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--- In romconlang@yahoogroups.com, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote: > > Benct Philip Jonsson skrev: > > What I meant to say/ask was that as far as I know it is the > case for all the national states of Europe that the name of > the country and the name of the national language are > derived from the same base. Even where several languages > share a single standard language, as with English and German > the language name shares its base with one of the countries > where it is spoken. > > The only exception I can think of which resembles my Borgonze- > Rhodray case is Iran--Farsi, where the name of the language > is derived from the name of a dominant part of the country. > > Can anyone think of other pertinent examples? > The classic case is Gaelic, not Irish. It is always assumed that this is because some other language(s) were once spoken alongside it, whether P-Celtic or pre-Celtic. National languages take the name of the nation because they are created by the nation. In the Middle Ages people just spoke Romance (vis-?«¢-vis Germanic languages) or, say, Norman (vis-?«¢-vis Picard or Francien). Nationalism turns a dialect into a language and gives it a name. What's the difference between Macedonian and Bulgarian, Czech and Slovak, Croatian and Bosnian? A lot less that the diffence between my speech (RP English) and that of, say, Glasgow, which I frequently find quite incomprehensible in a radio interview! David