Quote:
Originally Posted by Kanji_The_Wanderer
The word Japan in Japanese is "Nihon" and someone from Nihon is "Nihongo".
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Here's my Japanese mini-tip of the day.
"go" or "語" translates to '
language' or '
word'. Therefor, nihongo/日本語 is Japanese. Furansugo/フランス語 is French. Doitsugo (from Deutsch)/ドイツ語 is German.
"jin" or "人" translates to 'people'. Nihonjin/日本人 is Japanese people. Kanadajin/カナダ人 is Canadian people, and so on.
It is rather strange that we choose not to use the native word Nihon for Japan, but that tends to happen to many location names across the world. In Germany, we call one of their cities Munich, but in Germany, its called Munchen. This type of thing occurs with many country and city names across the world. Conversely, Japanese use the Portuguese spelling for their version of England, which is igirisu/イギリス, despite the fact that England speaks English (obviously..). It derives from Portuguese "Ingles". This is most likely due to the fact that Portugal was one of the first western nations to make contact and trade with Japan.