Newsgroups: sci.lang
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From: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com (Julian Pardoe LADS LDN X1428)
Subject: Re: Burmese by any other name...
Message-ID: <DyLDvw.57q@tigadmin.ml.com>
Sender: usenet@tigadmin.ml.com (News Account)
Reply-To: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com
Organization: Merrill Lynch Europe
References: <DyDBCt.FBx@scn.org>
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 10:16:43 GMT
Lines: 30

In article <DyDBCt.FBx@scn.org>, lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross) writes:
-->
-->Bertilo Wennergren <bw@e.kth.se> wrote:
-->>
-->>Julian Pardoe wrote thus:
-->>> 
-->>> What's wrong with "Czech Lands", "Czechlands" (like "Netherlands") or
-->>> even "Czechia" or "Czechy"?
-->> 
-->
-->I say, what's wrong with all of them is that szilly izzard (`zed').  Why 
-->not spell it/them "Check(-...)" like it's pronounced [or "Cheque(-...)" 
-->as the British pronounce it]?

Well, what about the ch = /x/?  Chech doesn't really work!

In modern Czech the sound /tS/ is spelt "c"-caron.   (A caron or hachek or haczek
is like an inverted circumflex).  In Polish and in Czech before Jan Hus "cz"
was used.  That's where the "z" comes from.  In Polish "czech" means "czech".

I imagine this is where the English spelling comes from.  I'd be interested
to know when this spelling was introduced and how quickly it became
established and whether there were any competing forms.

As for the country code, one could argue that CZ stands for ^Cesk'e Zeme
or Czech Lands which is what the Czechs call the Czech Lands ... which is
where we came in!

-- jP --

