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Language Perplexities
Here's a question: How come we don't say "Czechia," "Czechland" or just "Czech" as opposed to "Czech Republic?" French come from France. Japanese come from Japan. Argentines come from Argentina. Poles come from Poland. Slovaks come from Slovakia. How come Czechs don't come from Czechia? Didn't they ever figure out the proper word ending for the name of the land of Czechs? What's the deal?
Another thing I find annoying is the Internet slang term, newbie. I hate this word. It's too cutsie--sort of like webmaster is too cutsie--smacks of AOL and Compuserve. Why aren't perfectly servicable words like neophyte, greenhorn and novice sufficient?
I also loath all those recently coined chat acronyms like LOL, IIRC, FWIW, RTFM and so on. I prefer to write all my cliches and phrases out in full, TYVM!
Posted by Pace Arko on October 8, 2001 8:54 AM
Comments
Wow!
That was very helpful and informative Toby! Thanks!
Posted by: Mr. Farlops on October 11, 2001 12:05 PM
Just give a late update on all this, I discovered that on the side of a Czech beer bottle, Pilsner Urquelle I think, the Czechs themselves refer to their land as Czech. At least when they refer to breweries in it. So that mystery may be solved.
Posted by: Mr. Farlops on November 6, 2001 6:11 AM
well actually the answer to this is probably more complex than you might expect- sufice it to say that many traveler's and people throughout Europe do in fact call it simply Czech as opposed to adding Republic, while still others, especially here in Turkey still refer to it as Czechoslovakia, recent changes in the map notwithstanding. part of the problem is the multiethnic and diverse character of the region; thus the lands of Bohemia are referred to as �echy, whil there remain within the borders of the Republic Moravia and part of Silesia- remember that all of these places were incorporated into the Austro-Hungarian empire and there are the further complications of German connections and history in the region- there are also of course Polish minorities and of ourse large numbers of Slovaks--- as to the noun and adjective endings of a language like Czech, they are best left to themselves- but the simplest answer is that the masculine noun form is '�ech' (that first character should have an accent above C)- the adjective form is �esky while the feminine noun is �eska... and added to all of this is the basic ineptitude of English speakers at dealing with complex phonological systems like the slavic languages have....
Posted by: Toby on October 9, 2001 11:01 AM