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 03:45 am (UTC)(link)
THANK YOU. I've been stumped as to where the hell the Hindi word for "English" came from.

[identity profile] wwidsith.livejournal.com 2008-10-30 02:36 pm (UTC)(link)
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".
Edited 2008-10-30 14:37 (UTC)