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

[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.