# "r" in the word for English/England



## MarX

Hello!

I'm not sure in which forum I should post this question.

Which languages have *R* for the word *English/England*?

Indonesian: *Inggris*
Panjabi: *Anggrezi*
Japanese: *Igirisu*

Thank you!

Grüsse,


MarK


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## irene.acler

*Italian*: Inghilterra
*Spanish*: Inglaterra


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## tie-break

*Français* : Angleterre


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## Outsider

Portuguese: England = Inglate*rr*a.

"English" has no "r".


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## Flaminius

MarX said:


> Indonesian: *Inggris*
> Panjabi: *Anggrezi*
> Japanese: *Igirisu*


The R in _Igirisu_ is not a rarity in Japanese since it does not have the phoneme L.  The other two from your examples are more curious since they do have the phoneme.


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## BlackWizard

Technically speaking, Japanese doesn't really have an R, either. Sound there is combination between R and L.

Although a curious thing to note here is that officially, when you spell out Japanese with roman alphabet, you're supposed to use R. This I never really understood, since the sound is much closer to L than it is to R.


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## Outsider

There are many types of "r". The Japanese consonant in an alveolar lateral flap, so it's both "_l_-like" (lateral) and "_r_-like" (flap).


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## MarX

BlackWizard said:


> Technically speaking, Japanese doesn't really have an R, either. Sound there is combination between R and L.
> 
> Although a curious thing to note here is that officially, when you spell out Japanese with roman alphabet, you're supposed to use R. This I never really understood, since the sound is much closer to L than it is to R.


To my ears, Japanese R sounds more like a D.
But this would be a theme for another thread.


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## ukuca

Turkish: 
England = İngilte*r*e
English = İngiliz


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## Nizo

If you go back to its origin, England derives from "land of the Engles" or "land of the Angles", a Germanic tribe.  From this also came the French _Angleterre_.  So it appears there may be two different explanations for the "r" in some languages' translations of England:

1.  Those which have exchanged "l" for "r" in the first part of the word (e.g. Indonesian, Panjabi, Japanese);
2.  Those which kept the French "r" in the second part of the word (e.g. Spanish, Turkish).

What do you think?


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## avok

I second that


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## jonquiliser

Nizo said:


> 2.  Those which kept the French "r" in the second part of the word (e.g. Spanish, Turkish).



Point 2 I don't agree on. All Romance languages seem to have an r because they have their respective words for "land" (at least Portuguese, Italian,  Galician, Spanish, French): terra, tierra, terre. So it's not the r from French retained.


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## Nizo

Jonquiliser,

You may be correct, as the Romance languages all seem to have adapted the Latin word for land/earth, _terra._  (I'm guessing the Romanian _ţară_ comes from the same source, though I may be wrong.)  However, it's interesting that the Latin word for England does not include any form of the word _terra_; their word for England was _Anglia_.  Based on history, most especially the Norman invasion of AD 1066, I would still suggest that _Anglaterra_ (Catalan), _Inglaterra_ (Galician, Spanish, Portuguese), _Inghilterra_ (Italian), _Engalterra_ (Rumantsch), and others all derived from the Norman French form of the word, rather than independently.

Just my thoughts!


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## jonquiliser

Maybe, but then I would still think "terr(a)" is the relevant part,  not an isolated "r".

Are there, by the way, countries that in Latin carry "terra"? I thought the typical thing was for areas to be called things like Hispan_ia_, Angl_ia_, German_ia_, Gallaec_ia_ etc.

Ciao,


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## robbie_SWE

Nizo said:


> Jonquiliser,
> 
> You may be correct, as the Romance languages all seem to have adapted the Latin word for land/earth, _terra._ (I'm guessing the Romanian _ţară_ comes from the same source, though I may be wrong.) However, it's interesting that the Latin word for England does not include any form of the word _terra_; their word for England was _Anglia_. Based on history, most especially the Norman invasion of AD 1066, I would still suggest that _Anglaterra_ (Catalan), _Inglaterra_ (Galician, Spanish, Portuguese), _Inghilterra_ (Italian), _Engalterra_ (Rumantsch), and others all derived from the Norman French form of the word, rather than independently.
> 
> Just my thoughts!


