I mean:

English

Russian

French? (how did this happen? France --> French?!?)

Chinese

And someone from Afghanistan is an Afghan? How did the word get shorter not longer? 🤔

Also, why is a person from India called an Indian, but the language is called Hindi? This breaks my brain…

Philippines --> Filipino? They just saw the “Ph” and decided to use an “F”? 🤔

Okay idk how language even works anymore…

[This is an open discusssion thread on languages and their quirks…]

  • Puschel_das_Eichhorn@lemm.eeEnglish
    02·
    3 days ago

    Em… Are you stoned?

    • Afghanistan means “land of the Afghans”.
    • Hindi is just one out of hundreds of languages spoken in India. The words have the same origin. I am not sure what prompted the loss or gain of an “h”, but English has nothing to do with it.
    • The Philippines/Filipino thing clearly works the other way around. I cannot think of any language besides English in which an “f” can be written as “ph”.
    • 🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦@ttrpg.networkEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      I cannot think of any language besides English in which an “f” can be written as “ph”.

      French. Vietnamese (via the French influence) when transliterated. Italian (where in Greek-origin words you can see either being used). German (same as Italian, though over the years some words got formally modified from ph- to f-, but words like Philosophie is still spelled that way). Spanish and Portuguese too, though far more rarely than in Italian (where it is in turn far more rare than in French). Polish and Hungarian too, IIRC.