# Angola/English



## ilocas2

Hello, what words have double meaning as something related to Angola (country in Africa) or something related to English?

For example, does *angolul* mean both "Angolanly" and "Englishly"? What are other words?


----------



## AndrasBP

Hello, 

The adjective "*angol*" (English) is similar to the African country *Angola*, but there is never any confusion about that. 
There are no words with a double meaning, as you imply.

Angola = Angola
angolai = Angolan
Anglia = England
angol = _adj_. English
angolul = _adv_. in English

If there was an _Angolan language_, "in Angolan" would be "*angolaiul*".
Compare:
Kína = China
kínai = Chinese
kínaiul = in Chinese


----------



## Zsanna

The beginning "a" in the two words has a completely different history and reason. In the case of Angola, I suppose, it is only there to make the pronunciation easier. The origin of the word comes from "ngola" which was the name of kings who ruled the Ndongo kingdom.
As it is not customary to start a word with two consonants in Hungarian and to help the pronunciation, a vowel was necessary.
(I haven't found a detailed explanation about this, so I imagine the "a" must have fitted best our ~~sound system  to stay closest to the original pronunciation.)


----------



## AndrasBP

Zsanna said:


> The origin of the word comes from "ngola" which was the name of kings who ruled the Ndongo kingdom.
> As it is not customary to start a word with two consonants in Hungarian and to help the pronunciation, a vowel was necessary.


I hope you're not being serious that it was us Hungarians who added the "A" in front of "ngola", to create the name of a Portuguese colony in Africa.


----------



## Zsanna

No, but it is sure that we could have done it as opposed to trying to pronounce a word beginning with two consonants. It is true that we are not alone with that.

P.S.I don't know much about Portuguese linguistics but probably it goes similarly in their language, too. Latin languages don't particularly known for having too many double consonants at the beginning of words... I don't know about Slav languages. In Russian there is an "a" at the beginning of the word but I don't know about the others.


----------



## AndrasBP

Sorry, I didn't mean to be disrespectful.

Like most Indo-European languages, Portuguese has no problem with certain word-initial consonant clusters, just think of the country name *Br*azil.
However, "ng" at the beginning of a word is not possible, that's why the Portuguese colonists named the country *A*ngola in the 16th century. This name later spread and became "international". The country is called "Angola" in virtually all languages today, regardless of whether they tolerate word-initial consonant clusters or not.


----------



## Zsanna

Andras, I couldn't even imagine you being "disrespectful", no need to be sorry. 

But I'm still wondering whether we understood the O.P. properly. (O.P.= original post)


----------



## ilocas2

Hello, I have a side question. Are these adverbs used only in the context of languages? I'm asking because in Czech these adverbs are just normal adverbs and there is no rule that they can be used only in the context of languages. For example let's say that there is an African dance which is danced differently in Angola and in Namibia. In Czech you can say "Dance it Angolanly, not Namibianly!". Is it possible in Hungarian?


----------



## franknagy

The word "angolaiul" does not exist because this language does not exist. Some high class people speak Portuguese in Angola. The others (>95%)  speak several different African languages which I cannot enlist.


----------



## francisgranada

ilocas2 said:


> ... does *angolul* mean both "Angolanly" and "Englishly"? What are other words?


The Hungarian being an agglutinative laguage, the last vowel of the word Angola is perceived as part of the noun itself and kept unchanged, unlike e.g. in Slavic languages where it is seen as a nominative singular ending,  thus it changes according to the corresponding declension pattern (_Angol*a*, od Angol*y*, v Angol*e*, s Angol*ou*, ..._). So the adverb _angolul _cannot derive from the noun _Angola, _but only from the adjective _angol_. 





ilocas2 said:


> ... For example let's say that there is an African dance which is danced differently in Angola and in Namibia. In Czech you can say "Dance it Angolanly, not Namibianly!". Is it possible in Hungarian?


Is it common to say e.g. "tancovat maďarsky/česky/rusky" (to dance Hungarian/Czech/Russian) in Czech language?

(In Slovak, even if it is possible to say "tancovať po angolsky" [to dance "Angolanly"], it is  somehow a bit ambiguous and not quite usual. I'd prefer to say "tancovať na angolský spôsob" [to dance in the Angolan way/manner]  ).

In Hungarian I'd say "_angolai módon_ táncolni" or "_angolaiasan _táncolni". In case of Angola, the adverb _angolaiasan _sounds a bit weird, as it is unusual, but the adverbs _magyarosan, csehesen, tótosan/szlovákosan, lengyelesen, angolosan_, etc ... are normal and commonly used. In other words, the ending _-ul/-ül,_ when added to an adjective indicating a nation, typically (though not exclusively) refers to the language. So e.g. _magyarul _practically means "in Hungarian (language)" and _magyarosan _means "in a (typically) Hungarian way/mood/manner".


----------



## ilocas2

francisgranada said:


> Is it common to say e.g. "tancovat maďarsky/česky/rusky" (to dance Hungarian/Czech/Russian) in Czech language?



Sorry, but the more I think about it, the more I'm getting lost in it and it's giving a headache... Anyway, thanks for the reply.


----------



## AndrasBP

franknagy said:


> The word "angolaiul" does not exist because this language does not exist.


Nobody said it existed:


AndrasBP said:


> *If* there *was *an _Angolan language_, "in Angolan" would be "*angolaiul*".


----------



## francisgranada

ilocas2 said:


> But there are couple of Google results for "angolaiul" ...


In my opinion, the word _angolaiul_ is grammatically and linguistically perfectly correct. It's a totally different question if there really exists a language called "_angolai_" (= "Angolian").

Finally, for example, what we used to call _kínai_ (Chinese) practically corresponds to a plenty of various languages and dialects spoken in China. I.e. the term _kínai/Chinese _commonly does not represent a particular language (from the linguistical point of view), but rather a language or group of languages spoken in a certain country.


----------

