racism kontrol

[Carsten Haese]

On Thu, 2007-10-04 at 17:30 +0200, Wildemar Wildenburger wrote:
> Sidenote: Its funny that everybody calls the Dutch "Dutch" (when 
> speaking English), which pretty much is the word "deutsch", which, guess 
> what, means "German" (cf. Pennsylvania Dutch). That has always baffled 
> me --- do Dutch people refer to themselves as "Dutch" when speaking 
> dutch? The term for "Dutch" is "Nederlands" or "Hollands", isn't it?

It is fairly common that people are referred to by others by a different
name than what they call themselves in their native language. Germans
call themselves Deutsch, Chinese call themselves Zhong-guo-ren (I
think), Iroquois call themselves Haudenosaunee, and so on.

The reason for this, I'm guessing, is that visitors and/or invaders
either didn't bother to ask what the people call themselves, or they
misunderstood the answer, or they can't pronounce the answer, or they
didn't ask an authoritative source, or a combination of the above. (For
example, if you ask my neighbor what my name is, he might say "The guy
that doesn't mow his lawn often enough.")

Anyway, I believe this thread has gone on far enough off-topic...

-- 
Carsten Haese
http://informixdb.sourceforge.net