English in Japanese called 英語(えいご)
Yet England is called イギリス("Eglish")
England and English makes sense in, well, English (of course) - England is the country (land) and the people and English and speak English.
England and English makes sense in Chinese too - 英国 - Eng-land people speak 英语 - Eng-talk.
But in jap English is 英語 kanji and England is イギリス katakana which indicates it is a more recent foreign term, compared to 英語 which is imported from China.
Why don't they also use kanji for England - 英国 like the way they do for 中国? Somemore "Eglish" is so different from England.
My theory is that, similar to Singapore, Australia, and Central America, when the British first reached Japan, they saw a strange looking animal and asked the natives what that was, and the natives answered "kangaroo" which was supposed to mean "I don't know" but the visitors took that as an answer. And when the British saw a person hiding under the table the Japanese said "nothing" because they didn't see anything, but the British took it as it was a kind of superhuman called Ninja. And when the Japanese asked where the British were from, and they replied "Shut-the-f***-up speak English!" The Japanese, being used to their long-winded redundant grammar, thought it was a formal way of saying "I am from ______". Aren't we glad the British didn't phrase their sentence this way "Speak English, f*** you!"
P.S. - the Ninja part is fake. Actually the entire last half of the post is fake, if you don't know me very well.
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