This question has been bugging me for years but I've never Googled it

[Gwylan]

Close - tre is Welsh for town.

To edit myself, I was talking nonsense - tref IS Welsh for town, although in place names it does often drop the 'f'.

I'm having one of the days when I'm half awake...

"brains of NSC"?

 

[house your seagull]

Calling the country Holland is like calling Britain "England", or "Scotland", or "Wales". It's just wrong, and it really annoys me when the football commentators call the team "Holland'. Ignorant tossers.

i think it's harsh to call them ignorant tossers ... i'm not so sure that the holland thing is common knowledge - you should channel these annoyances onto people who refer to 'the withdean' as our current home.

can anyone explain why we called Germany Germany, the romantic languages have it down as allemagne (sp) except italy, and the poles call it something completely different too 'niemcy'

the polish word for italy is 'WŁOCHY' when we all call it Italy or similar.

i'm confused.com - get your linguistics out for the lads.

 

[User removed 4]

When I travelled round China four years ago, mainly using trains and public buses to get from A to B, we chatted to the locals for hours using the Lonely Planet's dictionary as a go-between.

They would snatch the book out of our hands, read the Mandarin question on the page, and then pass the book back, pointing to the phrase. Something like: "What is your name"

We would then read the pinyin answer back aloud and point to the Mandarin response, too: "My name is..."

Had loads of great 'conversations' that way. Was well weird, because many of the people we met had never seen a white person before.

.

did you encounter many obstacles from officialdom ?? ie visas etc ?

 

[queens park pete]

To edit myself, I was talking nonsense - tref IS Welsh for town, although in place names it does often drop the 'f'.

I'm having one of the days when I'm half awake...

"brains of NSC"?

Well I didn't want to get too smart- my mum is from North Wales, so I just assumed you were using that strange southern dialect they use.....

 

[Trufflehound]

Bombay >> Mumbai
Rhodesia >> Zimbabwe
Opal Fruits >> Starburst
Marathon >> Snickers

Why oh why ....

Davros >> Ian Dowie

The list is endless...

 

[Trufflehound]

That's quite easy. The country is the Netherlands. Holland refers to one of the provinces which makes up the Netherlands (nowadays split into two proovinces, North Holland and South Holland). Calling the country Holland is like calling Britain "England", or "Scotland", or "Wales". It's just wrong, and it really annoys me when the football commentators call the team "Holland'. Ignorant tossers.

To be fair though, the Dutch bring this confusion upon themselves. When their football supporters cheer for the elftal, they shout "Hup Holland!", not "Hup Nederland".

And if you walk into any tourist office in the country, every T-shirt, mug and pen says "I ♥ Holland" not "I ♥ the Kingdom of the Netherlands"

So bollocks to 'em, I say.

Besides, they all constantly refer to the UK as "Engeland", regardless of what part they're talking about...

 

[fatbadger]

To be fair though, the Dutch bring this confusion upon themselves. When their football supporters cheer for the elftal, they shout "Hup Holland!", not "Hup Nederland".

And if you walk into any tourist office in the country, every T-shirt, mug and pen says "I ♥ Holland" not "I ♥ the Kingdom of the Netherlands"

So bollocks to 'em, I say.

Besides, they all constantly refer to the UK as "Engeland", regardless of what part they're talking about...

Well, indeed. They are ignorant to call Britain "England", and we are ignorant to call the Netherlands "Holland". And, just as there are English people who think that England is the most important and thus the only part of Britain worth considering, so do many from Holland. I once sat in a pub and watched two friends of mine, one from Rotterdam (in Holland) and one from Groningen (in the province of the same name) as the former argued that Holland is the only part of the Netherlands that matters, so you might as well call the Netherlands "Holland". It was all light-hearted (Stijn didn't entirely mean it, he was saying it for argumentative effect), but illuminating all the same.

Luckily, the Welsh, Irish and Scottish members of the British polity are more vocal than their provincial equivalents in the Netherlands and don't let the English (or foreigners) get confused in their company.

 

[Exmouth Seagull]

I hear that due to the success of The Olympics that GB has decided to rename a famous place in a similar manner to Peking/Beijing in honour of China.

Therefore 'The Peak District' will shortly be renamed 'The Beige District'.

 

[The Large One]

i think it's harsh to call them ignorant tossers ... i'm not so sure that the holland thing is common knowledge - you should channel these annoyances onto people who refer to 'the withdean' as our current home.

can anyone explain why we called Germany Germany, the romantic languages have it down as allemagne (sp) except italy, and the poles call it something completely different too 'niemcy'

the polish word for italy is 'WŁOCHY' when we all call it Italy or similar.

i'm confused.com - get your linguistics out for the lads.

Similarly, 'Hungary' - or smiliar derivations - is purely a Germanic (under which English is usually placed)/Romantic creation. The natives in what is now that country are 'Magyars'.

 

[withdeanwombat]

Holland and The Netherlands... what's that all about then?

edit: or apparently the full name is Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden. I'm confused

Now that TRULY IS double dutch.

 

[seagullsovergrimsby]

As an international telephonist it was nice to go through to Beijing (which we correctly pronounced as Bayzhing) and say to her "thanks , duck", or ringing Shanghai and saying "ok , Lil". My favourite was calling Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and bellowing "Good Morning Vietnam !!!"
It was funny when interior designers were spouting off about fung shooey until it was pointed out the correct pronounciation was feng shway.

 

[Trufflehound]

edit: or apparently the full name is Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden. I'm confused

Blimey! Just exactly how OLD is the browser you're using? It ceased being called the "Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden" when Napoleon invaded in 1795, back when what is now Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands were all sort of the same country ...

(They have "Koninkrijk der Nederlanden" written in their passports these days...)

 

[Gwylan]

Well I didn't want to get too smart- my mum is from North Wales, so I just assumed you were using that strange southern dialect they use.....

Oh yes, I speak southern Welsh - I'd never want to be mistaken for a Gog

Enough of this: what I want to know is why we sayi Bayern Munich? Surely we should either say Bavarian Munich (as if there's another) or Bayern Muenchen, instead we have adopted the macaronic version ...which just sounds odd.

And even more importantly: why and when did Keith Richard become Keith Richards?

 

[queens park pete]

Oh yes, I speak southern Welsh - I'd never want to be mistaken for a Gog

Enough of this: what I want to know is why we sayi Bayern Munich? Surely we should either say Bavarian Munich (as if there's another) or Bayern Muenchen, instead we have adopted the macaronic version ...which just sounds odd.

And even more importantly: why and when did Keith Richard become Keith Richards?

Then we watch Roma play in the city of Rome, but AC MILAN playing in Milan which Italians call Milano- they're confused and they live there!