 
The Romanian _*ţară* _does come from the same Latin word _terra_, so you're right! 

The interesting thing is that the Romanian word for England remained identical to the Latin word: in Romanian it's _*Anglia*_. Why no "r"? Why not have "terra" somewhere in the name?



jonquiliser said:


> Maybe, but then I would still think "terr(a)" is the relevant part, not an isolated "r".
> 
> Are there, by the way, countries that in Latin carry "terra"? I thought the typical thing was for areas to be called things like Hispan_ia_, Angl_ia_, German_ia_, Gallaec_ia_ etc.
> 
> Ciao,


 
Me too! I thought so too, maybe somebody can help figure this out!?

 robbie


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## jonquiliser

Here's a list over some Latin names for countries/places. Found no _terra_s in there.


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## BlackWizard

Nizo said:


> 1.  Those which have exchanged "l" for "r" in the first part of the word (e.g. Indonesian, Panjabi, Japanese);



While I agree that this may explain r/l in latin-based languages, you can't apply the same rule on languages that doesn't differentiate L and R. In such languages, the usage of R is nothing more than convention (like Japanese). I have no knowledge of Indonesian or Panjabi, but due to the nature of their languages, I would not be surprised if that was also the case here (correct me if I am wrong).

To me, this looks kind of like taking black and white photo of a color painting and then taking color photo of the black and white photo. All traces of the original color would be lost in the process.


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## Flaminius

Hi,

As I noted supra #5 Indonesian and Panjabi have L sound.  I am not surprised if they have phonetic restrictions for L in this word since -nggl- is too large a consonant cluster for a lot of languages to handle as it is.

While we are at it with Asian languages, could Korean speakers contribute if their words (잉글랜드,  영국 and maybe some more) for England contain R or L?


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## BlackWizard

Flaminus: Ooops.. missed that. Although it would seem really odd to me if the usage of r in this case was anything more than some type of phonetic convention in the language. ...But I know nothing specific about the language, so I'll shut up about this until someone can clear that up...

In the meantime - something that I CAN answer: 

Korean, like Japanese, doesn't differentiate R/L. On top of that, the word used most common for England in Korea is 영국, which comes from Chinese and has no relevant basis on roman expression of the word - so I don't think it's relevant to this thread.


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## Flaminius

Thank you *BlackWizard*,
Sorry for my illiteracy in Hangul but, if 영국 is 英国, it must be a vague reference to UK itself (assuming the same usage in Chinese and Japanese).  I wonder what term Korean has for England as a part of UK — for instance, how do you refer to the England team as opposed to Scotland and Wales national teams for international football matches?


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## panjabigator

Panjabi, Hindi, and Urdu use /angrezi/ for the English language.  English, the adjective, would be /angrez/.  For England, people just say England, but I think there is a special word in Urdu, /inglistaan/.


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## MarX

Do you mean *Angrezi *or *Anggrezi*?

In Indonesian, *ng* is clearly differentiated from *ngg*, with *ng *being a single (=singgel) sound.


MarK


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## panjabigator

The N sound in those words is a nasal sound, so I'm not too sure how to answer...


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## Outsider

A velar nasal, like at the end of the English word "si*ng*"?


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## panjabigator

Yes, or at least I think so.


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## MarX

Then it's *Anggrezi*.


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## panjabigator

Hehe, the thing is that in Indic languages, sounds can be doubled.  So saying /a.ngrezii/ would be different than /a.nggrezii/  So I try and follow a system of transliteration that reflects how it would be spelled in Devanagari.  I erred when I spelled angrezi; it is better written as /a.ngrezii/, because ".n" is how I try to write nasal sounds, transliterated.


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