The Names of Countries

[semaphore]

Well, I didn't realise Japanese and Chinese were THAT close. I have no intrest in Kanji so I didn't know any of them. It is almost like German and Dutch if you look at that list though.

They actually aren't that close, it's just that those were kanji, which are Chinese characters, and therefore almost the same. Kind of like French and German alphabets (except Kanji isn't alphabets, of course).

[Anakso]

wat

Korea is called Hanguk? For real? I had no idea... Then was it called Korean before or was it always Hanguk?

Yep, it's typed 한국 which is Hanguk.
Then 한굴 Hangul is Korean for Korean as in the alphabet. And then it's either 한국말 or 한굴말 (Hangukmal or Hangulmal) for Korean language, as in spoken language. Mal just means language. I forget which one it is though, I think it's the former.

It might be like Chinese. There's no actual language called "Chinese". It's Mandarin or...the other one I can't think of.

Not quite the same, as Hanguk translates into English as Korea, and Hangul translates into Korean. So to us English speakers it's still Korea and Korean.

[Bolson13]

Yeah, and we used to call you Flandes, Paises Bajos (Low Countries) or Provincias Unidas (United Provinces), and you guys didn't kick us out, we just weren't interested in keeping you in the Empire any longer lol

Oh, bring it. We will kick your ass for another 80 years and steal your goldfleet once again though that mostly consists of Seats which are basically VW golfs with no gold. You can keep those .

[jotabe]

Well, I didn't realise Japanese and Chinese were THAT close. I have no intrest in Kanji so I didn't know any of them. It is almost like German and Dutch if you look at that list though.

Chinese and Japanese are not close at all, as languages. They just use (roughly) the same writing, due to the Chinese culture being hegemonic in the Far East. It wasn't complicated to adapt, because after all in Chinese each character is a word, and that's how you construct newer words and phrases (this isn't exact, as some characters are only phonetic). So, the Chinese writing doesn't really depend on the language, but on the meaning you want to communicate. Theoretically, you could obtain a good degree of understanding of texts in Chinese without having any idea of Chinese language, simply by knowing the meaning of the characters.
Japanese has a double system: kept the logographic characters from Chinese (the kanji), and has 2 additional syllabic alphabets (hiragana and katakana).

[Bolson13]

They actually aren't that close, it's just that those were kanji, which are Chinese characters, and therefore almost the same. Kind of like French and German alphabets (except Kanji isn't alphabets, of course).

So not all Japanese characters are Kanji (or hanzi, Chinese characters)?

---------- Post added 2012-12-06 at 12:42 PM ----------

Chinese and Japanese are not close at all, as languages. They just use (roughly) the same writing, due to the Chinese culture being hegemonic in the Far East. It wasn't complicated to adapt, because after all in Chinese each character is a word, and that's how you construct newer words and phrases (this isn't exact, as some characters are only phonetic). So, the Chinese writing doesn't really depend on the language, but on the meaning you want to communicate. Theoretically, you could obtain a good degree of understanding of texts in Chinese without having any idea of Chinese language, simply by knowing the meaning of the characters.
Japanese has a double system: kept the logographic characters from Chinese (the kanji), and has 2 additional syllabic alphabets (hiragana and katakana).

Oh I see. Well saying that you can understand Chinese to a large degree if you can read the characters is actually true but the characters are the hardest thing to learn. Chinese grammar isn't all that complicated (for me so far at least, compared to say German grammar or even English).

[semaphore]

So not all Japanese characters are Kanji (or hanzi, Chinese characters)?

Yeah, the Japanese written language also includes hiragana and katakana, which are rather more like alphabets. But also Japanese Kanji contains some native characters that are not found in actual Chinese, and certain abbreviations differ (with traditional Chinese).

[jotabe]

Oh, bring it. We will kick your ass for another 80 years and steal your goldfleet once again though that mostly consists of Seats which are basically VW golfs with no gold. You can keep those .

Hah! we only need one Spaniard with a pike, to poke the button that controls the polders. And don't belittle my Seat Ibiza it's a great car because it's mine. It's a great small car lol

[Mayhem]

i actually like the different words for the country i´m from

austria, autriche, oostenrjik

[Anakso]

So not all Japanese characters are Kanji (or hanzi, Chinese characters)?

