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English breaks my brain... How is some languages end in -an, but others end in -ese, -ish, etc... [Open Discussion Thread on Languages and their Quirks] (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 2 months ago by IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/casualconversation@lemm.ee

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I mean:

English

Russian

French? (how did this happen? France --> French?!?)

Chinese

And someone from Afghanistan is an Afghan? How did the word get shorter not longer? 🤔

Also, why is a person from India called an Indian, but the language is called Hindi? This breaks my brain...

Philippines --> Filipino? They just saw the "Ph" and decided to use an "F"? 🤔

Okay idk how language even works anymore...

[This is an open discusssion thread on languages and their quirks...]

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[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 1 points 2 months ago

Italian and Spanish subbed ⟨PH⟩ with ⟨F⟩ ages ago; examples here and here. Portuguese stopped using it in 1911 (ACL / "European" standard) asd 1943 (ABL / "Brazilian") standard.

In Portuguese it was part of a wider wave of orthographic reforms, that also got rid of etymological double consonants and ⟨Y⟩. A lot of people were hilariously annoyed, example stolen from Wikipedia:

Imaginem esta palavra phase, escripta assim: fase. Não nos parece uma palavra, parece-nos um esqueleto (...) Affligimo-nos extraordinariamente, quando pensamos que haveriamos de ser obrigados a escrever assim!

Imagine this word phase, written like this: fase. It doesn't resemble us a word, it resemble us a skeleton. (...) We get profoundly afflicted, when we think that we would be required to write it like this!