आज का शब्द / آج كا شبد / ਅੱਜ ਦਾ ਸ਼ਬਦ

[muckefuck]

जर्मन / جرمن / ਜਰਮਨ jarman

I suppose I shouldn't be in the least surprised to find that the Hindi/Urdu/Panjabi for "German" is a borrowing from English, given that the German state only formally came into existence thirteen years into the British Raj. But I rather suspected at least one would have preferred a reflex of Persian آلمانی almānī. It's rather ironic, in fact, to have an English borrowing for "German" when the native word for "English", अँग्रेज़ी / انگريزی / ਅੰਗ੍ਰੇਜ਼ੀ ãgrezī, obviously comes from somewhere else. (Portuguese ultimately? Hobson-Jobson is silent on the subject.)

It's also curious to see the country designated as जर्मनी / جرمنی / ਜਰਮਨੀ jarmanī when I might have expected the final -ī to be taken as a nisba ending and analogically expanded to jarmaniyā.

Comments

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU. I've been stumped as to where the hell the Hindi word for "English" came from.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

That's pure speculation on my part, Raja. The modern Portuguese word is inglês, but ingrez is an earlier variant form and the Portuguese were in the right place at the right time for transmission to have taken place.

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

Speculation or not, it's a helluva lot better than anything I've come up with ...

[wwidsith.livejournal.com]

OK this one has confused me.

Is this a person, the language, or an adjective?

I can't seem to find the same meanings in any online resources either.

This site (http://www.cfilt.iitb.ac.in/~hdict/webinterface_user/dict_search_user.php) translates German (adj.) as simply जर्मनी का. The nouns are all compound terms.

But meanwhile it defines जर्मन itself as meaning "Teutonic - (informal, often disapproving) showing qualities considered typical of German people".

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I think the answer is "yes". From what I've seen, qualification is only necessary when ambiguity would arise. For instance, it would be ridiculous to say *जर्मनी की भाषा बोलने वाला *jarmanee kee bhaaSaa bolne-vaalaa since जर्मनी बोलने वाला jarman bolne-vaalaa alone can only mean "German-speaker". In a sentence like यह युवक जर्मन है yih yuvak jarman hai, it's clear that "German" is being used as an adjective; जर्मनी का jarmanee kaa would be a pleonasm. (At least, my understanding is that if you wanted to say "This young man is a German", you'd need to include the article एक ek.) Keep in mind that Hindi is as free as English when it comes to substantivising adjectives.