muckefuck: (Default)
muckefuck ([personal profile] muckefuck) wrote2008-10-29 09:58 pm

आज का शब्द / آج كا شبد / ਅੱਜ ਦਾ ਸ਼ਬਦ

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 to be taken as a nisba ending and analogically expanded to jarmaniyā.

[identity profile] aadroma.livejournal.com 2008-10-30 04:22 am (UTC)(link)
Speculation or not, it's a helluva lot better than anything I've come up with ...