By the way, anyone know why it's called "Germany" when they call it "Deutchland"? Even the Korean word for Germany is "Doh-Gil", which sounds more like "Deutchland" than anything else. How about "Munich"? That hardly sounds like "Munchen," no?
I think the problem started with Holland/the Netherlands. Having the two vowels, eu, is not common in English so it would make sense that the e would be dropped as well as the s in Deutsch [in fact, you dropped the s when discussing the word up above]. However, the resulting word, Dutch, became the name for the people from the Netherlands except in the case of the PA Dutch who are not from Holland but are either German or Swiss German......I forget which.
I suspect the word 'deutsch' exists in some form in the language of Holland, after all, Dutch is a Germanic language. So the English may have starting calling those people, the Dutch. Since Germany came much later than the Netherlands.......Germany didn't become a nation until the 19th century......the word Dutch was already taken and so we came up with the word, German..........breaking it down further.....Ger Man. That's as far as I can go with it.
As for Munich, its just the anglicized word for Munchen. Look at Prague for Prada or Milan for Milano or Athens for Athena or Cologne for Köln. |