From what little I know about Japanese, they have their own Japanese letters then the Chinese characters which represent words rather than letters, or something along those lines. I tried learning Japanese a while ago but the whole thing just confused me. I think every symbol in Japanese falls into one of two, or it might be three, alphabets/categories. Could be wrong though.

[jotabe]

Yep, it's typed 한국 which is Hanguk.

Ooooh... i thought that Hanguk was the brand that made my dobok...

[Anakso]

i actually like the different words for the country i´m from

austria, autriche, oostenrjik

Which one is in Austrian?
I'm going to assume oostenrjik since it's the most different, who uses autriche?

[Bolson13]

Which one is in Austrian?
I'm going to assume oostenrjik since it's the most different, who uses autriche?

Thats actually Dutch and it should say Oostenrijk. So the i and J turned around.
In German it would be Ostenreich, with dots on the O if I am not mistaken.

[Anakso]

Ooooh... i thought that Hanguk was the brand that made my dobok...

Had to google dobok xD
But nope, your dobok says Korea!
This is hangul for dobok also 도복 if you happened to have seen that anywhere.

[semaphore]

Österreich. By far the best imho!

[Anakso]

Österreich. By far the best imho!

I read that as Ostrich xD (I know that's going to be totally wrong)

[jotabe]

Which one is in Austrian?
I'm going to assume oostenrjik since it's the most different, who uses autriche?

Austria was a bad latinization, in any case. Osterrich (sp) should mean "kingdom to the east", and when converting the name into latin (the international language of the time), they just mixed it up with Austral that means "southern"... because it sounded similar.

---------- Post added 2012-12-06 at 12:00 PM ----------

Had to google dobok xD
But nope, your dobok says Korea!
This is hangul for dobok also 도복 if you happened to have seen that anywhere.

Haha, i probably saw it, but never been able to memorize those non-latin characters (yet... i really need to learn chinese...)

[Hyve]

A proper Atlas will show you the English & Native name of the nation. Having a single unified system that makes it easier is a good thing. It is English because it is a very dominant language that almost every nation speaks.

[Anakso]

Haha, i probably saw it, but never been able to memorize those non-latin characters (yet... i really need to learn chinese...)

Hangul is probably the easiest completely foreign alphabet to at least learn the basics of, and be able to pronounce most written words fairly easily.
Take Hanguk for example 한국 , good example because it contains one of letter changing rules. It might look scary but that's just because Hangul organizes the letters of each syllable together, unlike English and most other languages. So the individual letters are this(With the pronunciation of those letters next to them): ᄒ(h) ᅡ(a) ᄂ(n) ᄀ(g) ᅮ(u) ᄀ(k)
Han is one syllable so the letters go together, and the same for guk.ᄀ Changes to a G sound if between vowels or if preceded by the letter ᄂ(n)

Free Korean lesson for you

[Ethes]

Challenge accepted!

Nippon
Tokyo
Kanagawa
Fuchinobe
Kyoto

If you did that without a dictionairy of some sorts, well done. Took me a while to learn those kanji. My point was however, that if you don't know any Japanese there is no way you can pronounce these names of both the countries and the cities. So first off you've got to translate them into western writing and next you'll need to be able to actually pronounce them.

Therefore it seems logical that while we're at it, might just as well reform the whole word into something easy. However, it's a riddle for me how we went from Nihon/Nippon to Japan... Seems quite a stretch

---------- Post added 2012-12-06 at 12:32 PM ----------

A proper Atlas will show you the English & Native name of the nation. Having a single unified system that makes it easier is a good thing. It is English because it is a very dominant language that almost every nation speaks.

Actually, De Grote Bos Atlas which is quite wellknown in Holland is completely in Dutch. Besides, although I'm not particually against using English in an international setting I'm glad most things can be found in my own language. Google maps is (if you'll set google in Dutch) also completely Dutch next to native spellings of places.

[Hraklea]

I find this curious too, specially because people don't translate brazilian cities. We (brazilians) say "Nova York" rather than "New York", "Carolina do Sul" rather than "South Carolina", "São Francisco" rather than "San Francisco"... but I never saw an american saying "January River" rather than "Rio de Janeiro", or "Saint Paul" rather than "São Paulo".