
I’m basing this on the Korean (well, Korean-in-America for a long time which is not necessarily Korean from Korea) pronunciation of it, which barely acknowledges the “yuh” sound. The emphasis is definitely on the long “o.”
Is there a good reason for the newscasters switching the pronunciation?
I read a book “is there a cow in Moscow” which promised to give me all the derivations & alternatives & authentic pronunciations of various words, from a stuffy British type, but was very disappointed. I ended up disagreeing with the author over the “correct” (read “snobby”) pronunciation, although I think we both acknowledge that even if there is a “correct” way, it’s not worth much in the end.
Anway, when I start rolling my eyes at the KEEyoto thing, am I being even more of a putz than they? :rolleyes: