The proper names for Dutch and German

[dbbolton]

Quod Romani linguae germanicae appellant nomen optimum certo est.

[Hwæt]

People forget that Latin was the world's language for a very long time. It's probably why English uses the word Germany for the country.

English is a Germanic language, not a Romance one. I just think that it would be nice to change them to try and reduce confusion. Referring to one's own language as "Dutch" must get confusing, as already stated by another member.

Besides if it really bothered the Germans they would ask us to stop.

That just doesn't even sound plausible.

And What about Spain (España), Brazil (Brasil), Greece (Hellanic Ruplublic)...

Hispania (Lat) -> España
Hispania (Lat) -> Spania (Late Lat) -> Espayne (Anglo-Norman) -> Spain

Same root, cognates, no confusion

Brazil is rather obvious, and not confusing

As for Greece:

From Latin Graecia < Ancient Greek Γραικός (Graekos), a character in Greek mythology, the son of Thessalos, the king of Fthia, whom Ἑλλάς (Hellas, "Greece") and Ἕλληνες (Hellenes, "the Greeks") were also named after.

I do agree that that one should also be changed. Although, it is the Hellenic Republic in English, as well.

the English names are accepted by these countries if they were not we would still call Congo, Zaire; or Myanmar, Burma.

They aren't "accepted" they are simply understood translations. English has no regulatory body other than the people who speak it, so there's no one to file a grievance with. The only way to incur change is to get what you want integrated into slang, and from there, if it catches on, it's pretty much automatic. On top of that, people still do call those places by those names. Remember Bush mistakenly calling Myanmar, Burma? People also still refer to Mumbai as Bombay, hell, aspell doesn't even recognize the official name.

I would leave it with dutch.
nederandic just doesn't sound right
most dutch people can understand english anyway (exept for the millions who can't speak dutch or english)

Well, that's only because you're so accustomed to hearing it that way for so long. Think about Neatherlandic for a while, or Neatherlandish like jw said. It could grow a bit on you.

Well, you'd have to use "Netherlandish" for Dutch. "-ic" is a Latinate suffix.

German would probably come out something like "Theadish", in English, had the root been retained in any English words. The root involved became Old English "Theodisc" before passing out of usage, and "Dutch" is a later borrowing from one of the continental languages, where "th" became "d".

Thanks for the information, I didn't know that.

I do like your idea, though. Netherlandish has a little catchier ring to it than Netherlandic.

[koenn]

Quod Romani linguae germanicae appellant nomen optimum certo est.

fanboi

[Teber]

in the case of dutch there's even more confusion. nederlands is also referred to as hollands. simply because the netherlands is also referred to as holland. this is because the old county holland (later a province) became very dominant.

is see no point at all in changing dutch to something else. it would involve a major change, if at all possible, and i see no gain here.

actually the similarity between dutch and deutsch reflects the fact that dutch is often mistaken for german by many people.

another matter is the choice of language menu when installing software. for many dutch it would be easier if their language would be called nederlands there.

[t0p]

And why oh why does the English language insist on "translating" place names? Okay, I can understand Koln (sorry, I don't know how type an umlaut) and Cologne, as they do sound similar. But why change Roma to "Rome" and Napoli to "Naples", and a thousand other Italian placenames into ridiculous "translations"? Bah!!

EDIT: Do other languages do that? (Other than French: I know they do - ie "Douvres" for Dover, "Londres" for London.)

[slakkie]

Dit gaat echt helemaal nergens over. Slotje?

[spupy]

Interesting/fun facts:
- Germany in Japanese is "ドイツ" - Doitsu. It sounds funny.
- Germans are called "немци" (nemtsi) in Bulgarian - coming from the word for "mute", since no one understood their language, might as well be mute.

[mivo]

Okay, I can understand Koln (sorry, I don't know how type an umlaut) and Cologne ...

The proper 7-bit way of typing umlauts is by adding an e to the base letter. ä = ae, ö = oe, ü = ue. The ß (called "eszet") is a ligature and can be substituted by ss.

[OffHand]

Cheesehead don't feel bad, when I was a youngster I spoke fluent groningse which is a nederlandse dialect. I never did learn the hoog taal properly.

Haha... how funny is that. I can speak that dialect too, although not as good as native nederlands

[lisati]

Don't they have any regional accents in dutch? I imagine the two are easily confused.

Cariboo907 mentioned groningse, one of the regional dialects. My dad grew up speaking twentse. Beyond a few words and short phrases my own knowledge of the language is quite small.